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Well, judging from your own replies and behaviour here on this forum , you 're either a vulgar liar , or a lousy third or x grade "scientist " , sorry : no pain, no gain, truth does hurt sometimes.No hard feelings , right ?
Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos.
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 06/10/2013 19:57:22Well, judging from your own replies and behaviour here on this forum , you 're either a vulgar liar , or a lousy third or x grade "scientist " , sorry : no pain, no gain, truth does hurt sometimes.No hard feelings , right ? So, soi-disant Elvis, I take you at your word and offer you the chance to make an amazing comeback and as much money as you want for one night's work, and instead of thanking me, you call me a liar. Hard feelings? Your stupidity is beneath contempt! Or maybe your honesty is questionable. Perhaps you are a priest after all. Never mind! Young Alice will sing for us as usual - and she is in a better state of preservation.
I'll have to look into the rat experiment. There have been problems reproducing other research he cites or has done, like the staring experiment. ( http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=ruperts-resonance ) Any phenomena that is new is worth pursuing, trying to reproduce and explain, no argument from me. But again, if you suggest a mechanism (like morphic fields), the validity of the claim rests on evidence that directly supports, not lack of some other mechanism. Saying "well, this is how it could work...." is a nice start, I guess, but that's all it is. The one thing I wondered about the rat experiment, how genetically similar do the rats have to be? And can they access the squirrel channel if they need to?There are two things that bother me: 1) The repetitive claim that science has somehow "crippled" itself by materialism, when the research productivity is exploding in neurology. You and Sheldrake may not like their conclusions, but it is not grinding to halt for some reason. The second is, when mystics or fringe scientists invent an alternative model for a process in science, or mystical explanation for a phenomena, they seem to think they are off the hook, and won't have their very own complaints and criticisms turned against them. "But Sheldrake, how can some simple field explain love and poetry and culture, and my unique individuality, blood sweat and tears, hopes and dreams, Duck Dynasty and all of human history and....no way makes no sense! Science proper has been hijacked by morphism!"Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos.
Quote from: cheryl j on 07/10/2013 01:42:55Incidentally the placebo effect does not always mean that beliefs or expectations made patients better. In experiments, it is used to control for a number of variables, such as diseases healing via physical processes with or without the drug, or patients not wanting to disappoint their caregivers by complaining that the medicine didn't work, etc. I'm not saying a patient's mental state has no effect, just that that isn't the sole purpose of placebos. As I understand it, it affects the patient's subjective perceived and/or reported symptoms (i.e. they feel it has helped). Meta-studies show no evidence overall for a placebo effect on objectively measured outcomes (although one might have expected a small effect for stress or mood-related physiological problems). They show minor improvements in subjective outcomes, particularly pain.
You all should try to learn about what science proper really is all about , what its limitations are , what its nature , function and role are ....You can't just go on confusing science proper , scientific results , scientific approaches ...with materialism as a false conception of nature , materialism that has thus absolutely nothing to do with science proper , scientific results or scientific approaches whatsoever ...once again .
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 17:41:46You all should try to learn about what science proper really is all about , what its limitations are , what its nature , function and role are ....You can't just go on confusing science proper , scientific results , scientific approaches ...with materialism as a false conception of nature , materialism that has thus absolutely nothing to do with science proper , scientific results or scientific approaches whatsoever ...once again .Some of us have actually worked as scientists, doing real research. You haven't yet clearly defined 'science proper', but all the indications are that it is not something the vast majority of working scientists would recognise or agree with. So, do you get to define science proper, or should it be the consensus of the majority of working scientists? To save confusion, you might be better calling your 'science proper' something else (magic? nonsense?).
... you do dare have the nerve to say that some of you, guys , are working scientists doing research
I do fear the worst for science in your hands , obviously , logically ...
Materialism in science is an incurable lethal disease in fact , a bit like cancer , even though some forms of cancer can be cured indeed : the only alternative to rid science from the materialist lethal cancer disease is by eradicating materialism from science ,from all sciences for that matter , by eradicating its symthoms extensions also in all sciences thus , and all its left-overs and traces as well in all sciences and elsewhere .............if one wants to have a real healthy science or sciences as a result at least...
