Mad Kally

<a href="http://www.csicop.org/si/9701/placebo.html" target="_blank"> The Mysterious Placebo. </a>

A common saying is that if you treat a cold it will last a week, but if you leave it alone it will be gone in seven days.

[ November 28, 2002: Message edited by: Mad Kally ]</p>

Doubting Didymus

<a href="http://www.thebsh.com/intro.html" target="_blank">The Even More Mysterious Placebo</a>

Dr Rick

Researchers disagree whether placebo effects are clinically important. The controversy is partly due to conceptual and methodological problems, and variations in the meaning of the concept of placebo effect. Placebo treatment has been reported to improve subjective and objective measures of disease in up to 30-40% of patients with a wide range of clinical conditions. Studies indicate that the placebo effect may be mediated by endogenous opioid neurotransmitters and not just all be "in the head."

The notion of placebo effect has at least two main meanings: effect of placebo intervention, and effect of patient-provider interaction. When the terms are defined pragmatically, effects of placebo can be estimated as the difference between placebo and no-treatment in randomized trials. The term placebo effect means not only the narrow effect of a dummy intervention but also the broad array of nonspecific effects in the patient-physician relationship. Attention, compassionate care, and the modulation of expectations, anxiety, and self-awareness all heighten placebo effects and are especially prominent in unconventional healing, and it seems possible that the unique drama of this realm may have "enhanced" placebo effects in particular conditions. Only prospective trials comparing placebo effects to therapy can provide reliable evidence to support claims of efficacy; there are none that support homeopathy.

Rick

Mad Kally

<a href="http://www.skeptic.com/03.1.jarvis-homeo.html" target="_blank"> Homeopathy from Skeptic.com </a>

The Cardinal Principles of Homeopathy

The Psora and Vitalism

Hahnemann believed that 7/8ths of all diseases are due to an infectious disorder called the Psora (itch). In the words of Hahnemann's "Organon": This Psora is the sole true and fundamental cause that produces all the other countless forms of disease, which, under the names of nervous debility, hysteria, hypochondriasis, insanity, melancholy, idiocy, madness, epilepsy, and spasms of all kinds, softening of the bones, or rickets, scoliosis and chophouses, caries, cancer, fungus haematodes, gout-asthma and suppuration of the lungs, megrim, deafness, cataract and amaurosis, paralysis, toss of sense, pains of every kind, etc., appear in our pathology as so many peculiar, distinct, and independent diseases (Stalker, 1985).

Hahnemann believed that diseases represent a disturbance in the body's ability to heal itself and that only a small stimulus is needed to begin the healing process. He owed this to his faith in vitalism, which holds that life is a spiritual, nonmaterial process and that the body contains an innate wisdom that is its own healing force.

Clutch

<a href="http://iidb.org/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=57&t=000107&p=" target="_blank">It never got any better than this, for my money...</a>

Mad Kally

Clutch,
Please don't make me laugh in an upper forum.

tronvillain

*chuckle* You know, I had forgotten about that thread? Classic Corwin.

Living Dead Chipmunk

The best statement:

So all we have to do is put a 500kg mass on a metal table, and use the heat to power our perpetual motion machine. Brilliant.

[edited to add: Wouldn't this mean that the force of gravity weakens over time, since it's being converted into heat? In ten billion years, acceleration due to gravity will be 8.2m/s^2, and ten billion years ago it was 11.3m/s^2.]

[ November 28, 2002: Message edited by: Living Dead Chipmunk ]</p>

Boro Nut

Only because you've probably never suffered a bad attack of them though. I expect some people who suffer from chronic placebos can't get enough of the stuff.

Boro Nut

DMB

lpetrich: re Simon Jenkins. As far as I can recall his last ramblings on the subject, he doesn't think that studying science at the school level teaches you anything worthwhile. Science is not, apparently, an essential part of general knowledge.

Mind you, given the type of science teaching available in many schools, he may have a fraction of a point. In my experience, science is sometimes taught as a collection of recipes that you have to learn, not understand the priciples of.