Why I Prefer Dating Women Who Are Martial Artists

Try this link: Placebo Use in the United Kingdom: Results from a National Survey of Primary Care Practitioners

 

Interesting study, of note:

"Several impure placebos were used frequently by at least a quarter of GPs. These included non-essential physical examinations (54%, 95% CI 50 to 57), positive suggestions (52%, 95% CI 48 to 55), non-essential technical examinations (31%, 95% CI 28 to 34), conventional medicine whose effectiveness is not evidence-based (26%, 95% CI 23 to 29), and antibiotics for suspected viral infections (25%, 95% CI 22 to 28).

These arnt placebos is the accepted pure sense.

I'd like to see what the prescribing data says, as far as I know, you can't prescribe placebos (in the pure sense) in primary practice, (the systems don't allow you too) and you can't order them in from general pharmacutical stockists.

I've not seen any in six odd years of analysing primary care prescribing, and just the once when part of hospital drug trials, for over a decade.

In hospital when running trials we've had to order them in from abroad, which was a large undertaking, due to the legislation around it.

I'll see what I can find that's upto date.

 

Placebos in primary care? a nominal group study explicating UK GP and patient views of six theoretically plausible models of placebo practice

There's a good up-to-date article and study here too.

Interesting, Im gonna have a chat to someone I know who works for the big distribution firms, it seems like it's a small but persistent minority who say they are prescribing them, (from a small self selected group, so may well not be representative of the country).

 

Rereading this, 1% of GPs in the study said they prescribe a true placebo regularly.

That's not many, although it is a number it's a statistically insignificant one.

I'm still interested on how they are getting a legal supply though, they don't appear in the drug tarrif, and arnt available from the two main pharmacutical distributers, I wouldn't imagine any chemist is going to order a special item for free and loose a lot of money, they also can't be electronically prescribed, so that just leaves a private hand written script, fulfilled by an in-house dispensing doctors.

Which is all sorts of dodgy.

Interesting.

 

1% give pure placebo at least once a week, and 12% have given at least one pure placebo in their career, so between these two figures lie the percentage who regularly give pure placebos less frequently than weekly.

But almost all GP's who responded to the questionnaire have given impure placebos during their career, and 77% give them weekly or more.

 

GPs will have several hundred script items per week, having 1% of them give an actual placebo weekly, isn't a large percentage and doesn't mean it's being used widely, and as I've already said, the method they use to get that placebo tablet is in question, chemists can't just relabel tictacs.

The "impure placebo" is just general doctoring, patients want antibiotics you give them paracetamol, and say it will help they feel better, as the study comments say, many of the GPs disagreed with that term and felt it misleading.

 

It could be 10% of GP's giving pure placebo every other week, which wouldn't be insignificant.

Annoyingly, I can't seem to copy/paste from the link, but your paracetamol example doesn't cover the kind of impure placebos listed.

 

It would be covered by :

conventional medicine whose effectiveness is not evidence-based (my emphasis, for the complaint).


Right since just asked a mate whos a GP.

In his opinion as a qualified GP for 8 or so years,

A) actual placebo sugar pills, shaky legal / ethical ground, everything has to be labeled up correctly, and most chemists wouldn't touch it with a barge poll, also The most popular GP systems don't even list them, so you wouldn't be able to do a script.

B) placebo injections, big no-no, if you had an infected injection site for an unnecessary injection, you would get in big big trouble.

C) the big one is giving people saline nasal sprays when they have a bad nasal cold, or ibuprofen etc for sore throats, it makes patients feel valued and keeps the ABX usage down which keeps the CCG happy.

So C is using the placebo effect in a way, but not in the way you seem to be applying it.

But that is just one GP, I know they can be quite different in there approaches.

 

Is this link working for you (it is a critique of the paper I linked, thought you would be interested in the counter points): https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&sou...Vaw3-kbxSisAkf5AIDwKfjeKX&cshid=1623354042396

It's a PDF download.

 

That's spot on, really good criticisms, under the original studies definititions, all off label prescribing would be a impure placebo, which is plainly rediculous.

Thanks for posting!

