“Parachute use to prevent death and major trauma related to gravitational challenge: systematic review of randomised controlled trials”

link:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/327/7429/1459?ijkey=425457f110f8db584617b87a1eace92eaa39ff02

So for example in testing homeopathy to test whether the pills are active you would use the homeopathic consultation but with sugar pills.

A placebo therefore can ONLY exist as a mirror intervention, it cannot exist in its own right. This helps clear the dillemna, ‘what is a placebo effect?’ because instead we can say, ‘what is the effect of sugar pills, or pink lights on a physiotherapy machine, or confident friendly consultation skills etc. i.e. calling these things what they are instead of lumping them under the catch-all, ‘placebo’

Additionally it can help doctors to be more aware of the complex way in which they are healers and not simply evidence-based prescribing machines.

I think we have discussed a psychology experiment where the perceived value of financial advice in an investment simulation depended on the price charged for the advice, or somethiing like that. This probably maps to the abstract psychological element of placebo effect – someone is doing something nice for you – but that isn’t necessarily the whole story.

Haere’s a thought: placebo vaccine. Bad iea, yes?

Autosuggestion, Coue stressed, does some things but not others. It’s sphere of effect is probably virtually the same as the placebo effect. Stress, anxiety, pain, and depression seem to be particularly responsive to autosuggestion, and to some extent physical illness, which is sometimes exacerbated by stress. As Coue long ago said, in his seminars,

“For instance, if you have a leg cut off, and you imagine the leg will grow again, it is positive it will not grow again, because till now we are not able to produce such miracles; but if we have sad ideas, if we have organs which do not work well, if we have pain in a part of our body and we imagine that the sad ideas will be replaced by pink [sic.] ideas, that our organs will, little by little, function better; that the pain we have, in whatever part of the body, will disappear, it takes place, because it is possible.” (Coué, 1923: 111)

Now, as I mentioned in another post, as a hypnotherapist myself, even I would admit that it’s accrued a great deal of flakeyness. But the basic concept introduced by James Braid in the 1840s was dead simple… If you help people to focus their attention for a while on a dominant idea, to the exclusion of anything else, and raise expectation, then there’s an increased effect of the imagination upon the body’s responses, and this can be used to deliberately (non-deceptively) replicate the placebo effect using suggestion. Irving Kirsch therefore calls hypnosis a “non-deceptive mega-placebo.”

Proper research in the field of hypnosis, tends to suggest certain areas where it’s more effective, and these can be compared to the sphere in which the placebo effect operates.

By the way, you should also consider Emile Coue in this respect. He was the French pharmacist who popularised autosuggestion as a form of self-help in the 1920s. He was very famous in his day. I’ll look for a snippet to post.

Off the thread I know, but related to your high BBC media profile.

Good chat on the breakfast sofa this morning on superfoods.

I’m not sure how far rational persuasion is going to get on a programme where one of the main headlines is ‘Line-up on Strictly Come Dancing announced’.

Are Richard and Judy still going?

MP3 is lower-quality, and patent-encumbered.

By the way, Ben, I thought you did a good job of grilling those doctors. They all seemed to want to twist words to make out that they weren’t lying to patients. You were consistently open and frank about it.

That said, there’s a vast amount of ignorance about science and scientific method, statistical analysis and psychology that all contribute to the wonders of advertising, consumerism and new-age evangelicalism that rightly raise indignant heckles and Ben has to be cheered for trying to help us battle those who would exploit us with their false promises and dodgy marketing.

We should be grateful that we’re better educated, less anxious, less narcissistic (and hence less vulnerable to exploitation) than others, and do our (Christian) moral duty by protecting those who are.

Ian – agree – can intelligent, reasoning sceptics benefit from the placebo effect?

Has anyone done a trial for example, of paying Gillian Mckeith either nothing, a lot, or an awful lot for the same ‘treatment’ and then measuring the outcome?

If paying more for a treatment makes it more effective, how do we determine which patient and which treatments are influenced (or not) by this?

I’ve re-encoded it as Ogg Vorbis, with a low, variable bitrate. You can hear the compression, but it’s worth it for the file size. I could add a few MB and make it sound perfect.

Part 1 (8.42MB):
http://www.mediafire.com/?ujmodjjrmdb

Part 2 (8.45MB):
http://www.mediafire.com/?s7hhiwdgh0h

What Ben’s progammes have demonstrated is that placebo effects are real and complex and involve a patient expectation, the doctor’s behaviour and social factors (and more)

Placebo effect is too simple a term to adequately describe this range of processes, so we/you/ Ben(!) need(s) urgently to develop the necessary lexicon so that when we say ’snake oil’ we’re not talking about good communication skills.

Graham

It works a treat and leaves no adverts or associated crud on your system. I’m listening to part 2 of Ben’s programme now and it works fine.

Cheers.

Graham.