5 ms·

What do you make of the placebo effect? The polygraph obviously has no basis for working, but while a sugar pill doesn't make a tumor disappear, it can be very

by vasco 2y ago

What do you make of the placebo effect? The polygraph obviously has no basis for working, but while a sugar pill doesn't make a tumor disappear, it can be very good at pain management. I still wouldn't use it in the context of the justice system, though.

codr7 2y ago
So you mind can fix pain, but not tumors? Where do you draw the line?
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  At things that only exist in the mind, like, say, pain.
  - codr7 2y ago
    Except that's not even close to true.
    - tsimionescu 2y ago
      In what sense? Pain is a complex emotion triggered by various simple sensations (very hot, very high pressure etc). But remember that people with certain kinds of brain damage can feel these same sensations, but not pain. To them these just don't register as painful. Other people feel pain in limbs that they no longer have, so not triggered by any sensation at all. Also, even beyond medical issues, different people perceive pain very differently. Hot peppers are perhaps the clearest example of this, where people accustomed to them feel the same heat, but not the same pain as someone unaccustomed.
      - codr7 2y ago
        In the sense that it's a physical process triggering mental reactions.
        tsimionescu 2y ago
        Pain is the mental reaction, not the whole process (of course, mental reactions are themselves physical processes, but that's a different discussion). When you take an opioid, the pain goes away, but the physical process that was previously causing it doesn't.
        codr7 2y ago
        This is such a one sided dogmatic view of how the body works and heals that I honestly don't know where to start. I've seen enough evidence of bodies healing themselves just from changed minds. The truth is the synthesis of western scientific reasoning and eastern mysticism and holistic thinking. The problem was always blind faith, dogmatism, which is exactly what you're doing.
knallfrosch 2y ago
The problem is that the polygraph doesn't work on both levels. Obviously, it doesn't detect lies. But more to the point, it also doesn't extract useful information from most liars, and leads to fake confessions. To stay in your metaphor: - Not only do sugar pills not cure tumors, but imagine - 60% of recipients don't report decreased pain levels (no placebo effect) - 20% of recipients feel more pain
ADeerAppeared 2y ago
> What do you make of the placebo effect? The placebo effect is measurable. If there is no measurable improvement, there's no placebo effect either. Bear in mind that what most claims in favour of the polygraph measure is not truth but potentially-false confession. Extracting false confessions is relatively easy, it's also completely f-ing useless to wider society and massively harmful to the victim.
- meowface 2y ago
  I see no issues with using polygraphs for hiring at intelligence agencies (I defer back to the comment about people missing the point of it), but as an investigative tool it's definitely a net negative.
- ToucanLoucan 2y ago
  You're assuming truth is the goal, which isn't correct. The goal of police is to close cases, and in this goal, polygraphs are quite effective. They don't care if you actually did the crime, they care that they can extract a confession, or provide damning evidence to a prosecutor that lets them throw you in prison, so they can put a nice big checkmark on that case. Did they actually jail who was responsible? Maybe not, but who cares about that, apart from you? Same reason for Forensics to exist. Don't misunderstand, some Forensic science has validity in many cases, but a lot of it is just straight up nonsense that isn't proven or peer-reviewed in the slightest, in fact many Forensic sciences that appear in modern court cases are completely, 100% debunked. And like, why should they care? Even if you hire a crack lawyer team that gets you out of the court case, it's not like anyone involved in the investigation that almost threw an innocent man in jail is going to suffer an ounce of consequences. Or hell, even if you're wrongly convicted, worst case scenario you get a financial judgement after years of litigation, that's paid for by the taxpayers.
Sesse__ 2y ago
A sugar pill does not make tumors disappear. That's not what the placebo effect does; it changes your perception of pain and well-being, but not much else. (Of course, that can have a value in itself, but it's nothing like the magical healing effects found in urban legends.)
- em-bee 2y ago
  the healing effect comes from the fact that your perception of pain and well-being actually contribute to the healing process.
- vasco 2y ago
  You must've misread what I wrote, since we both said the same thing.
- SkyPuncher 2y ago
  I think OP is trying to say exactly what you’re arguing
voxic11 2y ago
The placebo effect itself isn't real (at least in the vast majority of cases where it has been claimed to exist), when people measure a "placebo effect" what they are actually measuring is simply a regression toward the mean, not a causal effect. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/31/powerless-placebos/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/31/powerless-placebos/ https://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-weak-regression-to-the-mean-is-the-main-reason-ineffective-treatments-appear-to-work/ https://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-wea... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6369471/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6369471/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707261/
- krferriter 2y ago
  I don't think this is right. Placebo effect definitely exists for conditions that are largely influenced by mental perception. The common example is pain. You can reduce people's perception of pain by deploying the placebo effect, e.g. giving them sugar pills that you convince them will reduce their pain. It extends to other similar conditions which are not generally (or possible to be) measured directly, but rather based on a patient's self-reported scoring. Like "on on a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your experience of this condition". Placebo effect can work for that. But not for other more tangible conditions.
  - voxic11 2y ago
    Did you read any of the articles I linked? > The most important study on the placebo effect is Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche’s Is The Placebo Powerless?, updated three years later by a systematic review and seven years later with a Cochrane review. All three looked at studies comparing a real drug, a placebo drug, and no drug (by the third, over 200 such studies) – and, in general, found little benefit of the placebo drug over no drug at all. There were some possible minor placebo effects in a few isolated conditions – mostly pain – but overall H&G concluded that the placebo effect was clinically insignificant. Despite a few half-hearted tries, no one has been able to produce much evidence they’re wrong. This is kind of surprising, since everyone has been obsessing over placebos and saying they’re super-important for the past fifty years.
lazide 2y ago
In a small but measurable percent of cases, the sugar pill does actually make tumors disappear though. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12509397/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12509397/], and helps with almost every other factor of care in much larger percentages of the time.
- jayrot 2y ago
  Literally from your link : > Conclusion: In randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials, presumably with minimum sources of bias, placebos are sometimes associated with improved control of symptoms such as pain and appetite but rarely with positive tumor response. Substantial improvements in symptoms and quality of life are unlikely to be due to placebo effects.

