We already know that belief affects medical tests.
If a person is given a medicine then they, in general, believe they have a better chance of getting better, and psychosomatically adjust their health. For this reason we use placebos and blind trials, so the patient doesn't know whether they are getting real medicine or not.
Moreover the doctor's beliefs about the medicine can affect the result. We may assume this is because of the patient's ability to read cues from the doctors and adjust their own health accordingly. Anyway, as I understand it, we try to remove the affect of any biases by experimenter or subjects by double blinding experiments.
What I question is whether this is enough. How do we rule out the possibility that the experimenters' beliefs affect the results?
I think this is a reasonable question because I think that many woo beliefs propose or are compatible with the possibility that beliefs or intent affects reality.
My assertion, that I would like to explore, is that skeptics are not testing the alternative hypothesis fairly simply by disbelieving it.
Then my questions are:
Are there some beliefs that are possibly true but untestable by the current methods employed by the JREF challenge?
Is there any objective way to discover if these beliefs are valid?
If a person is given a medicine then they, in general, believe they have a better chance of getting better, and psychosomatically adjust their health. For this reason we use placebos and blind trials, so the patient doesn't know whether they are getting real medicine or not.
Moreover the doctor's beliefs about the medicine can affect the result. We may assume this is because of the patient's ability to read cues from the doctors and adjust their own health accordingly. Anyway, as I understand it, we try to remove the affect of any biases by experimenter or subjects by double blinding experiments.
What I question is whether this is enough. How do we rule out the possibility that the experimenters' beliefs affect the results?
I think this is a reasonable question because I think that many woo beliefs propose or are compatible with the possibility that beliefs or intent affects reality.
My assertion, that I would like to explore, is that skeptics are not testing the alternative hypothesis fairly simply by disbelieving it.
Then my questions are:
Are there some beliefs that are possibly true but untestable by the current methods employed by the JREF challenge?
Is there any objective way to discover if these beliefs are valid?
via JREF Forum http://ift.tt/UGoiku
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