"Peter Moran" <[email hidden]> wrote in message news:...
Quoted message said:
Quoted message said:Do you know that in some clinical trials fifty per cent of the subjects
have
Quoted message said:"responded" to placebo? This means that in that particular context the
opinion of the practitioner as to his treatment having a true effect in
any
Quoted message said:individual patient will be wrong fifty per cent of the time.
I'm wrong. Actually it is a lot worse than that. I never was much good
at statistical thought. What this really means is that any treatment at
all can appear to "work" often enough to convince a practitioner that is
inclined to believe so.
Thus what we find in practice are very numerous false claims of authentic
treatment effect for every one that is likely to be, or actually shown to
be, more than a placebo-related influence (which includes spontaneous
fluctuations for present purposes). Placebo effects, along with other
properties of clinical practice such the patient subordination described in
the prior post, can make just about anything look like an effective
treatment for things like anxiety, mild pain relief, allergies etc.
So what is the true likelihood of such a claim being true, just on a
practitioner's say-so? It is actually very low.
Peter Moran