Reddit mentions of Bad Science

Bad Science is one of the best books I've ever read. This guy knows what he's talking about.

If you're even vaguely interested in this, I heartily reccomend Ben Goldacre's book Bad Science.

Alternatively (or tl;dr) in short the answer is yes. Definitely. Sometimes, people become even more responsive to the placebo then they would if they assumed that it was just normal medication. If this sounds odd, think about when you were a teenager first starting off on passionpop, or whatever your equivalent is. There would always be some girls who would take a sip or two, and then claim that they were soooooo wasted!! the entire evening. It's because they know that alcohol has an effect on them, and so they are anticipating (and thus reacting to) whatever effect it may have on them.

Lots of studies for new meds and treatments complete double blind studies, where one control group is told that they are taking the placebo for XXXX, where another control group isn't told that they are taking a placebo and think that its normal medication. This is to ensure that a persons reaction to the medication isn't just the result of a person having positive associations with taking a pill.

Edit to add that I can link to sources if you want. I'll just need to dig around some old essays to find them.

I didn't know the human body had an internal light source. If you genuinely believe in this holistic shit, read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. Holistic crap is my greatest pet peeve.

so you are using a youtube video and a 4 year old source, which cites a 24 year old source as your sources?
Also, as a side point, if water had memory there would be so many things it "remembered" that homeopathy would have zero effect. Any water is homeopathic by your assumption, its very rare that water is perfectly clean. Please read a book It will help to educate you on what science is and has some reliable sources.

I picked up Bad Science by Ben Goldacre because of this subreddit. I couldn't find it in the library because of how new it is, however, it's not so expensive in the book store. I thought there would be a lot of "here's why so and so is wrong, and here's your defense against it" kind of stuff, but actually, it very quickly gets to how you on your own can figure out whether a claim is bullshit or not -- very eye-opening, and a better read than "this is wrong, and that is wrong, and here's why"... more like "well, we established this is wrong, but here's why we figured that out. Now that you've led by example, here's resources you can use to figure out if a future claim is wrong".

An essential for the rising skeptic.

Risk
Bad Science book , book and blog
PD at TED
numberwatch on the data dredge

Fun and game books Duelling Idiots and Cabinet ... there are many books on this subject but I haven't read most of them.

serious probability writing Jeffreys and Yudkowsky

A bit longer, but all are solid suggestions, and although I could add two dozen more, I'm sure others will take up the cause.

• What the dog saw, by Malcolm Gladwell
  
  
• Bad Science, by Ben Goldacre
  
  
• 
  God is Not Great, by Christopher Hitchens
  
  
• The Moral Landscape, by Sam Harris
  
  
• The Shock Doctrine, by Naomi Klein
  
  
• Super Freakonomics, by Levitt & Dubner
  
  
• The Omnivore's Dilemma, by Michael Pollan
  
  
• The Case for Mars, by Robert Zubrin
  
  
• The Value of Nothing, by Raj Patel
  
  
  

Also Bad Science by Ben Goldacre.

I have this book and I, too, confirm it's a great read.

Bad Science - Ben Goldacre

Website

Book - Amazon

Book - Wikipedia

You might find Bad Science entertaining

Thanks very much for stopping by :) I was heartened by your link, and the progress described.

> That doesn't necessarily exclude alternative medicines... but not sure how many of those have been established to effective by the scientific community.

Actually, that definition would exclude everything that calls itself "alternative medicine". Anything that has been proven to be effective is simply called "medicine" :)

I recommend Trick or Treatment if you'd like to read a review of the evidence by experts for laymen, or Bad Science (book or blog) for more stuff.

Lastly - and sorry to bang on for so long - you could do worse than get in touch with former MP Dr Evan Harris, who gave this talk along with Prof David Nutt. It was a most enjoyable evening - but more importantly, Dr Harris is part of a campaign to make more policies based on sound evidence, and he could probably tell you a lot more than I could :)

No. You still don't understand what the placebo effect is, or the degree to which people can fool themselves.

I can highly recommend Bad Science by Ben Goldacre if you're actually willing to learn about this (it's a fun read).