🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3970d3ea@ecn.ab.ca>, John Fleming wrote:
>King & Associates Int'l <kai@5pillars.com> wrote in message
>news:39708803_7@news.oanet.com...
>> Deacon:
>
>[snip]
>
>> Well, in human trials you are absolutely correct.  That is why we do
>> demonstrations on horses and other animals, this eliminates the
>"placebo"
>> element entirely. Unlike "suggestible and easily mislead ...
>humans",
>> animals have no concept of the "false" effect and have not the
>mental
>> capacity to be fooled into thinking something works, for them it
>either
>> works or it doesn't.
>
>The problem with animal trials is that animals can respond to a
>treatment differently than human beings.  For example, while morphine
>dulls human senses, it excites cats (Give me an hour or two in the
>library, and I should be able to track down the ancient issue of Omni
>magazine I read that in).

Animals cannot tell you how they feel either.  You can take blood, measure
temperature, heart rate, etc., but they cannot tell you about qualitative
things like how much pain they feel (unless they are limping or something).

My question is this: who observes these animals?  Were they independent
experts who did not know what animals were receiving treatment (see below for
more on that)?  Or were they employed by the snak^H^H^H^Hmagnetic insole
company?


>In fact, I believe the correct procedure with people to compensate for
>the placebo effect is to test the treatment with two groups--one given
>the actual treatment, and the other given a placebo.  A double blind
>adds to the effectiveness because the person dealing directly with the
>test subjects isn't aware of who's getting the placebo and who isn't.

Double blind studies are the standard for measuring drug/treatment
effectiveness.  The people receiving the treatment cannot know whether they
are getting the real treatment or the placebo.  Everyone dealing with the test
subjects cannot know either.  This is especially true those who are measuring
the results of the treatment.  The only way they can be completely objective
is to not know who is getting what treatment.


King & Associates:  Show us a double blind study by an independent lab
(preferably two studies by different labs) that verifies these claims.  And
don't give us that "we never say it's for therapeutic use" crap.  Why aren't
you advertising them as ordinary fridge magnets then?
-- 
Serve Gonk.
Jon Martin - Undergraduate Labs Systems Administrator (ISG)
Department of Computing Science at University of Alberta.