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double-blind tests
March 2009 
Prayer, placebo and double-blind tests
Posted on Aug 13th, 2006
by 
Itlandm
Itlandm
I have seen a few spectacular healings after prayer and faith healing. The most "impressive" were remission of cancer and arthritis. They just kinda faded away over the next weeks. But then again I've seen quite a bit of prayer, and sometimes there was a lot of it and people died anyway. And being what I am, I took notice of the fact that the chance of healing showed no correlation with the loudness of the prayer or the verbal assertion of faith.
When I was a curious child, around 40 years ago, the placebo effect was still held in low regard. Old doctors thought it only worked on hysterical patients. These days it is heresy to not believe in it. A while ago scientists found out that to check for placebo effect, it was not enough to leave the patient in the dark. You also had to hide the truth from the doctor or nurse who gave the treatment. The belief of the doctor somehow caused placebo effect in the patient even when the doctor went out of his way to conceal his knowledge. This flies in the face of the thought that we only control our own bodies. The common explanation today is that information is transmitted by body language.
It is not restricted to healing. A few years ago there was a lot of noise about scientists having found the "God center" in the brain: By stimulating this brain area with strong magnets, they caused people to feel a divine presence, or elves or aliens for those who lean that way, and even cause the occasional vision! Now that science had found God in the brain, declared optimistic atheists, we could remove him from the outside world. (Presumably discovering the visual cortex had already removed the visible world?) Well, in any case, someone made a double-blind test, so that the magnets sometimes would not turn on when requested, and sometimes would turn on when not requested, but the operator did not know. Unsurprisingly to some of us, the spiritual phenomena followed the belief of the machine operator, not the magnets.
I don't think these things are supernatural. I just don't think we know much about nature.
When I was a curious child, around 40 years ago, the placebo effect was still held in low regard. Old doctors thought it only worked on hysterical patients. These days it is heresy to not believe in it. A while ago scientists found out that to check for placebo effect, it was not enough to leave the patient in the dark. You also had to hide the truth from the doctor or nurse who gave the treatment. The belief of the doctor somehow caused placebo effect in the patient even when the doctor went out of his way to conceal his knowledge. This flies in the face of the thought that we only control our own bodies. The common explanation today is that information is transmitted by body language.
It is not restricted to healing. A few years ago there was a lot of noise about scientists having found the "God center" in the brain: By stimulating this brain area with strong magnets, they caused people to feel a divine presence, or elves or aliens for those who lean that way, and even cause the occasional vision! Now that science had found God in the brain, declared optimistic atheists, we could remove him from the outside world. (Presumably discovering the visual cortex had already removed the visible world?) Well, in any case, someone made a double-blind test, so that the magnets sometimes would not turn on when requested, and sometimes would turn on when not requested, but the operator did not know. Unsurprisingly to some of us, the spiritual phenomena followed the belief of the machine operator, not the magnets.
I don't think these things are supernatural. I just don't think we know much about nature.
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