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408. Conventions

By Joel Jacobsen

It's hard for any professional to question the conventional wisdom of his or her field. It's hard even to perceive the things one takes for granted.  The tendency is easiest to see in fields in which one has no emotional or financial investment, such as medicine.  In Seed, Dave Munger writes: "placebos by definition have no medical effect."  He's paraphrasing this belligerent post by the MD blogger Peter Lipson, who claims to genuinely believe he's delivering "a serious smackdown."  But both pieces demonstrate that, according to standard ways of measuring things, placebos do have a measurable medical effect.    What the bloggers mean is: placebos, by definition, have no pharmacological effect.  They're proceeding from the assumption that something made up to look like a pharmacological agent can have no medical effect through any mechanism other than pharmacology...continue to full post

Full post as published by Judging Crimes on November 15, 2009 (boomark / email).