Faith healing:proof of god, or placebo effect?

The only cases of the placebo effect that I've ever read about were cases of self-reporting; i,e., "Yes, Doc, my knee feels better", while an MRI shows the cartilage is still torn and the patient is still limping. What is astounding is that that is astounding to someone (I don't mean you, here).Do you have any reports of truly astounding placebo effects? How does one do a double blind study on the effectiveness of a placebo?

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

I don't doubt for a minute that a doctor saying what you have is tachyoryctes macrocephalus, and two of these taken three times a day for eight days will fix you right up will be more effective than his saying take a chill pill, Phil. But will it do something that will show up on a lab report or a survey of ones turnips?

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

Differences in attitude among individuals aren't at odds with experience. All people have aches and pains. Some shrug it off immediately while others whine perennially; those who complain until something gets done, and those who just get tired of complaining and get on about their business. When I go out into a November snow I'm a misery to behold; whereas, my sister dances in it. Yet we both react pretty much the same way to a February snow. A positive and a negative effect both caused by the time tested placebo Getoverit^®. What reason is there to ascribe the placebo effect to anything more than an attitude adjustment: a known, non-astounding effect? What is alleged goes against what is normally possible, what is possible, and often what we'd want to be possible. But if we stick to confirmed cases of 'healing' "seems" is the operative word. One artifact of the human cognitive process is that the extra attention we pay an unexpected event is attributed to the event. We should never be surprised by what surprises us. Mind over matter would be astounding, mind over mind not so much.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

I'd bet a dime for donuts that "slake" is about a gazillion times too strong of a word for the case. That it might ease the desire some I have little doubt. People fill their lives with events called habits. When we skip one of our habits we have a bit of time that we don't know what to do. This causes angst. It's one of the reasons that convention and ritual is such a strong force in society. Retaining the rituals of drug dependence while eliminating the drug is fixing one problem at a time. Have you anything to show that the change in attitude isn't the entirety of the effect? I don't think anecdotal evidence should be accepted out of hand. Hear here! "I think I can. I think I can. I arrgh!" I'm betting you've more of a surmise then an observation. Yes it would: conformatory bias. I bet I could. I bet I could find a doctor that would agree that brain tides cause lunacy. Let's up the standards of evidence a wee bit. I agree. But in what sense?

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

What real effect? What evidence it there that the patient ⇛is⇚ better? That the patient reports that they feel better? To be sure I'm better off with a broken arm and a smile than I am with a broken arm and a frown, but I still have a broken arm. Do bones knit faster when we have a better attitude, or is attitude better when we have a better attitude? Paint me blas. No. Got a lab report where grinning reduces BUN?

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

And your straw man can ride him over. My GP can’t reconnect a severed spine either but I’d not demand that to credit her abilities. I haven’t actually denied anything; and, which of my questions was wrong?

quote:

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• Do you have any reports of truly astounding placebo effects?
• But will it do something that will show up on a lab report or a survey of ones turnips?
• What reason is there to ascribe the placebo effect to anything more than an attitude adjustment: a known, non-astounding effect?
• Have you anything to show that the change in attitude isn't the entirety of the effect?
• What real effect?
• What evidence it there that the patient ⇛is⇚ better?
• That the patient reports that they feel better?
• Do bones knit faster when we have a better attitude, or is attitude better when we have a better attitude?

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I don’t think a placebo is worthless, but that is not the point in question.As far as it goes I don’t believe that a placebo is worthless, but it’s ‘healing’ not worthless that was put on the table. And I’m not even a stickler for how much healing. If it can make a five day cold turn into a four day cold I’d consider that pretty darn good. But it’s just not there.Not to be too critical of your site but there is a reason it’s called alternative medicine. That’s code for not supported by the evidence. (Chopra’s Quantum Healing? Geez, Call 1-900-psychic and ask them if astral projection is a cure for claustrophobia.) If I fill my mouth with chocolate pudding and squash my cheeks I can produce measurable thrust. Not only won’t I make it to the moon anytime soon, I’ll not be achiving the Ballon. Placebo as medicine has made the same advances over the last few hundred years as tarot readings. Looking over my posts I think the statement I was most egregiously flippant with was Mind over matter would be astounding, mind over mind not so much. I can use my mind to make my fingers move. So mind can clearly effect matter. Just so long as we’re all on the same side in the conspiracy to reject any and all truths put forth by Architect I’m cool. I’d be interested to know how you know what I have or haven’t looked for. Hummm! The power of mind over body in the healing sense has a long way to go before the burden of proof shift over to my side of the fence.I’m not very good with research yet. I am in awe of those of you who can find and seemingly digest all that information. Arachophilia over in the deconversion thread is just blowing me away. My respect for the most of you ( Buz and ICANT your on the edge, but on this side of it. Archie’ Haha, dude.) is immeasurable. I hope I don’t have to resort to emoticons to make that clear.AbE: I think it far worst to jump on board too quickly.Edited by lyx2no, : Missed a bit

