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Originally Posted by Paul C. Anagnostopoulos  Simple: You perform a ceremony that is similar to a real shaman ceremony, but leaves out the bits that actually effect the cure. We do know what those bits are, right?
The placebo acupuncture trials use a device that looks like an acupuncture needle, delivers a pinch, but does not actually pierce the skin. This is presumed to be a placebo because we know that piercing the skin and irritating a qi channel is what effects the cure. Or something like that. Maybe. |
I think David is assuming that the shaman ceremony invokes a strong placebo effect that cures the patient's cancer or whatever. He then argues that you can't do a double blind randomised trial because any convincing sham shaman ceremony would have the same placebo effect as the "real" shaman ceremony. All this does is render his assertion untestable and unfalsifiable.
You can test shaman ceremonies against no treatment. There is nothing wrong with doing this. You will quite probably find improvement in various subjective measures after the shaman ceremony. If anyone is going to argue that the shaman ceremony has any effect on objective measures such as survival I would like to see the evidence. A randomised prospective trial of shaman ceremony +standard care vs standard care would be able to test this. If anything the lack of blinding would favour false positives.