Nornagest comments on Belief in Belief - Less Wrong

66 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 29 July 2007 05:49PM

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Comment author: MixedNuts 22 June 2011 04:20:04PM 1 point [-]

I agree this study is a bit silly. I'll try to dig up the one I saw, but promise nothing.

Agree that the placebo effect may contain lying to doctors. There may also be some regression to the mean - people who are too healthy are excluded from the study, so when everyone moves at random the ones sick enough to be selected get healthier.

Comment author: Nornagest 22 June 2011 05:40:46PM *  1 point [-]

My understanding is that the studies establishing a placebo effect were controlled in a way that'd rule out regression to the mean as a cause of the perceived improvements. Lying to doctors does sound plausible, though.