Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris Noble  There are a huge number of anecdotes about the supposed connection between emotional attitude and cancer survival rates. It has almost become dogma that people with a positive outlook do better. However, well conducted studies find no independent effect due to emotional well-being. |
'Well conducted'? These are
also anecdotal IMHO. Chris these studies basically ask the patient how they feel? That is just an
anecdotal opinion of the patient replying to a survey question. You can't have it both ways, you can't say unconventional reports are 'anecdotal' and untrustworthy but when reports match the conventional expectation these anecdotal reports are good science.
Furthermore it raises complex problems of how the question is asked in a survey too and whether the patient feels it is 'negative' to be honest and try to be 'positive', even if they don't feel so. So the problem again here Chris is how do you measure people's 'positive outlook' claim? How can any person diagnosed with cancer be that 'positive'?
Surely there are better ways of testing this? I might comment on this further ... busy at moment