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Bad Science Writer Talks About the Placebo Effect *NSFW*
The Guardian newspaper's Bad Science columnist Dr. Ben Goldacre does a stand-up routine about medicine, the placebo effect, and the mysteries of the human body at Nerdstock. From a scientific standpoint, I can't accurately say how funny it is because I was told it was great before I saw it.
Or do you just think he is because he said he was going to?
I can highly recommend Ben's book "Bad Science". I bought a copy for each of my family members for the holidays. It gives a very realistic overview of the current state of medical research, both from the "mainstream" and "alternative" medicine worlds.
And now, neither can the rest of us.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
Try a Google search for Ben Goldacre placebo
If you try to watch it all the way through, you'll get diarrhea.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Could not find the vomiting study in the rotating drum but I believe the muscle relaxant study was of Carisoprodol and can be found at this PDF. The asthma placebo effect study appears to be this study on this new bronchodilator.
If you're saying "citation needed" to imply that the placebo effect is not real, then I ask you why so many reputable institutions almost require a placebo group? It's obviously so they are capable of renormalizing the results to account for the placebo effect and not wrongly attribute their drug to something the patients caused themselves to believe they felt or to actually feel.
I might take issue with his claim that the placebo effect 'caused the muscle relaxant molecules to be more effective in relaxing the muscles' (or however he rambled it) as I have always thought that the placebo effect operated on a psychosomatic or neurological level.
My work here is dung.
(thanks Andy)
only one, but they told him it was speed.
The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that none of it has tried to contact us.
Not that I don't find placebo effects interesting, but what is it about a certain species of skeptic that says (in this case, explicitly says) they think the concept of people healing themselves through mental processes, whether you call it psychic or otherwise, is uninteresting and entirely unscientific to investigate.
Call the same thing "The Placebo Effect" however, and suddenly it's fascinating and scientific?
WTF Over?
Pug
An Invisible Entity of Vast Power whose existence must be taken on faith alone: Liberal Media
Or that giving the patient a placebo *and letting them know that* is better than nothing, and better than most IBS medicine.
http://ibs.about.com/b/2010/12/27/the-ibs-placebo-study.htm
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
It's the internet. He's just being a little fast and lose with his spelling.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
Actually the base premise is factually infallible:
Of the people that heal, they all heal themselves.
Or, if you'd rather:
A human body that will not heal cannot be helped by medicine of any sort.
One more try, perhaps:
Healing > Medicine
My final point would be that we could be researching HOW the placebo effect works in order to harness that power without using placebos. Getting the body to heal itself would be the ultimate goal, and I believe that the observables within placebo effects can lead us down that path.
Once those secrets are revealed, then not even cancer would be insurmountable, because again, exactly zero cancer patients who cannot heal have survived it. All of their bodies healed themselves. We need to figure out how to make that happen directly, and understanding the mind's impact on health would seem essential.
> Ah how you must want the BBC
Don't worry, the quality of the BBC's output is going downhill at record places.
The Wikileaks news coverage was closer to Fox News than it was BBC News circ 2005.
BBC One is now 24-7 cooking, property, reality or any combination of the three. Preferably with dancing.
BBC Two seems to be repeats of BBC One, plus snooker or darts.
BBC Three and BBC Four are where the quality content is to be found.... so the BBC have decided to close them to cut costs.
Your feigned disinterest is betrayed by your post count.
Bad point is bad.
Medicine is merely an aid to the underlying biological processes. Quality of life improvement, and little else.