I just learned about this "healer" yesterday and was surprised to see how much success he had treating treatment resistant cases. First off, I am very familiar with so-called faith or energy healers and similar pseudoscience, and the absurdity of their claims. This guy got my attention, though, as I'm struggling to figure out what exactly is happening.
The placebo effect is the most obvious explanation, but there are three things that seem to conflict with that possibility: (1) the most impressive healings occurred in people who did not expect anything to happen, and (2) there was no event or signal that something was beginning to happen. In my experience, at least one of those two things have to be present to get a placebo effect. I performed mentalism in my younger days in order to expose supernatural claims, and if people did not believe or truly expect something to happen you have to give them some indication at the beginning that a change is taking place (same thing with hypnosis tricks). Once they have some preliminary evidence of something happening (even if it is ambiguous), their brain can take it from there. But even then, to get any kind of reliable effect, you must have an authoritative presence and use words to direct their experience. Charlie was very shy and simply asked them what their problem was, then just sat there with his eyes closed, leaving the patient confused about if it had yet started. I would not expect much success from this method at all.
Most surprising to me, is that (3) many of the patients were treatment resistant and had not been able to have much success at all from prior medical interventions. One woman had to have injected ketamine to get relief, but claims Charlie's healing was better than the ketamine, and was permanent despite only seeing him once (as a followup one year later showed). Two other severe cases were seemingly permanent as well. If anything were to trigger a placebo effect, it'd be an injection of ketamine. I struggle with a placebo effect (or even desirability bias) explanation given that so many other medical interventions allegedly didn't work. If there is a placebo effect going on, then we need to figure out what is so effective at triggering it when other medical interventions were unable to.
So what is really going on here? Energy healing is extremely unlikely, for obvious reasons, but placebo effect also seems a less-than-convincing explanation. I have not seen his tv show, nor do I have much desire to. What I saw was a news story on him, in which they tested him with different patients. A reality show or self-produced special can be and almost certainly is faked. The report I saw at least appears as if they are attempting to be fair.
What am I missing?
The placebo effect is the most obvious explanation, but there are three things that seem to conflict with that possibility: (1) the most impressive healings occurred in people who did not expect anything to happen, and (2) there was no event or signal that something was beginning to happen. In my experience, at least one of those two things have to be present to get a placebo effect. I performed mentalism in my younger days in order to expose supernatural claims, and if people did not believe or truly expect something to happen you have to give them some indication at the beginning that a change is taking place (same thing with hypnosis tricks). Once they have some preliminary evidence of something happening (even if it is ambiguous), their brain can take it from there. But even then, to get any kind of reliable effect, you must have an authoritative presence and use words to direct their experience. Charlie was very shy and simply asked them what their problem was, then just sat there with his eyes closed, leaving the patient confused about if it had yet started. I would not expect much success from this method at all.
Most surprising to me, is that (3) many of the patients were treatment resistant and had not been able to have much success at all from prior medical interventions. One woman had to have injected ketamine to get relief, but claims Charlie's healing was better than the ketamine, and was permanent despite only seeing him once (as a followup one year later showed). Two other severe cases were seemingly permanent as well. If anything were to trigger a placebo effect, it'd be an injection of ketamine. I struggle with a placebo effect (or even desirability bias) explanation given that so many other medical interventions allegedly didn't work. If there is a placebo effect going on, then we need to figure out what is so effective at triggering it when other medical interventions were unable to.
So what is really going on here? Energy healing is extremely unlikely, for obvious reasons, but placebo effect also seems a less-than-convincing explanation. I have not seen his tv show, nor do I have much desire to. What I saw was a news story on him, in which they tested him with different patients. A reality show or self-produced special can be and almost certainly is faked. The report I saw at least appears as if they are attempting to be fair.
What am I missing?
via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/32Tqppf
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