The anti woo thread.

[LetThereBeRock]

Can all those who don't believe in homeopathy,ghosts,talking to the dead,reading minds etc,please check in here?

There must be a few of us.

I feel as though I've logged onto allthingswoo.com rather than Mumsnet.com at the moment,and I'm not referring to this particuarly forum,but chat and AIBU?.

And if anyone says anything about how we should be openminded,I'm afraid I'll have to beat you to death with a a stick,one cut from an ash tree by the light of the first Summer moon of course.

and try awfully hard to accept you're wrong. Thats not what the placebo effect means at all.

I'm not wrong. Bit sensitive now about attacking people's intelligence?

No. I am quite comfortable stating that people who believe in homeopathy and reiki aren't the sharpest knives in the drawer.

Do you have a point though? You seem to be flailing around spitting venom at people. Any particular reason?

You don't understand? What's hard to understand

The benefit of many/most/all alternative treatments is almost certainly down to placebo effect.

Strongest impact of placebo effect is belief.

Placebo effect produces symptom relief including pain relief.

Pointing to little understood but powerful relationship between mind and physiology.

Relationship dependant largely on deception or is it see Trillian's link and this one

Deception can and almost certainly does result in health benefit

= interesting debate

as opposed to ha ha you stupid idiots aren't we all clever (which I doubt, if you can't understand the above)

Fab thread LetThereBeRock.
Motherhood does seem to be more infested with/ exploited by woo than other walks of life. Am always talking to apparently rational women who pop something about homeopathy, Bach remedies, cranial osteopathy, angels etc.. into the conversation. I find it hard to really take them seriously after that.

I wonder if it is a combination of fewer girls taking science subjects at school & uni, and then dealing with the biological and medical side of parenthood?

I think religion is a form of woo, but one that it is even harder to challenge, because of established power, societal taboo and the fact that it has long learnt not to express itself in ways that can be tested.

By the way, can I recommend Butterflies and Wheels www.butterfliesandwheels.org I think ('fighting fashionable nonsense')

"You don't understand? What's hard to understand

The benefit of many/most/all alternative treatments is almost certainly down to placebo effect."

It's all a placebo and a deception.

= End of argument.

er -- that's my point mardy

talk about wading through mud

Whatever - I've only skim-read the last few pages and apologise if I've got the wrong end of the stick. FWIW all the"woo" stuff is either BOLLOCKS OR PLACEBO imo.

I suppose it depends on whether it's considered ethical to spend £££s on a placebo effect.

Er, no no no the point is that alternative therapies can and do focus on vulnerable.

Take money for what can be achieved from a nice bath with some smellies, or getting what some of us call a grip on reality.

So basically we're all agreeing then.... the thick and vulnerable might spend money on it to fool themselves into making themselves better.
Anyone with an ounce of intelligence should steer well clear.

er no no no the point is that alterative therapies can exploit the placebo effect and produce benefit thereby

debate then follows on ethics/benefit/cost of deception/placebo

no one here has even begun to consider it in the middle of all the snorting

except Trillian whose link suggested that placebo effect is possible without deception

it didn't really but it was a good effort

No I'm not saying that intelligent people don't get caught up, of course they do.

I object to people arguing that because it worked for their grannies best friends mother in law, well then who knows?
It may have something in it.

It's like lipstick, lipstick might make you feel good for a few minutes but it can't be advertised as relieving stress, pain or discomfort.

Woo gets away with all this malarky because "Well we don't know everything do we"

Bollox.

in fact "getting a grip on reality" is precisely the point

placebo demonstrates health benefit from losing grip on reality

no bollocks at all

we really don't know

see my link

which is from boring old turgid web md not woo.inc btw

"lipstick might make you feel good for a few minutes but it can't be advertised as relieving stress, pain or discomfort."

if you are told it will, it might

Oh sorry I should of made it clear. I have no problem in people firing ahead with this bollox. Each to their own. Demented as it is.

What pisses me of is the "practitioners" making the money out of peoples fears and insecurities.

"demented"?

a new one but not unexpected

really? like the pharmaceutical industry inventing disorders for us to lap up?

like scare-mongering by conventional medicine to try to get everyone over fifty onto statins or whatever?

does that piss you off too? to what extent, considering the financial exploitation is there too, along with health costs commensurate if not greater than alternative health? or is that just woo?

if there's a health benefit, there's a cost

people aren't going to do it for free

but I agree -- this is the debate that should be happening

childish derogatory abuse and snide comments are just that-- childish

The placebo effect may make you feel a bit happier or more comfortable but it isn't going to cure you.

And frankly what you are saying is that pharmaceutical companies rip people off (yes) and find new 'ailments' to help market their products and this is just as bad as 'woo' and so we should just shut up.

I should think well today my child has been told that Moses parted the Red Sea or that processed food contains no water, but heck, it might be true! It ISN'T true! It's bollocks, and I'm allowed to say so.

May I join? I'm with others, in that I don't object to people dabbling in woo.

As long as they don't try to push the woo onto me, or to suggest that because I don't believe in the woo I am somehow lacking as a human being.

That applies to new age medical woo as well as religious woo.

This is your problem Appletrees

"Pointing to little understood but powerful relationship between mind and physiology"

Er, no. Its not little understood, its scientifically studied. By scientists. A lot. Making it "powerful" and "little understood" gives it to woo sheen, because it isn't. So you arguing for woo for something that is perfectly adequately explained by science.

Nil points.

"BMJ Group News
The 'placebo effect' is a well-known but little-understood aspect of medicine. It occurs when a patient feels better after having a dummy treatment (such as a sugar pill). But experts don't know exactly why placebos work and how they might be used in everyday medicine."

placebos for dummies web md

The interesting thing about the placebo effect is you don't have to believe. They can hand over the pills saying "here's a placebo, take your nice sugar pills" and they still have an effect. Placebo is a real thing; it is not woo, even though it is poorly understood. Alternative treatments "work" for the talking and listening and feeling caredforness, so they can be a kind of placebo in that way, but proper evidence-related medicine requires an effect better than placebo. See?

my link talks about the studies that have been carried out

"nil points"? are you eight?