> Whether such practices can produce effects beyond what placebo research documents—whether shared noetic certainty can, under certain conditions, become causally operative on physical outcomes in ways that exceed current medical understanding—remains genuinely open.

It doesn't, there are many studies on the "placebo effect" (see for example https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM200105243442106 - "We found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects. Although placebos had no significant effects on objective or binary outcomes, they had possible small benefits in studies with continuous subjective outcomes and for the treatment of pain. Outside the setting of clinical trials, there is no justification for the use of placebos.") that reliably show that the only thing it can do is reduce the feeling of pain.

This essay is verbose AI moralityslop that doesn't back up any of the points it makes, makes no single coherent argument, and apparently tries to subtly promote quackery. Truly awful.

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galaxyLogic 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

But placebo works, right? But it only works if you don't know that it is placebo you are getting.

	▲	Nevermark 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Placebos often work, even when a placebo is known to be a placebo.

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canadiantim 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

If placebo’s didn’t have clinical effects we wouldn’t be controlling for them in every scientific study

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Antibabelic 2 hours ago | parent [-]

The entire premise of a placebo-controlled study is to see if a treatment works better than something that produces no effect.

	▲	Nevermark an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Both the placebo and treatment have placebo effects. By comparing the treatment to a placebo, the placebo effect is cancelled out. Whereas, comparing a treatment straight to non-treatment, leaves it unclear how much of any perceived benefit the treatment has was due to placebo, or the specific treatment. You may have been saying that, I wasn't sure what "no effect" was emphasizing. An alternate means of getting the same comparison is to have treatment and non-treatment applied without any patient knowledge of either, when that can be done. Which works, and is more straight forward from a measurement standpoint, but is ethically unacceptable.