Ineffective yet Helpful: Thoughts about the Placebo Effect

Diagrams about Thoughts about Thoughts about Diagrams

The study of diagrammatic reasoning often focuses on computational models of diagram use rather than on studies of human performance. This paper considers diagrams as a notational system that can be used and studied in an experimental context. It presents a review of the experimental psychology literature rather than a complete theoretical framework, and is intended as an introduction to the fi...

Dieting: really harmful, merely ineffective or actually helpful?

Dieting has developed a negative reputation among many researchers and health care professionals. However, 'dieting' can refer to a variety of behavioural patterns that are associated with different effects on eating and body weight. The wisdom of dieting depends on what kind of dieting is involved, who is doing it, and why. Thus, depending on what one means by the term, dieting can be quite ha...

Why do ineffective treatments seem helpful? A brief review

After any therapy, when symptoms improve, healthcare providers (and patients) are tempted to award credit to treatment. Over time, a particular treatment can seem so undeniably helpful that scientific verification of efficacy is judged an inconvenient waste of time and resources. Unfortunately, practitioners' accumulated, day-to-day, informal impressions of diagnostic reliability and clinical e...

Aromatherapy: ineffective treatment or effective placebo?

Second thoughts about fluoride.

L ong before the passionate debates over cigarettes, DDT, asbestos or the ozone hole, most Americans had heard of only one environmental health controversy: fluoridation. Starting in the 1950s, hundreds of communities across the U.S. became embroiled in heated battles over whether fluorides—ionic compounds containing the element fluorine—should be added to their water systems. On one side was a...