4 ms·

I'd like to see more concrete detail on the experimental design, to convince myself that this wasn't much more than placebo effect. Additionally, assuming the

• ZoFreX 12y ago
  I am incredibly skeptical. There are a lot of red flags here: * Huge incentive to keep getting positive results because money was/is needed * Higher ups insisting this is great and works before the science is finished - this can cause a lot of pressure to focus on positive results and gloss over negative * Scatter gun approach - they're doing a lot of different experiments, and are allowed to fail on lots of them: "they want to promote research that is very cutting-edge and very risky; a 90 per cent failure rate in their portfolio is okay, because the 10 per cent that works will change the world" - it's pretty likely somewhere in that region of experiments will show results just through sheer chance. Are they controlling for this? * A wide number of not particularly related benefits from a single, simple cause whose mechanism is not understood (I understand that breakthroughs occasionally look like this, but it's also a hallmark of snake oil) * Possible cherry picking: "This is one of the criticisms that has been levelled at tDCS: the results aren’t always that good" and "people do not respond equally to stimulation, and no one yet knows exactly why". Could the reason be that they are sometimes seeing positive results due to chance or placebo? Overall, their claims are extraordinary and their evidence is anything but. I'm not saying there's nothing here, but so far I am not convinced that these researchers aren't fooling themselves.