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[Xantalos]

Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket
/ominouschanting

Now, we wait.

Hey, it's 3, 5, 7, or 11 times, you know that!

[Duuvian]

Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket
/ominouschanting

Now, we wait.

Hey, it's 3, 5, 7, or 11 times, you know that!

You also have to be looking a mirror with one eye closed while you do it.

[Sergarr]

Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket Lord-Bucket
/ominouschanting

Now, we wait.

Hey, it's 3, 5, 7, or 11 times, you know that!

You also have to be looking a mirror with one eye closed while you do it.

But don't break it, or you will summon a Evil LordBucket, and we don't want that. do we?

[ChairmanPoo]

The better question is why placebos work in the first place.

they don't.  Stuff just happens.Clinical trials are run against placebos because you want to find out whether your drug actually works better than random environmental events.  Also, its an important ethical and practical guideline to test against the gold standard, not placebos

[Leafsnail]

Mediums are total whack-jobs though.

I'm not sure if I agree.  In order to be a decent medium you need to have a fairly good grasp of human psychology and to know about the power of suggestion.  Most probably are frauds on some level.

[MetalSlimeHunt]

Mediums are total whack-jobs though.

I'm not sure if I agree.  In order to be a decent medium you need to have a fairly good grasp of human psychology and to know about the power of suggestion.  Most probably are frauds on some level.

Just people with developed intuition who know how to use it. I've got a decent intuitive skill myself, and have been accused of having psychic powers more than once in the past because of it.

[scrdest]

Mediums are total whack-jobs though.

I'm not sure if I agree.  In order to be a decent medium you need to have a fairly good grasp of human psychology and to know about the power of suggestion.  Most probably are frauds on some level.

Just people with developed intuition who know how to use it. I've got a decent intuitive skill myself, and have been accused of having psychic powers more than once in the past because of it.

Psychology helps a lot, though. If you only run on intuition, you cannot filter the output for observer-side errors.

[Candlejack]

ESP itself isn't unbelievable to me, but what IS unbelievable is that something like it could stay under the radar even now. Still, it's strange how everything I've read on the subject says that it's extremely easy, that it can be done by anybody with no special preparations in a short(10~ minute) period of focus, and you will get definitive results on the first try.

[Leafsnail]

ESP itself isn't unbelievable to me, but what IS unbelievable is that something like it could stay under the radar even now. Still, it's strange how everything I've read on the subject says that it's extremely easy, that it can be done by anybody with no special preparations in a short(10~ minute) period of focus, and you will get definitive results on the first try.

If that were the case then it would be extremely easy to verify the existence of ESP in a scientific test.

[Jelle]

Right, here we go again.

You know about solipcism, don't you? Most if not all beliefs that we hold are 'theoretical fantasies'.

From what I've come to understand in the general sense solipcism is understanding that we make a number of assumption to make sense of our observations. Despite having insuficient information to make an incontestable conclusion, we do so anyway. I suppose it can be seen as a kind of belief rooted deep in our instincts.

However to say we make a few assumption in the process of observation is the same as everything we can possibly know is a belief seems a bit of a stretch.

Pretty much - it's like the mathematically correct expression of "We need control experiments".

Erm no? It's because no measurement can possibly be perfect. At least that's how I recall it.

It's only boring if you don't take it as an invitation to embrace introspection, surrealism, and existential awe. Or, if you're feeling morbid and depressive and such, existential dread - same thing, only one has rainbows and trees and things. You just have to take the day-to-day as an internally consistent fragment of its own, and you're set to be as pants-on-head twisted in your take on the realness of things as you'd like!

Of course, that might also be the road to schizophrenia, but philosophers have gotten to be so safe these days, with their cappuccinos and their college degrees...

Edit: More seriously, knowing that you don't know something, and being able to produce internally consistant Gedanken, is pretty essential to producing new thought and finding ways to break past academic dogma. Yes, there is scientific consensus for certain things. Those things are probably true, whatever that means. Yes, it can be useful to follow that consensus to focus your attention into new areas. But when that well dries up, and there's nowhere else to go but fantasy, your obligation is to fantasize. The idea that we're close to understanding the way the world works is attractive, but it's as much of a dead end as the idea that we can't understand it at all. The key difference is that the latter provides new direction and movement, rather than just butterfly collections.

