New York Times: "What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/magazine/placebo-effect-medicine.html

 

Loooonng article.

One point that jumped out at me - he says

Well, the diet industry in the UK is a testament to the fact that doesn't work.

 

Well, if I was a boozer I would invent an organisation called SIPS and go and have a few drinks in some ornate concert hall in Leiden. I would of course make sure the meeting was approved by the Ministry of Funny Talks and make sure I paid the bill in dummy bank notes.

I better read it - not sure if I will make the end.

 

I read it. Oh what drivel. Why do we live in an era when it is acceptable to write complete drivel as if it was high intellectual debate. Is it the price we pay for ease of communication - that the empty vessels' noise drowns out everything else completely?

And why are 'educated people' so ignorant of the basic issues of philosophy that 100 years ago were well understood in the institutions of learning. All this dross about mind and body and MRI scans - which even a policeman can see is nothing new (my boss always used to insult policemen in this way).

Civilisation is quietly sinking into the waves. A tiny island remains above water - called S4ME.

 

The words "mind and body "create a Pavlovian response in people where they stop using their own mind to critique what they are reading.

 

Objective evidence for it or bust. It's not that hard.

It's fascinating and very entertaining. But you need actual objective evidence. Moving goalposts to claim that sometimes subjective evidence is fine should not be accepted. That's how we got exceptions like the psychosocial model, built up from laundering a small number of unblinded trials into some sort of evidence base.

It's madness to see science and technology advancing farther than ever before while ongoing a crisis of magical thinking that regresses and cheapens the whole.

It's great for mood. Mood is good. It's still not medicine. It's complementary and a whole other level on Maslow's pyramid. About on par with a warm, homely room. That's always nice and helps recovery, just not on its own.