Comments on Epiphenom: A personal god boosts the placebo effect

I prefer- A placebo effect boosts the idea of a pe...

2010-03-01T05:21:42.181Z

I prefer- A placebo effect boosts the idea of a personal God. Dad D thought is was very interesting. A nice "blessing" on you Tom. David Mc

Thanks Steven! There is one nice feature to this s...

2010-02-28T21:23:13.874Z

Thanks Steven! There is one nice feature to this study, however. It's prospective - they defined a hypothesis, did an intervention, and then followed people to see what happened. That kind of study is incredibly rare in religious research, so they deserve some kudos for that.

Yet another small study, poorly controlled, that s...

2010-02-28T14:45:13.987Z

Yet another small study, poorly controlled, that shows a marginal effect, which just happens to confirm what the experimenters themselves were looking for. It's interesting that these studies on religion use the same tricks, and have the same flaws, that studies of pseudoscience such as acupuncture employ.

Coincidentally, another recent study claimed that acupuncture helped cure depression too - another small, poorly-done study, with a small effect.

Welcome to FoS, by the way!

I sent this to Dan Dennett by the way. He thought ...

2010-02-27T09:29:08.629Z

I sent this to Dan Dennett by the way. He thought it "very interesting". :-)

The placebo effect is "spooky"? Really? ...

2010-02-26T12:49:28.659Z

The placebo effect is "spooky"? Really? There is no evidence for this.

Nice write-up, interesting result, but, yes, the study looks a bit dodgy. We'll need a properly done follow-up before we can really conclude anything.

Sounds like a terrible study. But if there were so...

2010-02-26T10:31:31.087Z

Sounds like a terrible study.
But if there were something to it, another possible explanation could be that susceptibility to irrational beliefs can cause one to have religious ideations or belief in the power of a pill.