Placebo of Placebo

Well, I thought we had a little bit of good news to round out the end of the year's pseudoscience news. Basically some scientists tried to see if people knew that they were taking drugs that were fake, would they still work. Glory be, the scheme worked! Here is an article and the paper.

But alas, there is a problem with scientists looking into magical effects. Yep, magical. A pill that does nothing but causes an effect and that is magic, right?

First, credit where credit is due. Orac, a computer best known for his contribution of the Blake's 7 crew, looked close at the paper and saw the flaws. Here is Orac's analysis.

The upshot is that the study unfortunately did what most studies of pseudoscience do, they let the cat out of the bag and that probably skewed the results. First, the advertised ads looking for study participants sounded cool. You always get skewed results when patients think there is something cool going on.  

The second problem was that it was not a double blind study. They either gave the patients placeboes or told the participant to go home and do nothing. A double blind would have had placeboes, a fake placebo (a drug not cleverly labeled 'Placebo' like the one in the study).

Not sure if they should have had people that were told to do nothing.... Seems sort of odd. Back to that cool advert, if you found out you were in the "do nothing" group, wouldn't you go home all depressed and maybe your results would be better than getting a pill bottle labeled 'Placebo' (remember, very cleverly labeled).

Experiment - Placebo Crystals

Time for another great experiment!

1) Head to your favorite purveyor of fine rocks and pick up a few hundred quarts crystals.
2) Create envelopes that will hold the crystal and one of three different notes written thus:

    Note 1: Greetings! You have been selected to take part in an important study. This envelope contains a crystal from a mountain in the Andes near the mystic city of Kolumbunga. It is used as a very powerful placebo. In three days, please send an email to xxxx@xxxx.xxx and tell us if you feel better or worse.

   Note 2: Greetings! You have been selected to take part in an important study. This envelope contains a crystal. It is used as a placebo. In three days, please send an email to xxxx@xxxx.xxx and tell us if you feel better or worse. 

  Note 3: Greetings! You have been selected to take part in an important study. This envelope contains a crystal. In three days, please send an email to xxxx@xxxx.xxx and tell us if you feel better or worse. 

   Note 4: Greetings! You have been selected to take part in an important study. In three days, please send an email to xxxx@xxxx.xxx and tell us if you feel better or worse. 

Put crystals with notes 1, 2 and 3, but nothing in the 4th envelope. 

4) Recruit a few hundred people to run your experiment. If you want to be reasonably random, stand in front of your school, a supermarket, department store or Mickey D's and recruit.

5) Tally your results from the emails and any comments you may have received along with the better or worse indicator. Don't forget to count the numbers of non-respondents as people not saying anything is like someone talking and saying nothing (sounds Buddhist, but trust us, it is important).

Did you get better results for Note 1? We bet you will, so perhaps you should start selling mood enhancing crystals from Kolumbunga.

Commentary: Tarot Cards as a Psychological Tool

Jennifer Marre in her blog, Tarot Cards as a Psychological Tool, posits that Tarot cards are not paranormal, just cards with symbols. That's cool by us. Sure there is a lot of pseudoscience, but stating they are just cards sort of diffuses that. But this blog (about the book) is about pseudoscience. What good would we be without some way to totally rip apart the fact that Tarot is more than just a deck of cards with pictures?

Let's start with Jennifer's premiss: Tarot cards have symbols and thus they cause people to create interpretations based on their interpretation of the symbolism... Oh, and a psychologist/therapist can interpret those interpretations to help a person somehow with therapy based on the interpretations of interpretations.

Now we're talking! That sounds like pseudoscience!

 Sure, I like the core that they are just pictures, but Jennifer may have a problem with basic science. Oh yeah, this is psychology... There is not a lot of science in psychology.

Anyway, here is the flaw: You can't tie any response to a card to root causes. It is just sort of impossible. Worse still, the interpretation of the interpretation depends on the interpreting observers history and assumptions.

Let's take the simple case, say the patient plops down the Death card... The patient's interpretation is based on their life experience and pre-wired assumptions that were built on that experience. Their reaction will be based on too many to count, let alone trace to a single root cause for the interpretation. Their reading might be that they see change, death, loss, or even feel that the therapist is indoctrinating them into the devil's science. Those interpretations are just what comes out, there is no way for sure to understand why.

On the other side, the interpreter, say a therapist, has their own assumptions pre-wired. Their life experience does the same thing to both their focus of observations and their interpretations. For example, if the patient is seeing loss, the therapist could believe there was a recent loss in the patient's life or assume the loss was related to childhood trauma. Or, as would be rather obvious, the idea of loss is just what they learned was the interpretation of the card from a friend, book, movie, Oprah, or combinations.

The bottom line though is that there is no way to run an experiment. You know, that silly nerdy stuff  called the Scientific Method. This is a problem with most psychology. Not that I place psychology into pseudoscience, but it will always be on the edge of full blown testable and provable science. There is just no way to get a repeatable and independently verifiable result form human brains. Too messy! If they weren't messy we wouldn't have all those religions or more than one political party.

Sure this could be a tool. But as a tool it is one of the worst. With a hammer and nail you can fairly accurately  drive a nail into a piece of wood(given a little training of course). There is no way that Tarot could be used to any level of accuracy. It is more like a wet noodle with the nail driving itself from belief –poor metaphor, but I am a result of all my experience to this moment in time.

I guess the danger is in just one word used: Interpretation. The moment we 'interpret' we are on the slippery slope of pseudoscience and the danger of conclusions based on belief rather than reality.

That's the lesson. Want to be a great pseudoscientist, be an interpreter of interpretations.