Quote:
Originally Posted by David Bailey  Why are you so belligerent about everything - can't you tolerate a scintilla of uncertaintity in your brain?
I guess the power of the placebo effect has roughly the same grounding as the assertion that exercise is good for you - as I just pointed out, neither can be tested by double blind methods, but in both cases there is a lot of other persuasive evidence.
The logic "X can't be tested by method Y, so I don't accept they X exists" simply is not valid, particularly if you accept the validity of some other phenomenon Z that also cannot be tested by method Y!!!!!!!!!!!!
Put more simply, some useful treatments obviously can't be tested by double blind methods. |
I have no problem with uncertainty. It is certainty without supporting evidence that annoys me.
You have asserted that the placebo effect is strong medicine.
I responded with a study that suggests that the placebo effect is fairly weak and largely limited to subjective measures.
You responded by saying that it is difficult to measure the placebo effect but this simply raises the question of why you asserted that the placebo effect is strong in the first place. How can you know this if it can't be tested?
Science is simply a way of testing claims. There are a number of techniques such as randomised double blind trials that have been developed to help us not fool ourselves. I don't care about the exact techniques used as long as it can rule out things like confirmation bias and selective reporting. If you don't think the trials where placebo is compared to no-treatment then give reasons and come up with an alternative test. I still fail to see what is wrong with comparing a placebo group with a non-treatment group or how else you could possibly test to see whether a placebo was really doing anything.