exchemist

Interesting topic, but hard to work what's going on just from reading the exchanges in the link. Can you summarise what happened, in a paragraph or so?

Regarding the bit in red, you have certainly implied it. To quote you (from the other thread): "i challenged the current thought process.. im not the first to do this, many theories did the same and were rejected at first (a very important and proven theory comes to mind). And no, i do not equate myself to giants like Einstein., just saying." and "You may ultimately be right, or wrong, but closing the door on a thought simply because you know better is exactly why progress is stifled." But OK, you seem to be becoming more reasonable now, so that's a good thing. (By the way, Einstein's relativity theory was taken up with alacrity by the science community. It is a romantic myth that he somehow laboured on in spite of rejection. His 1905 publications immediately made a great impression on the scientific community and he was appointed professor (which in those days didn't just mean a college lecturer but was a very senior academic position) within five years. But Einstein accepted his ideas would be challenged to see if they were robust, and he knew his physics and of course his maths. He also, later, went to get help with the maths he needed for general relativity.)

Ask yourself who it is that enforces court orders in the USA. And who they report to.

No, this is a rabbit hole I don't think I want to go down. People trying to invent theories when they have not studied any science never ends well. What they forget, when they invoke people like Einstein and accuse others of closed mindedness, is that innovators like Einstein or Heisenberg mastered the existing science first and only then, once they understood the theories of the time and knew what they were talking about, did they go on to innovate. In other words, they did not "make shit up", as my friend PhDemon used to put it. I'm glad to have helped you avoid murdering mathematics and logic, but preventing you murdering physics would be a longer campaign. I'll leave that to others, I think.😉

I wonder if I was wise to try to help........

Yes but they are trying to get rid of the residual salicylic acid, aren't they?

It is my firm view that people without medical training should not dabble in offering medical therapies to others, whether profit-making or on a charitable basis. I just think it is dangerous.

OK thanks. I wondered whether it was something to do with agricultural use. Evidently you know Michael Harrop, then. You have already provided more detail on the reasons for his conviction that FMT will help than he has, in 3 pages of this thread. Thanks for this. What bothers me now is that you say you obtained FMT from Harrop's "own business, when it was in operation". This gives me the queasy feeling that he has tried to make a business out of providing FMT and went bust, which puts his appeals for support on this forum in a new and not entirely favourable light. I can't speak for others but I am very cagey indeed about supporting alternative quasi-medical enterprises, especially if the aim is to turn a profit. If he is, or has been, dabbling, without medical training, in providing medical treatment to others, then I would disapprove of that very strongly indeed. P.S. Just found this on the web: https://www.humanmicrobes.org/about Harrop has not been up front with us about this.

OK borderline dyslexic, that explains the occasional wacky spelling, that's fine, I just wondered. But you have to understand that attaching units to π is nonsensical. Perhaps you could get around the problem by introducing some factor with your chosen dimensions that has a value of 1. You could multiply π by this factor and the product would have the same numerical value as π but now with dimensions. So if the factor is F with units kg . m / A2 . S3, you could write πF = π kg . m / A2 . S3. Then you would need to explain the physical significance of F and why it has a value of 1.

Eloquently expressed. If we can't determine objectively (in a way broader society would accept as fair and reasonable) who might warrant pre-emptive intervention, and we don't in any case have the treatments, I'm not sure what there is to discuss.

What is tet? Tetracycline?

OK, so what then did you mean by saying in Planck's constant the "2 s" can be cancelled making it independent of time? To quote you, you said: " for example, when looking at planks constant, it is almost always shown as the factored version (cancelling the 2 time aspects) i did not, the reason, when i was trying to find the meaning of the units, one of the time units was a higher value than the other but the units themselves cancel out leaving just a number." How can you reconcile that with what we have just gone through? If you want anyone to read it, you will at least need to give them a reason to think it may not be crap. If you persist with trying to apply dimensions to π you have no chance of that. I strongly advise you to get rid of that notion. By the way it is spelt "without" not "with-ought". Is English your first language?

OK so that now agrees with my units, right?

What? That doesn't make sense. The dimensions of energy are ML²/T², so kg m²/s² in SI units. Planck's constant has dimensions of energy x time, so ML²/T, i.e. kg m²/s. though it is more usual to express it as an energy unit x time, i.e. in joule-seconds (J.s) or electron volt - seconds (eV.s).

