Upbeat Attitude Doesn't Affect Cancer

Reality Master 101 writes "Defying years of conventional wisdom, researchers announced that your attitude doesn't influence your outcome, and 'patients shouldn't feel pressured to stay positive'. I particularly liked the phrase, 'the tyranny of positive thinking'."

Comments

Re:What's the alternative?

[csbrooks]

You actually have some good points here, and I probably should have clarified my viewpoint more.

I guess I should say "I'm really annoyed with the faith the media put in a single 'scientific study'." I'm basing my viewpoint on my own experience with the media; single scientific studies, often taken out of context, and by their nature brand-new and *NOT* yet extensively reviewed by peers, are frequently cited as proof of whatever sensational thing the media thinks will get people's attention.

-csbrooks

Re:In other news...

[Smidge204]

"Do these clothes make me look fat?"

"No, your body makes you look fat. The clothes just don't do a very good job of hiding it..."

=Smidge=

Related research results...

[EnlightenmentFan]

Robert R. Provine's book _Laughter_ (2000, Viking) talks about the incredible media bias that feeds such controversies. He says, "Over the years, I have been contacted by many print and broadcast reporters.. about 'laughing your way to health.' My message that the literature about laughter and health is not all it seems..was as welcome as a skunk at a picnic."

Three small, inadequately-controlled studies by Lee Burk and colleagues on laughter-related increases in immune system function are the basis of much of the folklore about how great it is for your health.

Research contradicting it rarely gets into the popular press. Provine mentions 7-decade study following 1178 males and females which found, surprisingly, that "cheerfulness (opimism and a sense of humor) in childhood to be inversely related to survival in middle to old age. Oddly, conscientiousness was related to survival..."

Provine also cites an editorial by Marcia Angell in the New England Journal of Medicine (1985) as saying "the current evidence for mental states' affecting the cause or cure of disease is largely folklore..."

One of the vital functions of science is to make us pay attention to things we don't want to hear. We can rely on the media to tell us what we want to hear (You deserve a break today, a new car will make you sexy), but the role of science is different.

BTW most of Provine's book is a lot more fun to read than the parts I quoted--he's done a lot of scholarly research, including going up to strangers in malls and asking them to laugh, that is great fun to read about. If I ever have time, I am definitely submitting a book review on it, because it is the definitive nerd book on laughter.