by vasco 2y ago

codr7 2y ago

So you mind can fix pain, but not tumors? Where do you draw the line?

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
tsimionescu 2y ago
At things that only exist in the mind, like, say, pain.
- codr7 2y ago
  Except that's not even close to true.
  - tsimionescu 2y ago
    In what sense? Pain is a complex emotion triggered by various simple sensations (very hot, very high pressure etc). But remember that people with certain kinds of brain damage can feel these same sensations, but not pain. To them these just don't register as painful. Other people feel pain in limbs that they no longer have, so not triggered by any sensation at all. Also, even beyond medical issues, different people perceive pain very differently. Hot peppers are perhaps the clearest example of this, where people accustomed to them feel the same heat, but not the same pain as someone unaccustomed.
    - codr7 2y ago
      In the sense that it's a physical process triggering mental reactions.
      - tsimionescu 2y ago
        Pain is the mental reaction, not the whole process (of course, mental reactions are themselves physical processes, but that's a different discussion). When you take an opioid, the pain goes away, but the physical process that was previously causing it doesn't.
        codr7 2y ago
        This is such a one sided dogmatic view of how the body works and heals that I honestly don't know where to start. I've seen enough evidence of bodies healing themselves just from changed minds. The truth is the synthesis of western scientific reasoning and eastern mysticism and holistic thinking. The problem was always blind faith, dogmatism, which is exactly what you're doing.

knallfrosch 2y ago

The problem is that the polygraph doesn't work on both levels. Obviously, it doesn't detect lies. But more to the point, it also doesn't extract useful information from most liars, and leads to fake confessions. To stay in your metaphor: - Not only do sugar pills not cure tumors, but imagine - 60% of recipients don't report decreased pain levels (no placebo effect) - 20% of recipients feel more pain

