Placebo proves chi?

[Mendeli]

Often used to compare effects of both natural and supernatural drugs, could it be that placebo itself is a supernatural drug or a medium through which to prove something paranormal such as "chi" exists?

Before I go further, I'd like to ask what kind of efficiency does the placebo actually have, does it "heal" roughly what, 3% ? 10% ? of people from various illnesses? Well, not knowing that very well yet... I still have to ask. Supposing that the placebo medicines do have some effect through fooling us into believing that we are being healed with efficient medicine while we actually aren't but some of us do still get healed... wouldn't that kind of prove the existence of "chi" or supernatural lifeforce or whatever? Or are the healing placebo patients just getting better by chance? I don't believe in any of that chi chakra qi gong donkey wong wahoo myself, but one million dollars would still interest me greatly of course

So if I applied to the challenge, there would be 2 groups of cancer patients. Both groups would take their prescribed medicines, but group A would take some additional medicine. They would be told that its a new experimental super anti-cancer medicine but in reality it would be just placebo. If group A gets better healing results than group B, would I have proven anything?

edit: It wouldnt have to be cancer, could probably be replaced with any convenient condition...

Remember, no patients would be required to lose their prescribed medicines and therefore no lives would be dangered. The placebo would be just a harmless additional "medicine", maybe a capsule with water within.

Maybe the test would take too long?

 

[Bronze Dog]

As I understand it, the placebo effect isn't really an effect: It's a convenient label to describe spontaneous remission, improved natural healing among some tested people, the psychological effect of inducing confirmation bias, the regressive fallacy, post hoc fallacy, and so on in the test subjects.

Since the role of natural healing and rate of spontaneous remission vary with every affliction, the placebo effect isn't consistent.

 

[Amapola]

Here's a way to make the test a lot faster: Start with 10 people with a broken radius (that's a bone in the arm). Give them all a sugar pill. If they are all cured the next day, you've proved that placebo works!!!! Heck - if even ONE of them is cured the next day, you have proved it!!!!

 

[Zep]

Not even a semi-brain-dead peddler of medicines that could be tested against placebo trial would consider taking that test on - they know very well when their scam will be exposed!

 

[Mojo]

So if I applied to the challenge, there would be 2 groups of cancer patients. Both groups would take their prescribed medicines, but group A would take some additional medicine. They would be told that its a new experimental super anti-cancer medicine but in reality it would be just placebo. If group A gets better healing results than group B, would I have proven anything?

You wouldn't have demonstrated anything we don't already know. It's well established that people who think they've been given an effective treatment will appear to recover better than people who don't. It's just something that has to be taken into account when testing remedies, to provide a baseline against which we can measure the actual effect of the treatment in question.

 

[Mendeli]

You wouldn't have demonstrated anything we don't already know. It's well established that people who think they've been given an effective treatment will appear to recover better than people who don't. It's just something that has to be taken into account when testing remedies, to provide a baseline against which we can measure the actual effect of the treatment in question.

Yes, that's exactly why this is so... eh... funny. It's an established phenomena, its known to happen, but why? What's the actual explanation for it?

My claim would be that the phenomenom is supernatural, or paranormal. People who decide they should be healed get healed because they can influence their life-force or "chi" to heal themselves.

Tests have already been made and its kind of proven to work. So how would I go about receiving my $one million?

I think it comes down to how do I make a test that proves WHY placebo works instead of IF it works or not...

 

[Mojo]

I think it comes down to how do I make a test that proves WHY placebo works instead of IF it works or not...

Yes. So you need to find an aspect of the placebo effect that can only be explained by the existence of "chi" or whatever supernatural entity you are positing, rather than, for example, the sort of things that BronzeDog suggested above.

Good luck!

 

[Mendeli]

spontaneous remission, improved natural healing among some tested people, the psychological effect of inducing confirmation bias, the regressive fallacy, post hoc fallacy, and so on

unfortunately my english/phychology terminology/medical terminology isn't good enough to understand the meaning of most of those things so I think I'll have to research a bit to understand the meaning of those things and consider if anything is missing from that list or if some of those in that list could be argued or proved to actually be paranormal but well established to the point of not really considering them as such.

 

[Bronze Dog]

Confirmation bias
Regressive Fallacy
Post hoc Fallacy

 

[eri]

Before I go further, I'd like to ask what kind of efficiency does the placebo actually have, does it "heal" roughly what, 3% ? 10% ? of people from various illnesses? Well, not knowing that very well yet... I still have to ask.

It's my understanding that the placebo effect doesn't have a percentage of patients it works with, or have anything to do with spontaneous remission. It just seems to be the observation that if you tell people something will work, they might convince themselves it did. I highly doubt people have been cured from major diseases through the placebo effect - it's efficiancy in curing a brain tumor would probably be around 0%.

That said, I don't think you can argue that chi is the reason behind the placebo effect - there's simply no way I can think of to show this. And you WILL have to prove it to be eligible for the million.

 

[IXP]

There are two characteristics of the placebo effect that make it unlikely that it is any supernatural effect:

1. For the most part, it disappears for any objective criterion of improvement, it is strongest when the criterion is self-report, eg. headaches. It is weaker to non-existant when the criterion is measuble, eg. blood pressure.

2. A large meta-analysis if placebo controlled studies showed that it is only slightly better than no treatment at all. It may appear to be amazing that 33% of people feel better after taking a placebo. But in the normal course of most illnesses there is day-to-day variance of the symptoms. If you take and group of people suffering some ailment and test them on two days separated by the same period, you will likely find that 1/3 feel better, 1/3 feel worse and 1/3 feel about the same.

IXP

 

[Mendeli]

Thanks for all the info, looks like I won't be becoming a millionaire anytime soon then