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I'm glad lutusp has already jumped in here to decry the shoddy quality of "science" relied on to build the opinion piece kindly submitted here. He is correct th

I'm glad lutusp has already jumped in here to decry the shoddy quality of "science" relied on to build the opinion piece kindly submitted here. He is correct that psychology often relies on data unrepresentative of humankind as a whole, http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/WeirdestPeople.pdf http://hci.ucsd.edu/102b/readings/WeirdestPeople.pdf often engages in dodgy data manipulation after gathering the data, http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/ http://opim.wharton.upenn.edu/~uws/ and is usually part of a larger scientific universe of rushing to publish. http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/filedrawer.html http://www.ma.utexas.edu/users/mks/statmistakes/filedrawer.h... That said, while we will always have to be wary of grandiose claims about preliminary study results, http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html http://norvig.com/experiment-design.html and especially about "mind over matter" claims, http://norvig.com/prayer.html http://norvig.com/prayer.html there are skeptical psychologists http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/teaching/JOURNEE_AUTOMNE_CogMaster_2011-12/docs/Lilienfeld_2004_Teaching_PseudoScience.pdf http://www.lscp.net/persons/dupoux/teaching/JOURNEE_AUTOMNE_... http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/observer/2005/september-05/the-10-commandments-of-helping-students-distinguish-science-from-pseudoscience-in-psychology.html http://www.psychologicalscience.org/index.php/publications/o... http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_730.aspx http://www.psichi.org/pubs/articles/article_730.aspx and other researchers in psychology who apply rigor to their discipline, so over time we may actually find out something about human behavior from psychology more reliable than the weak and debatable assertions found in the article submitted here. AFTER EDIT: Because the submitted article mentions the placebo effect, in the usual manner of popular articles, perhaps I should share here some links that are helpful for understanding what placebo effects are all about. Some of these online links cite quite a few useful scholarly publications. http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/behold-the-spin-what-a-new-survey-of-of-placebo-prescribing-really-tells-us/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/behold-the-spin-what-a-n... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/michael-specter-on-the-placebo-effect/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/michael-specter-on-the-p... "In other words, the best research we have strongly suggests that placebo effects are illusions, not real physiological effects. The possible exception to this are the subjective symptoms of pain and nausea, where the placebo effects are highly variable and may be due to subjective reporting." Despite the numerous press releases on the Web pointing to publications co-authored by Ted Kaptchuk, who has NO medical training or credentials, http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doctors-and-a-dummy-degree-part-2-0-harvard-medical-school-and-the-curious-case-of-ted-kaptchuk-omd/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doc... http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doctors-and-a-dummy-degree-part-2-2-harvard-medical-school-and-the-curious-case-of-ted-kaptchuk-omd-cont-again/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doc... the statements typically found in those articles, such as "Recent research demonstrates that placebo effects are genuine psychobiological phenomenon [sic] attributable to the overall therapeutic context, and that placebo effects can be robust in both laboratory and clinical settings" are untrue. http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-rise-and-fall-of-placebo-medicine/ http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-rise-and-fa... "Despite the spin of the authors – these results put placebo medicine into crystal clear perspective, and I think they are generalizable and consistent with other placebo studies. For objective physiological outcomes, there is no significant placebo effect. Placebos are no better than no treatment at all." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20091554 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20091554 "We did not find that placebo interventions have important clinical effects in general. However, in certain settings placebo interventions can influence patient-reported outcomes, especially pain and nausea, though it is difficult to distinguish patient-reported effects of placebo from biased reporting. The effect on pain varied, even among trials with low risk of bias, from negligible to clinically important. Variations in the effect of placebo were partly explained by variations in how trials were conducted and how patients were informed." Fabrizio Benedetti, a co-author of one of the most cited papers who is also a medical doctor, sums up his view this way: "I am a doctor, it is true, but I am mainly a neurophysiologist, so I use the placebo response as a model to understand how our brain works. I am not sure that in the future it will have a clinical application." To sum up, despite claims to the contrary by a person without medical training who is often covered by the lay press, the best-considered view among medical practitioners with clinical experience is that the placebo response has no clinical application. See also: http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-thinking-make-it-so-cam-placebo-fantasy-versus-scientific-reality/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/does-thinking-make-it-so... http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html http://www.skepdic.com/placebo.html http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/revisiting-daniel-moerman-and-placebo-effects/ http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/revisiting-daniel-moerma...