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

I'm going to have to go over this a bit before I can comment. A quick skim certainly piques my interest.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

I'll be sure to do this justice. But I've a hard time taking a lot of it seriously when a pain metric is how tightly one scrunches ones forehead. I don't doubt for a second that with the help of biofeedback people can learn to work (or not work) 'muscles' they didn't know were controllable I hear that's how Vulcans learn how to do that one eyebrow thing but I can not-blink when someone slaps my face and it still hurts.Be it known, I'm not inconvincible.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

Maybe. But people are so willing to fool themselves that it's hard to make up something stupid enough that no one will believe it. The joker who came up with Nanny-tea as a cure for measles succeeded in proving that very point. With that in mind, an ounce of caution is worth a pound of sure. Maybe. Though a stimulus of our midichlorians into realignment with the qi would explain it equally well. That's a problem. Not right. Antibiotics will work in a marinated corpse. In the same way you can convince a lion into mauling you, yeah! The lion is going to maul you one way or another, but a few good jabs with a pointy stick and you can be assured your patience won't be tested. But I'm not prone to calling that control. The paired wads of tissue on top of my kidneys is not my brain. My brain is lower down and forward. Don't make me look for a list of benefits of pee pee chablis. Dang, and I just made that up. When I'm right, I'm right. Why would it stay in that light? Even miniscule effects aren't that hard to prove. We can pull teeny tiny temperature changes out of the CMBR that we couldn't possibly measure directly. Who doubts those fluctuation? So how could the most skeptical observer not be force to accept the reality of clinically useful placebo effects if "It most certainly is there" as you assert? The "and then amplified" needs to be qualified. Let us say that we do someday learn to intentionally control innervate tissue and fix what ails us. I predict that 'New Age healing" will evaporate. It's the magic, not the medicine that appeals.Edited by lyx2no, : Hit submit too soon.Edited by lyx2no, : SizeEdited by lyx2no, : Final submission.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

If you believe that there is anything going on in that video that isn't going on in the WWF you do believe in magic.There's more than one way to believe in magic. When watching your sport of choice, and you see your boy moving to score a point, and your anti-boy moving to prevent the point, are you up off of the couch waving your fist incanting "Go, go, go."? That is a conscious or non-conscious belief in magic.For me it's non-conscious. I don't have an intellectual belief that my rolling fist is going to help propel my boy in his course. But I learned as a wee babe that if I think the right thought the colorful, fuzzy thing with the laces will move to my will and that lesson in magic carries on emotionally till the day I die.How many of our belief are colored by the magic we learn in the crib? I face the fact that I can be fooled before I get to that point. I'd let those who are better at testing such things than I be my counsel.If I were the only person on Earth that had color vision it would take me a few hours to convince the scientific community that I could do something innately that they could only do with their spectrograph. The'd also be able to look into my eye and see a different arrangement of photo receptors that would lead them to the understanding of why.Qi has not been demonstrated in a millennium even in the scientists' 'chirographs' and there is no sign of a mechanism by which it could function if it does exist.Conversely, we (Bill Moyers included) are easy to fool if the trick pleases us.And remember how we came to be. We evolved under the physics of the Universe. Evolution didn't invent color. It was there and we adopted it. Where in the Universe is that Qi storehouse? *I uses "qi" here and in the immediate future as a shorthand for any and all of the mechanisms by which the plecebo or faith healing can work. I don't mean qi as in qi proper.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

True enough. You'll note that none is being treated by placebo.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

The question when taken out of context does indeed appear to be facile. And so the facile answer yes would indeed apply. But the question had a context. An application of that context would firstly show that grin was a place holder for earlier gibber-jabber, not the act of flexing ones facial muscles. Secondly, if context is to be ignored, I don't remember if grinning was effective. was a better answer. You didn't actually supply evidence that grinning did reduce BUN.But the larger point being, if the chain of events is: placebo modifies attitude, modified attitude manifests as healthier activity, healthier activity mediates health, then placebo is merely a proximate cause. Unless the proximate cause acts with as high degree of efficiency as the ultimate cause then skip crediting the placebo and attitude and credit and proscribe grinning.If the placebo cum attitude leads to the body doing healthier things for itself why not proscribe placebo to everybody continuously. Assuming the placebo isn't listening in to the doctor saying "This is used to treat your foot fungus." it may mistakenly hunt down and kill that first cancer cell in the pancreas.If the placebo triggers the mind to hunt down that cancer cell we need to find out why the mind ain't got the gumption to to it itself without the humming and hawing.If the placebo is the ultimate cause, you've got magic.That biofeedback can help us to learn to use muscles that we weren't using or weren't using effectively may be beneficial to health is not at issue. (Nor, I think, much at question.) No evidence was offered pertaining to the debate.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