 

And, as they point out, even the pure placebos could simply saying "have you tried aromatherapy?" just to get someone out of their office.

 

I think that mostly depends how one defines “god”. It’s a far reaching discussion, but if your mind is closed off there’s no point at all on trying to have one.

the book I read of his wasn’t really about “asking for favours” it was about experiments of psi phenomena, and very interesting it was too. It’s the one I referenced; my mistake if I made it sound I had read and was advocating all his books/ work. Can’t really advocate what I haven’t read but would also be lying if I said I haven’t read the odd book along similar lines.

I do try to stay open to it, the perennial philosophy that is. It does have a certain appeal, not gonna lie. Your entitled to your own thought and opinions, just don’t try to be so arrogant to claim things you can’t demonstrate. I haven’t made claims to what is real or not, and you’d be wiser not to either. That’s a free tip for you

 

Haven’t there been quite a few studies though showing the efficacy of prayer when applied to people suffering from ailments.

The groups prayed for faired better than those not prayed for.

That doesn’t mean “god” per se. Or whatever one might understand God to be.

 

Fair enough, will take a look. But I wouldn’t necessarily take wiki as the last word. I’ll see if I can’t find the kind of experiment / study I’ve been alluding to.

 

lol, could have sworn he was smarter than that!



On a serious note though.. thinking in absolutes doesn’t really work out in the end; in my experience.

 

Indeed only the sith deal in absolutes, although then again that's also an absolute statement coming from our lord and savour himself, let's just say I don't believe in anything without evidence, and in over 3 thousand years of recorded history, we've yet to see such evidence.

I may be wrong, God my exist, then again it might not be the god your thinking of, and only Mictecacihuatl is the real deal.

At least she has access to pretty dresses........

 

Studies have shown positive effects, no effects and negative effects. They average out at no statistically significant effect.

I found a good article on the philosophy of doing these kinds of experiments: Prayer and healing: A medical and scientific perspective on randomized controlled trials

It raises an interesting point: that if we entertain the notion that supernatural, intelligent entities exist, and grant favours in exchange for prayer, proving this actually diminishes them.

Why would a powerful, non-corporeal entity ignore the Ill health of a control group? That would suggest they are rather vain and petty, and it erodes any idea of natural justice or divine plan. The idea of prayer as a way to petition a deity for favour goes against the Abrahamic concept of God, yet it is very popular with believers.

You are still left with the options of less powerful, vain and capricious gods, some power inherent in us to affect probabilities, or an undiscovered aetheric energy that can be influenced to affect probabilities.

The thing is, there is no compelling evidence to even hint at these being at all likely, so trying to prove them is a solution looking for a problem.

 

I grew up with a great interest in the supernatural, and spent years trying a whole host of esoteric and occult practices. I would actually like to believe in the supernatural, but I just can't make a convincing case for the existence of anything outside of elementary particles and their interactions.

Belief affects behaviour, behaviour can affect health outcomes, maybe, just maybe some subtle probabilistic outcomes can be affected by behaviour remotely, if thought can somehow influence wave function collapse or similar.

All of this is still materialism. While I still allow my mind to remain open to the idea that humans can perform some kind of magic, however unlikely, my guess is that it will be a materialistic mechanism.

I should point out that I am not a determinist though; I prefer the idea that quantum stochastic processes rid us of a clockwork universe and also theological arguments of first cause. It also claws back the possibility of agency and free will for us.

 

That's a great point, I think if people were completely rational, there would be less opportunity for true free will, but as this pandemic has shown, 100% of people arnt 100% rational, 100% of the time.

I'm currently reading this:

The Righteous Mind - Wikipedia


It gives a good breakdown of how peoples decision making processes seem to be structured, and the cognitive processes behind them.

It's made me appreciate where peoples more unusual right wing beliefs come from, and why the left and the right don't seem to be able to understand each other.

Well worth a read for people on all sides of the political spectrum.

 

I find it interesting that you're reading and promoting Haidt, given I would summarize him as a non eccentric arbiter on various conditions society faces based on human behavior that is similar to the same outlook as Jordan Peterson.