But I'm afraid in the real world there is such a thing as ballocks. And if you talk ballocks people will point that out. As a former contributor on another science forum, who was a school teacher, used to say, "In science, you can't just make shit up." Ideas have to conform to logic, including mathematics, and they need to be testable, at least in principle, by observation of nature. Inventing a now-you-see-it-now-you-don't rule for applying dimensions, when you feel like it, to a mathematical transcendental number like π, has to fail as a scientific idea. I'm sorry to be harsh but there it is. You are free to think what you like. But if you persist with this idea you will be thought a fool, that's all. Up to you entirely.

What is A? Usually it denotes Amperes, i.e. electric current. Planck's constant has the dimensions of "action", viz. energy x time. That is always true. You can't just cancel the time element, that's nonsense. And there is only one time element. I don't know what you mean by there being two of them. You must have misunderstood whatever you were reading. (Or you were fed a load of garbage by AI: we see increasing amounts of that on this forum.)

There are other dimensionless constants in physics, one well-known example being the fine structure constant: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fine-structure_constant But in any case, π is not a physical constant but a mathematical one, as earlier posts on this thread have pointed out. It is not solely related to circles in Euclidian geometry either, but has a more fundamental significance, as shown for instance by Euler's relation, which is not intrinsically geometrical (though you can represent complex numbers geometrically). You are not at liberty to arbitrarily give π dimensions only when it appears in certain physical contexts: either is it is dimensionless or it is not.

Well against my better judgement I see am being trapped into taking part in this thread after all. 🙂 If there is no defined condition, you have no business deciding to try to treat it - even if a treatment were available, which there isn't.

I know what you mean. I gather "What if the sky were made of concrete?" comes from the US military, as an example of a pointless hypothetical scenario with with no useful answer. In fact you just feel tired even trying to start thinking about how you would answer it. Very funny, as so many of these military things are. (There's another great US Army one, in a performance review of a soldier, which simply says: "Got a full six-pack, but kinda lacks the plastic thingy to hold it all together." We've all worked with people like that.)

Must say I rather dislike this "What if the sky were made of concrete? type of question. There is no clinical diagnosis of psychopathy and there are no magic ways to fix it. So discussing it seems an empty exercise to me.

Haha true, dat. As we know from the Post Office scandal, what really gets the attention of politicians is a media storm alleging injustice of some kind. Hard to see where that would come from in this case. Pretty hard to argue people are dying due to lack of funding for faecal transplants. I mean they may be, possibly, if they have some specific conditions, but jolly hard to prove, other than in well documented applications like c. difficile.

OK, the discussion has been about why we should agree to do such a thing. One side of that is whether and why faecal transplants might be effectlve in the case of this person. The other, which you are focusing on, is whether writing to elected representatives is likely to produce a result. As I say, I think this is going to require publicly funded research rather than relying on drug companies. So maybe writing to elected representatives could be one way to promote that research.

Well actually I think "medical suppliers", by which you seem to mean drug companies since you speak of profitability, are a bit beside the point here. There is no way I can see for a drug company to get involved in faecal transplanting. You need live microflora from the intestines of a donor. This will be a hospital procedure, it seems to me, with a donor chosen for each specific patient. For instance the wife of a friend of mine needed one of these to get out of a chronic gut infection. They took it from her husband, because obviously they shared the same diet and so it was thought that would reset her to where she was before, and her system would be comfortable with that. It worked. The issue one of establishing scientifically - I would assume through publicly funded medical research, as it is not one for the drug companies - what further conditions, beside refractory gut infections, can be successfully treated with faecal transplants. @Michael Harrop seems convinced there is potential for CFS/ME, though he has yet to explain why. I'm hoping he can enlighten us, though I'm starting to wonder if it is not just a hope he has, without any specific evidence. I confess also to being a bit bothered by the references to "high quality" donors. This could be the sort of handy get-out spiel a charlatan could use when, having taken somebody's money for a transplant procedure, the treatment is found to make no lasting difference. But let's see what he has to say.

What's the betting the response starts: "Thank you for your excellent challenge" or something similar? 🙄

Yet nowhere in this lengthy response do you state why you think FMT might cure or alleviate CFS/ME. Is there a theory for this, e.g. a proposed mechanism of action? Or are there results of trials showing significant improvement in CFS/ME sufferers following FMT? Can we please get down to a concrete discussion of the science: the observational evidence and/or hypotheses for mode of action, specific to the treatment of CFS/ME by faecal transplants? If you believe so strongly in its efficacy you must be able to at least give us a paragraph explaining your rationale. You evidently have some detailed thoughts on the subject, since for example you speak of the importance of “high quality” donors. What does that mean? What defines high quality in this context? And so on.