Not sure I see what you're trying to say, but I just want to point out your use of the words dogma and consesus. Both imply a form of social truth, while science at its core could not be further from such things. The principles of science is to ascertain knowledge through observation in rigorous experimentation, not proclaim truth through social agreement or by authority. That isn't to say things are so ideal in practice (scientific authority, publish or perish etc), scientists are still human after all. But then one should fault the scientist, not science.

[penguify]

The better question is why placebos work in the first place.

they don't.  Stuff just happens.Clinical trials are run against placebos because you want to find out whether your drug actually works better than random environmental events.  Also, its an important ethical and practical guideline to test against the gold standard, not placebos

No. If you run a trial where you give half the people placebos and tell the other half "you're the control group, we didn't give you anything," the placebo group does better. It's not just random stuff.

Also, if you only test against the "gold standard" (by which I presume you mean "most effective drug we currently have") and not against placebos, you'll never discover any drug effects stronger than placebo but weaker than the "gold standard". Thus it's not a good practical guideline.

And if it's an important ethical guideline, you should probably tell all the researchers because I don't think they got the memo.

[tahujdt]

As far as UFO sightings go, I think they are 4/5s experimental plane sightings and 1/5 sleep paralysis.

[ChairmanPoo]

No. If you run a trial where you give half the people placebos and tell the other half "you're the control group, we didn't give you anything," the placebo group does better. It's not just random stuff.

... most likely it wouldn't. As a general rule: the placebo effect has no significant effect in itself, except in relatively subjective conditions (eg, pain, nausea), and even then it's transitory

Also, if you only test against the "gold standard" (by which I presume you mean "most effective drug we currently have") and not against placebos, you'll never discover any drug effects stronger than placebo but weaker than the "gold standard". Thus it's not a good practical guideline.

... actually, it IS very practical. In most circumstances* I'm unlikely to be interested in anything less effective than the gold standard. Furthermore: I'm likely to be interested in how does the new intervention compare against the old ones.

And if it's an important ethical guideline, you should probably tell all the researchers because I don't think they got the memo.

It's been part of the Declaration of Helsinki since it's first version in 1964.

[Neonivek]

you'll never discover any drug effects stronger than placebo

That is just because of basic psychology.

Of course you will never find a drug that is stronger then a drug that "fixed everything".

Also no... while the Placebo effect is powerful not ONLY is it not effective on everyone but it doesn't do all things. Most of the time a placebo works by making the patient believe they are healthy, and while that sometimes crosses over to having real profound effect it is often because of other aspects (like lack of stress)

As well in your reversed example it is easy enough to skew it. After all if they aren't looking for signs of getting better, then of course they aren't going to "do as well" as a group that is actively and optimistically looking for it.

Since whether or not they are doing "better" is entirely subjective.

Or rather: It is easy to get people to give you the results you want no matter what you do with them.

[penguify]

One of my observations was that ads touting antidepressants show them working better than placebo; doesn't that mean they tested them against placebos, not against the best drugs of their competitors?

I really am still pretty sure that placebos are commonly used as control groups, though the Helsinki declaration makes me somewhat less certain.

I'm aware that placebos work using weird psychological thingies, and that they are not magic nor do they work on 100% of people. But I'm pretty sure they work, as in, objectively tend to cause beneficial subjective effects? Whether something works according to direct biological mechanisms or indirect psychological ones, it still works.

Neonivek, I meant "if you only use the gold standard as your control group and don't compare the tested drug to placebos, you'll never discover effects weaker than the gold standard but stronger than the placebo." I don't even know how you got "you will never find a drug that is stronger than a drug that "fixed everything"," because that's not true, there are lots of drugs that are stronger than placebos. And of course I'm aware of that skew's existence: it's like half the reason placebos work. But just because something is subjective doesn't mean it's not important or useful.

ChairmanPoo, you're evidently familiar with the Declaration of Helsinki, have you studied medicine or research?