Still interested, not able. That’s because you’re willing to accept being partially wrong. Whether its the bit where you agree with me or the bit where you disagree with me that your wrong about A little bit of hokum goes a long way. Unless the context was April fools there is little that can be done to attain credibility. I have had two surgeries. Heart and (four) finger reattachment. After neither of them would I take any pain med’s prescribed to me. I don’t like them: they addle me. I was well able to withstand the discomfort. Thought very little of it, quite frankly. Nor did I need acupuncture. So, none of the drugs and none of the needles. But I had eaten hospital food in both cases. Think it could have been the hospital food? When in the history of mankind has there been a lack of evidence for electromagnetic fields. Did bad weather only come upon us of late? Oh, say, 4350 years ago, hummm? As for dark matter it was the evidence that came first.But yes, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But it’s not evidence of presents either. It was held that the world was flat for a lot longer than that. How’d that work out? You’ll have to ask someone who knows what a PCDBC trial is for this one. Definitely before the trilobites. Likely before multicellular organisms. But if that’s here nor there I’m not catching it.Qi is supposedly a flow of energy. How did life adopt a flow of energy that seems to be imperceptible? Unless something other than chemistry is going on within the brain this energy flow should be detectable. Herschel discovered infrared light because it screwed with his thermometers. Ritter discovered ultraviolet light because it screwed with his silver salts. Pit vipers beat out Hershel, and bees beat out Ritter. Currently, our capacity to resolve energies that screw with physics are well beyond that of what life can utilize. All indications are that there is no Qi. Anthropocentric much? Dogmatism often gets in the way of progress but it keeps us from being fickle. Fickle gets in the way of knowing there’s progress to be made. Perhaps. But that something doesn’t effect chemistry or physics. So how does the brain detect it?

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

Lest I forget, I first want to give a shout out to Phage0070. I got the sense that you felt that I was coming across a bit hostile. Thanks, Phage, for raising the bar. I’m betting I look pretty mild right about now. From what I’ve noticed the only ones who die of their illnesses are those who are the most cheerful and kindest of people: those who were the first to lend a helping hand. The same crowd killed by drunken drivers, if I don’t miss my guess. It’s bad enough that we’re not supporting our arguments with evidence, but do we have to resort to pablum? And this is why we can’t conflate placebo and biofeedback. Biofeedback involves learning. Placebo does not.Yes. the mind can control many things that we don’t usually think about. A few electrodes on my auricular muscles and I’ll be wiggling my ears within a week. Whoop-dee-do comes to mind. More interestingly, however, a dog can learn to salivate at the sound of a bell. The brain learns associations.A wax bead (I suggest a wax bead rather than a sugar pill for obvious reasons) could replace the bell to trigger salivation. Should we ascribe the autonomic salivary response to a placebo? Sounds like cheating to me.With placebo there is no opportunity for the brain to learn an association between the treatment and the desired response.So the story goes: If I go to my Dr. with a malady, which I presume I don’t consciously know how to mentally remedy, when he gives me a pill and a chat, I show significant improvement. (If not significant why are we having this tte--tte.)Now, if I go to my Dr. for scabies and diarrhea and he treats me with a placebo telling me it’s a powerful antipruritic and I don’t know what that means, what will it treat?Or is it only if I consciously know what the treatment is supposed to effect that I will note a specific improvement? But if my mind is unable to treat it when I consciously knew from the start I am not a fan of any form of runny goo extrusion, what new motive or information has the Dr. added to allow me to remedy it now?I have read many reports where it seems that a placebo is used to stimulate a conditioned response. I have a modicum of doubt that they are not entirely bologna. However, I have never seen a report of an unconditioned response that was not attributable to any of the half dozen or so know affects: suggestibility, selective affirmation, gullibility, sycophancySorry, Panda, but I'm afraid I won't be able to come back to this for some months. You'll have to play with Phage. Wear a helmet.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters

I can't argue with that. I happen to believe one of the major causes of the placebo effect is our acceptance of things we cannot change. When we are satisfied that the Dr. has done what he can to alleviate the our complaint we stop complaining. No complaint = successful result. And then we die.Bash away, sir. Bash away.

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When cometh the day
We lowly ones
Through quiet reflection
And great dedication
Master the art of karate
Lo, we shall rise up
And then we'll make
The bugger's eyes water
Roger Waters