jwr 13y ago
While I would agree that "the placebo response has no clinical application", I would not discount it so easily. Modern medicine tries to sweep all kinds of things under the "placebo effect" rug. In general, whenever something happens to the human body that we cannot explain by chemistry and mechanics, we call it a "placebo effect". This view of medicine treats the human as two separate entities: the body and the mind. I believe this is a narrow view. Our brains are not separate from our bodies and have a huge influence over what happens with us. And it seems that at lot of what we previously called "autonomic" systems can be influenced by the mind. This is something we do not understand, which is OK — but I don't think it is OK to mock anyone who says otherwise. My views on these things changed after, having spent 8 years trying to cure joint pains, I finally got rid of them just by thinking (a simplification, but close enough). Oh, and the throat infections and allergies? Gone, too. That sort of killed my smug scientific approach, or more precisely, made it clear to me that our scientific tools are inadequate and that there are lots of things happening in our bodies that we a) do not understand, b) cannot meaningfully measure, c) cannot reason about in statistical studies. This doesn't mean it is impossible to measure those things, just that at present we do not know how to do it. I also now believe that "medical training" is not it's all cracked up to be. And I learned that doctors really hate saying "I don't know". So, I would much rather hear people say "something is happening that we do not understand" rather than discount any articles like this one as pure quackery.
- driverdan 13y ago
  > In general, whenever something happens to the human body that we cannot explain by chemistry and mechanics, we call it a "placebo effect". If by "we" you mean you, sure. If you mean scientists I call bullshit. You're going to need a good citation to make that claim. > having spent 8 years trying to cure joint pains, I finally got rid of them just by thinking Not surprising. Pain is the one thing you expect to be able to change by "thinking." Pain is perception and placebos (and thinking) change perception. > Oh, and the throat infections and allergies? Gone, too. Now we're going down anecdote road. You do realize that allergies change as you age right? My anecdotes: until I was in my late teens / early 20's I didn't have allergies. Then suddenly one year I had them badly. Years later they went away again. My dad never had allergies until they came on strong in his 50's. Similarly infections come and go. > And I learned that doctors really hate saying "I don't know". Good doctors don't. The problem is that the medical profession is full of egos. Egos don't go well with admitting you don't know or are wrong.

jwr 13y ago

While I would agree that "the placebo response has no clinical application", I would not discount it so easily. Modern medicine tries to sweep all kinds of things under the "placebo effect" rug. In general, whenever something happens to the human body that we cannot explain by chemistry and mechanics, we call it a "placebo effect". This view of medicine treats the human as two separate entities: the body and the mind. I believe this is a narrow view. Our brains are not separate from our bodies and have a huge influence over what happens with us. And it seems that at lot of what we previously called "autonomic" systems can be influenced by the mind. This is something we do not understand, which is OK — but I don't think it is OK to mock anyone who says otherwise. My views on these things changed after, having spent 8 years trying to cure joint pains, I finally got rid of them just by thinking (a simplification, but close enough). Oh, and the throat infections and allergies? Gone, too. That sort of killed my smug scientific approach, or more precisely, made it clear to me that our scientific tools are inadequate and that there are lots of things happening in our bodies that we a) do not understand, b) cannot meaningfully measure, c) cannot reason about in statistical studies. This doesn't mean it is impossible to measure those things, just that at present we do not know how to do it. I also now believe that "medical training" is not it's all cracked up to be. And I learned that doctors really hate saying "I don't know". So, I would much rather hear people say "something is happening that we do not understand" rather than discount any articles like this one as pure quackery.

driverdan 13y ago
> In general, whenever something happens to the human body that we cannot explain by chemistry and mechanics, we call it a "placebo effect". If by "we" you mean you, sure. If you mean scientists I call bullshit. You're going to need a good citation to make that claim. > having spent 8 years trying to cure joint pains, I finally got rid of them just by thinking Not surprising. Pain is the one thing you expect to be able to change by "thinking." Pain is perception and placebos (and thinking) change perception. > Oh, and the throat infections and allergies? Gone, too. Now we're going down anecdote road. You do realize that allergies change as you age right? My anecdotes: until I was in my late teens / early 20's I didn't have allergies. Then suddenly one year I had them badly. Years later they went away again. My dad never had allergies until they came on strong in his 50's. Similarly infections come and go. > And I learned that doctors really hate saying "I don't know". Good doctors don't. The problem is that the medical profession is full of egos. Egos don't go well with admitting you don't know or are wrong.