Recently these pages witnessed a dramatic debate over whether astrology could be or had been proven in the now defunct Skeptics Challenge. (I learned my lesson – as revealed by a commentator, skeptics don’t have an open mind but require scientific, not experiential, proof.) At any rate, this appeared in our local newspaper column, the People’s Pharmacy: No Science Behind Soap Remedy.
Sometimes a remedy defies logic. Usually there’s no science to support it either. That’s certainly the case when it comes to putting a bar of soap under the bottom sheet to stop leg cramps or restless legs.
One reader (who happens to have doctorates in biomedical engineering and physics) took us to task for suggesting this remedy. He asked, “What is the mechanism of action for a bar of soap under your sheets for relieving any type of pain? Answering that this is anything but an old wives’ tale discredits everything you have done in the name of science.
“As a fellow scientist and university faculty member, I feel it is your responsibility to educate your readers using accepted scientific principles. When you do not, you are performing a disservice to the rest of us.
We can’t pretend that soap under the sheet is anything more than a folk remedy. We can’t explain how it would work, and we don’t know for sure that it does. Nonetheless, we have been impressed with readers reporting success.
One wrote: “I’ve been a long-time sufferer of sciatica. Recently, I was diagnosed with degenerative joint disease resulting in tarsal tunnel syndrome in my left foot. The pain was nearly unbearable. After your column on the soap mystery, I could not believe it but I thought I have little to lose.
“I keep the bar of soap underneath my sheets all the time. It’s been over a month, and I’ve been noticing much less pain and more energy. I shared the article with a co-worker who also is benefiting. Her sister, a nurse, is puzzled by this.”
Their training may predispose nurses to be cautious: “Being a nurse, I was VERY skeptical about the soap remedy. Statin medicines give me leg cramps. I decided the bar of soap could do no harm. It worked the very first night and has continued to work for the past three months. I can’t figure out how it can possibly help, but it does.”
Another reader found a bar of soap more helpful than prescription pain relievers: “I had an unsuccessful replacement of my right knee 18 months ago and my left thigh suffers from meralgia paresthetica (thigh nerve pain).
The article goes on with more testimonials. This is not a column written by wackos, these people have degrees in pharmacology and Joe is a consultant to the FTC. I tried to find an article debunking the soap remedy, but all I found were more testimonials and the odd fact that the remedy doesn’t work with Dial or Dove. But the point is that not everything can be explained by science. Some things just work!
posted February 20, 2007 at 5:07 am
Yes, I find scientists can be weird around explanations. Like, something can’t be happening because they can’t think of a mechanism that would make it possible. Like the soap remedy, or like the evolutionary “inheritance of acquired characteristics”, for which there is increasing evidence but no mechanism.
At the other extreme, if the data don’t fit their theories, they are capable of inventing something of which they have no experience to make it all fit. Like the ‘ether’ that matter was supposed to pass through until Einstein came along and got us to look at things differently. Or, I think, the current ‘dark matter’ theory: no one has detected ‘dark matter’, which apparently makes up 90% of the universe, and it has been invented to account for gravity not working as they think it ought to – that galaxies in theory do not have enough matter to hold together. I think it’ll probably turn out that we need to look at things in a new way again.
So it’s like they’ll accept an explanation without evidence if it fits their theories – like dark matter or the ether. But they won’t accept evidence without an explanation that fits their theories -like the soap thing. Actually, I think I’ll blog this one
posted February 20, 2007 at 6:30 am
Isn’t that funny Dharma – they’ll accept an explanation without evidence if it fits their theories because that’s what they say about us