Race2. The He Hormone. Ted Kaptchuk of Harvard Medical School studies placebos | Harvard Magazine Jan-Feb 2013. Two weeks into Ted Kaptchuk’s first randomized clinical drug trial, nearly a third of his 270 subjects complained of awful side effects. All the patients had joined the study hoping to alleviate severe arm pain: carpal tunnel, tendinitis, chronic pain in the elbow, shoulder, wrist. In one part of the study, half the subjects received pain-reducing pills; the others were offered acupuncture treatments.
And in both cases, people began to call in, saying they couldn’t get out of bed. The pills were making them sluggish, the needles caused swelling and redness; some patients’ pain ballooned to nightmarish levels. “The side effects were simply amazing,” Kaptchuk explains; curiously, they were exactly what patients had been warned their treatment might produce. But even more astounding, most of the other patients reported real relief, and those who received acupuncture felt even better than those on the anti-pain pill. Not all of Kaptchuk’s studies have been so warmly received. To Dr. How To Win At Forecasting.
One thing that became very clear, especially after Gorbachev came to power and confounded the predictions of both liberals and conservatives, was that even though nobody predicted the direction that Gorbachev was taking the Soviet Union, virtually everybody after the fact had a compelling explanation for it. We seemed to be working in what one psychologist called an "outcome irrelevant learning situation. " People drew whatever lessons they wanted from history. There is quite a bit of skepticism about political punditry, but there's also a huge appetite for it. I was struck 30 years ago and I'm struck now by how little interest there is in holding political pundits who wield great influence accountable for predictions they make on important matters of public policy.
The presidential election of 2012, of course, brought about the Nate Silver controversy and a lot of people, mostly Democrats, took great satisfaction out of Silver being more accurate than leading Republican pundits. Heartfelt rationality. The alternative industry: it doesn’t work and why it does My last major project before leaving Oslo for openDemocracy was a six-part edutainment/documentary series on the ‘alternative industry’, its science and irrationality. It was produced by Teddy TV and broadcast on NRK1 (Norway’s equivalent of BBC1, ie the country’s main television channel). We cheekily named ourselves Folkeopplysningen, “The Public Enlightenment”. The various branches of the alternative industry make a lot of claims, and a lot of money off these claims. We looked into homeopathy, healing, detox, acupuncture and strange panacea machines supposedly utilizing bio-resonance or quantum mechanics.
(Astrologists, psychics and mediums got a showing too, but let’s leave them alone to lick their wounds for now.) We decided it was time for some critical scrutiny of this business, and based on reception and ratings, we are not alone in thinking this. Public Enlightenment. And yes, we found it is pretty much all hokum. No.