... there are so many unidentifiable variables to control for in drug studies. Is a person getting the drug (or what they think is a drug) more careful about what they eat and drink? Do they become more "health minded" because they are being treated for something? Do they they have more overall contact with health professionals and get treated early for other, unrelated, potentially harmful conditions? So inexperiments they try to make the over conditions as similar as possible.
Regarding Sheldrake's criticisms of materialist explanation of memories in the brain:It was once thought that memory was distributed "across the brain," and that you could not remove a particular cell that would make you forget the day you got married. And I am familiar with the hologram analogy. But now it seems more likely that memories are stored in multiple ways in different areas of the brain. There are brain areas responsible for things, shape of things, the identifying characteristics of things. There brain areas responsible for events that happened to you, called episodic memory. Several different parts of the brain may contribute to the overall memory of your wedding day, so you'd have to destroy a large part of brain to completely wipe it out. It is, however, surprising how specifically located some memory is in the brain. One lady in a medical study who suffered a stroke could not identify or remember the names of fruit. Her intelligence, vocabulary and memory seemed normal in every other respect, and she could identify other common house hold objects - a spoon, a hammer, a chair, a toaster, a tooth brush. But bananas, apples, oranges, or any other kind of fruit were all gone from her memory. A person I knew personally had brain surgery for an aneurysm. She said she felt normal, the only thing she noticed afterwords was she could no longer tell time from a dial face clock. She could from a digital one, but not the one with the numbers in a circle and big and small hands that she understood since she was five years old. That is just anecdotal evidence, but I thought it was interesting, none the less. As for the comment that memory cannot exist in the brain because of molecular turnover, I question it for several reasons. The bones in your body are not the same ones you had in your body five, ten or 30 years ago. There is constant remodeling, and yet they maintain their form and size and arrangement, with some wear and tear, perhaps a loss of density as you age. Patterns can be replicated. There is also research that suggests that a memory is not like a file that records the original event and is stored forever. They do fade with time, and the ones that remain do so because you access them, and think about them, and store not the original memory but the newly recalled version of it. When you re-record it, you may re-record a slightly different version of it with missing information, new embellishments or interpretations of it. That is the basis of false memories, as well as therapeutic techniques to help PTSD patients. If memory is based on morphic resonance, why should memories fade at all? Why should some memories fade but not others, and why should they not be completely accurate? One problem with talking about consciousness is the habit of thinking of it as a "thing" and not a process or an action. I notice that in discussing consciousness, people like Sheldrake point and say "show me where a memory is in the brain," but I could just as easily point to your lower limbs and say "Show me where walking is in the legs." A lot of complicated things have to happen together in a precise way, or you're not going anywhere.
Quote from: DonQuichotte on 07/10/2013 19:40:06... you do dare have the nerve to say that some of you, guys , are working scientists doing research It takes no special nerve to be a scientist, although an appropriate qualification helps. In my case, it was many years ago, but, as the man said, it was what they paid me for; even had my name on some cited papers.
QuoteI do fear the worst for science in your hands , obviously , logically ...Meh; some of the kit I helped design and build is still saving lives (on the Hajj, ironically enough), which puts your distain and 'fears for science' into some perspective.
QuoteMaterialism in science is an incurable lethal disease in fact , a bit like cancer , even though some forms of cancer can be cured indeed : the only alternative to rid science from the materialist lethal cancer disease is by eradicating materialism from science ,from all sciences for that matter , by eradicating its symthoms extensions also in all sciences thus , and all its left-overs and traces as well in all sciences and elsewhere .............if one wants to have a real healthy science or sciences as a result at least...Healthy science as a result? very amusing - confusing a healthy body for a tumour and amputating it to save the head; ouch! should have gone to SpecSavers... The world is grateful you're not a surgeon Which puts me in mind of the old adage, "The operation was a great success, but the patient died".