ADeerAppeared 2y ago

> What do you make of the placebo effect? The placebo effect is measurable. If there is no measurable improvement, there's no placebo effect either. Bear in mind that what most claims in favour of the polygraph measure is not truth but potentially-false confession. Extracting false confessions is relatively easy, it's also completely f-ing useless to wider society and massively harmful to the victim.

meowface 2y ago
I see no issues with using polygraphs for hiring at intelligence agencies (I defer back to the comment about people missing the point of it), but as an investigative tool it's definitely a net negative.
ToucanLoucan 2y ago
You're assuming truth is the goal, which isn't correct. The goal of police is to close cases, and in this goal, polygraphs are quite effective. They don't care if you actually did the crime, they care that they can extract a confession, or provide damning evidence to a prosecutor that lets them throw you in prison, so they can put a nice big checkmark on that case. Did they actually jail who was responsible? Maybe not, but who cares about that, apart from you? Same reason for Forensics to exist. Don't misunderstand, some Forensic science has validity in many cases, but a lot of it is just straight up nonsense that isn't proven or peer-reviewed in the slightest, in fact many Forensic sciences that appear in modern court cases are completely, 100% debunked. And like, why should they care? Even if you hire a crack lawyer team that gets you out of the court case, it's not like anyone involved in the investigation that almost threw an innocent man in jail is going to suffer an ounce of consequences. Or hell, even if you're wrongly convicted, worst case scenario you get a financial judgement after years of litigation, that's paid for by the taxpayers.

Sesse__ 2y ago

A sugar pill does not make tumors disappear. That's not what the placebo effect does; it changes your perception of pain and well-being, but not much else. (Of course, that can have a value in itself, but it's nothing like the magical healing effects found in urban legends.)

em-bee 2y ago
the healing effect comes from the fact that your perception of pain and well-being actually contribute to the healing process.
vasco 2y ago
You must've misread what I wrote, since we both said the same thing.
SkyPuncher 2y ago
I think OP is trying to say exactly what you’re arguing

voxic11 2y ago

The placebo effect itself isn't real (at least in the vast majority of cases where it has been claimed to exist), when people measure a "placebo effect" what they are actually measuring is simply a regression toward the mean, not a causal effect. https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/31/powerless-placebos/ https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/01/31/powerless-placebos/ https://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-weak-regression-to-the-mean-is-the-main-reason-ineffective-treatments-appear-to-work/ https://www.dcscience.net/2015/12/11/placebo-effects-are-wea... https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6369471/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6369471/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707261/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6707261/

krferriter 2y ago
I don't think this is right. Placebo effect definitely exists for conditions that are largely influenced by mental perception. The common example is pain. You can reduce people's perception of pain by deploying the placebo effect, e.g. giving them sugar pills that you convince them will reduce their pain. It extends to other similar conditions which are not generally (or possible to be) measured directly, but rather based on a patient's self-reported scoring. Like "on on a scale of 1-10 how would you rate your experience of this condition". Placebo effect can work for that. But not for other more tangible conditions.
- voxic11 2y ago
  Did you read any of the articles I linked? > The most important study on the placebo effect is Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche’s Is The Placebo Powerless?, updated three years later by a systematic review and seven years later with a Cochrane review. All three looked at studies comparing a real drug, a placebo drug, and no drug (by the third, over 200 such studies) – and, in general, found little benefit of the placebo drug over no drug at all. There were some possible minor placebo effects in a few isolated conditions – mostly pain – but overall H&G concluded that the placebo effect was clinically insignificant. Despite a few half-hearted tries, no one has been able to produce much evidence they’re wrong. This is kind of surprising, since everyone has been obsessing over placebos and saying they’re super-important for the past fifty years.

lazide 2y ago

In a small but measurable percent of cases, the sugar pill does actually make tumors disappear though. [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12509397/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/12509397/], and helps with almost every other factor of care in much larger percentages of the time.

jayrot 2y ago
Literally from your link : > Conclusion: In randomized double-blinded, placebo-controlled trials, presumably with minimum sources of bias, placebos are sometimes associated with improved control of symptoms such as pain and appetite but rarely with positive tumor response. Substantial improvements in symptoms and quality of life are unlikely to be due to placebo effects.