Ben Goldacre on the Placebo Effect
One of my personal heroes, and author of the mind-blowingly brilliant and easily understandable Bad Science, explains what exactly is the placebo effect:
Ben Goldacre – The placebo effect
If you are not familiar with Ben Goldacre and/or are interested in finding out more about his work, here are some good places to start:
- His book Bad Science [Amazon|UK].
- His website, blog and forum, also called Bad Science.
- Twitter: @bengoldacre
- His column in The Guardian newspaper
Ben is a magnificent communicator of science, health and logic-related concepts in a manner than can be understood by anyone, and he’s very active in the skeptical scene — including speaking at the inaugural TAM London last October and a recent appearance on Robert Llewellyn‘s often fascinating CarPool video podcast — though seems loathe to label himself as such. (Perhaps he’d prefer we consider that our realms of interest often coincide).
Hat tip to the always awesome PodBlack Cat.
Obviously never read ‘Cultural Dwarfs and Junk Journalism’, I’d highly recommend it!
@Jeremy
Thank you for your drive-by comment, Jeremy. I’m assuming you’re referring to the book referenced here? It reads like anything written by the tinfoil hat brigade. (Tip: the phrase “Big Pharma” makes grown-ups turn the page).
It amazes me how many advocates of alternative medicine or viewpoints resort to claims of Big Pharma/Oil/Agra at the drop of a hat, and then fire off all the usual red flag words and phrases. As the very entertaining Tim Minchin says in Storm: “You know what they call alternative medicine that’s been proved to work? Medicine.”
Ben Goldacre acknowledges that pharmaceutical companies are rife with problems, and he’s not slow to criticise them himself. There may occasionally be overlap between certain vested interests and the findings of people like Ben, but that doesn’t mean there’s any connection between the two. Don’t confuse correlation with causation. Independent reliable scientists knock unproven treatments as much as those you might consider to be in the pocket of the Evil Empire du Jour.
Scientific method, integrity, honesty, independent peer review and verification, and meta-analyses of reliable trials… that’s where the “truth” is. Not with a collection of anecdotes or “free books” that are merely third-rate character assassinations.
Scientific method, integrity, honesty, independent peer review and verification, and meta-analyses of reliable trials… that’s where the “truth” is.
Couldn’t agree with you more, unfortunately Dr Goldacre has failed to produce integrity while making his own thrid-rate character assassinations in the past and honesty doesn’t really ring true in his diabolically written littered with inaccuraties MMR piece. In that respect Melanie Philips did a brilliant job in exposing his faults only to find Ben unreluctant to correct himself.
It’s a pity that you yourself, instead of willing to discuss have resulted into your own third-rate character assassinations (tinfoil hat brigade???).
@Jeremy
I’m not entirely certain that Melanie Phillips is a good yardstick of integrity and rational thinking, if her Ann Coulter-style invective and hyperbole is anything to go by, but I’ll accept that you consider her so. I’m afraid we’ll have to agree to disagree on the pros and cons of both Ms Philips and Ben, though I suspect you’ve never actually read Bad Science cover-to-cover. In Chapter 10 he both makes the statement that “big pharma is evil” (with qualifiers) and happily illustrates his own willingness to admit errors when proven wrong, and I’ve seen him do it in person. These things are easily forgotten when there are axes to grind before the front cover has been opened.
I don’t think that your insult of me is warranted, as I don’t think I performed an ad hominem against you. I did say that the document to which you referred me is from the tinfoil hat brigade. There’s a difference between attacking a person and attacking a work. Mocking a belief is not the same as mocking its believer, and that’s where I suspect a lot of friction comes from between the evidence-based and alternative/fringe communities. It seems the two aspects get confused quite easily when people see their life’s work reduced to rubble in the face of irrefutable, dispassionate evidence. Emotional reaction is a natural by-product.
You must remember that this original article was an explanation of the placebo effect and that you decided to make it personal by referring to a book that attempts to discredit the speaker of the explanation. If Charles Manson were to explain the road rule of stopping at a Stop sign, would that somehow make it any less of a legal requirement?
That you have a problem with Ben Goldacre is obvious; that it doesn’t concern or interest me is, I hope, equally obvious.
I have not insulted you, the problem with Goldacre is not a personal vendetta against him, I’m just surprised how eager you seem to be to disregard any criticisim of your ‘hero’.
@Jeremy
Which, I’m afraid, is a mischaracterisation. I admire the man’s work and I think he is doing good things, but there is no eagerness from me to disregard criticism of him and I will most certainly not back anything he states that is provably wrong. It’s simply that you’ve not presented anything beyond ad homs and someone else’s attempt at discrediting him.
The download page (linked in an earlier comment) speaks more about the author than the subject of his writing. I’m afraid that if Walker’s ‘book’* is supposed to be “the case” against Ben, I have better things to do.
* A free PDF download is not automatically a book, despite the page count and the growing popularity of ebooks.
“PDF download is not automatically a book”
I don’t believe I ever coined the term book. Not that it makes much difference as far as content is concerned.