NPR: The Placebo Effect Works And You Can Catch It From Your Doctor

Spoiler: the study measures subjective outcomes in response to observable behaviors that would bias their expectations. Who is writing for NPR? These days they are as lazy as the rest.

Nature Human Behavior: Socially transmitted placebo effects

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-019-0749-5

 

Link to the NPR story on the Nature paper here

 

whoops, my bad

 

Counterpoint: the BPS model of ME. 100% expectation of success by its creators. 0% success in real life other than questionnaires, which have very little accuracy and are often biased to get this response.

F A L S I F I E D

Less magical thinking. More science. Please.

 

There seems to be a phenomena which has emerged in many places. You might call it
The Arrogance of the Institutions, or perhaps the Arrogance Of The Idiocracy.

In the US we've spent, on average, a few hundred K$/year on our disease since it several outbreaks happened in the 80s and 90s. Until the past year or two, nearly all of it was chewed up by bureaucratic wallpapering. In any case the amount would not sustain any productive quantity of researchers.
At the same time we have an entire sub-agency, currently named NCCIH, assigned to investigate hippie-cräp, aka alternative medicine. Started in 1991, it is now given over $100,000,000 US/year to do studies on cures such as homeopathy. It was created and funded by Those Who Know Best and has consumed $2.5 Billion of the government's limited discretionary spending, while producing no effective new treatments for any disease. The original sponsor for the agency, California Senator Tom Harkin, complained that the agency has not validated enough of his pet treatments.

 

Medical establishment has lost their grip on hard science. Caved to popularity of unproven and unprovable alternative (complementary) bs. Yes, medicine doesn't have many, many answers. Wishful thinking, placebo response, oh what a lively waste of money it is.

Patients are at fault, too, for being uneducated in science, addicted to superstition, and thinking they know more than MDs.

I've had my own primary care doc on his way out the door saying that I should try tumeric for my arthritis. I don't think he really believed it works (after all, it's not even absorbed in the gut, or very very little, no matter how much pepper you eat with it), but he tossed out, " my patients really find that it works." What?

I live in a very post-hippie town so I guess I forgive my doc. But still, stop trying for popularity, doc and just do your job. Say you don't know. Say you're sorry I'm suffering.