That’s ok. It’s good to question things. I realise this stuff is hard. I added an important caveat to how we approach hypotheses. There is actually a lot of writing about how there is too much information to filter these days, even for academics. This is why we rely on things like impact factor. Additionally, anyone can technically publish in a journal but it is hard to get into because of these kinds of politics.
I’m glad there are no hard feelings, and I apologize I guess I am a bit naive on the nature of these journals, I figured that just getting one published and recognized was already an incredibly difficult process subject to much scrutiny.
If this is not the case, then that is news to me and wish to be better informed.
I will try to get you those peer reviewed papers on the smoking and irritable bowel syndrome claims, but for the future is there a good way to know the impact score of a paper? There are a lot of papers on meditation and even some claiming to make statements on the subject of life after death that I would love to see further scrutinized, while the former is pretty much accepted by everyone at this point, the latter is very much a question and a question that many neurologists and physicists believe is answered by no.
When you find a paper, Google the name of the journal + “impact factor”, and you should find something. Some journals display their metrics with different scores due to complications with the IF system, so you’ll need to judge those accordingly but they should come up with the same search keywords. There should be a body of literature with higher scores, not just single papers too. Also, look up your authors and see if this is actually something they’re qualified for. This all shows the idea has been established and accepted as part of the mainstream conversation. This is the academic “sniff test.”
The problem with hypnosis isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the lack of significant effects (efficacy), notably as a standalone treatment. Most sciences measure this with a variant of a p-value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value?wprov=sfla1 Note that interpretations of p-values are susceptible to placebo effects.
It’s also kind of important that the research is relatively newer because of some metascience trends have changed our understanding of things and we have different standards now.
If there is no absence of evidence, then we can’t disregard it as bullshit now can we? It sounds more like we haven’t found the right applications or we need to develop better methods of using it.
As for it’s not working as a standalone treatment, does anything these days? I’m on medication for bipolar and anxiety but I still need to regularly see my therapist. The medication by itself isn’t going to fix anything.
Efficacy. It needs to pass through this before it gets to effectiveness testing. Meta studies are important for examining this hence the wiki section mention earlier, which lists a bunch.
Note that just being in the conversation doesn’t mean it’s not being cannibalised. Papers or trends may arise that put other researchers in a tizzy. If it’s an accepted practice, you are likely to see a lot of papers fine tuning methods.
The placebo thing shuffles it under their umbrella. There’s a lot of issues there with those.
If I understand what you were saying, is that we have evidence that there is something there, but that’s about all we have, and anyone claiming to have anything more than that when it comes to hypnosis is a charlatan who is best ignored. And that those who practice meditation need to be careful to avoid making big claims with it, and not have high expectations.
Because we have evidence that it works, but nothing more than that, Placebo is the best official classification it can have even if that doesn’t completely perfectly fit, but it is the best label we can give it for now until we know more.
Am I understanding correctly, or if I completely lost the plot? Because I’m only telling you as I understand it. Which I admit considering you have already corrected me on some terms that I did not know, my understanding may be more limited then I realized it was prior to entering this conversation.
You generally got it. ;) The grey areas keep things interesting. Methodology is also important to consider and pick apart more and more considerations of appropriate applications and working contexts. It may be that this practice should be re-categorised rhetorically too, e.g. the language that we use to talk about this subject causes too much confusion as this thread exemplifies.
Lots of things have once been seen as mystical woo, but later had some of the phenomena established with good investigations. From what I have seen, and I’m by no means an expert, that body of literature one would expect for this just isn’t there yet.
Ps: Determining a good IF score will depend on the niche-ness and topic as well but that is why you try not to examine literature in a vacuum of one or two papers. Naturally, those that read more on these specific subjects are the best judges.
Actually that is something I have wanted to ask about but I haven’t really found the right person to ask or the right forum, that being, how many instances do we see in which something that was previously completely written off of pseudoscience turn around and actually become established science.
Off at the top of my head the only thing I can think of is how the existence of germs was originally thought of as complete Insanity, and the paranoia of one addled individual who swore up and down that these invisible creatures where everywhere and were making everybody sick.
There is the matter of the Earth revolving around the sun being the reverse at one point, which is mistaken for a religious claim however at the time of galileo, other scientists came to completely different conclusions with their own telescopes and had refused to endorse his position due to a lack of evidence.
If I remember correctly, Galileo had an obsession with pillars that would have been even stronger evidence than what he thought he saw in the telescope had he just looked a little closely. One of those crazy little ironies I suppose.
And finally, the Big Bang Theory in a weird inversion of expectation was actually established by a priest, who was mocked by scientists who came up with the name Big Bang as a way of writing off his idea as a uniquely Catholic perspective that no way resembled good science. And then the steady state universe theory kind of collapsed and was replaced by the Big Bang Theory that had been so mocked. If I were correctly I believe Albert Einstein had his photograph taken with this priest.
But outside of that, I can’t think of anything, it would be cool to find a list of these somewhere.
What is and isn’t good science changes with changes in metascience (the science of science); which is also why it’s important to keep current with the literature, especially in today’s world. Philosophy and History of Science are fields that are having an exciting little boom right now with tonnes of great researchers and lay books.
(As an aside, I use wiki a lot for a quick jumping off point as I trust it a bit more after I started editing it; they do try their best and are vigilant and passionate.)
I like this guy from Durham in particular: https://markrubin.substack.com/ - he’s got some cool links in the about section, but his stuff is a little technical. Nice dude.
That’s ok. It’s good to question things. I realise this stuff is hard. I added an important caveat to how we approach hypotheses. There is actually a lot of writing about how there is too much information to filter these days, even for academics. This is why we rely on things like impact factor. Additionally, anyone can technically publish in a journal but it is hard to get into because of these kinds of politics.
I’m glad there are no hard feelings, and I apologize I guess I am a bit naive on the nature of these journals, I figured that just getting one published and recognized was already an incredibly difficult process subject to much scrutiny.
If this is not the case, then that is news to me and wish to be better informed.
I will try to get you those peer reviewed papers on the smoking and irritable bowel syndrome claims, but for the future is there a good way to know the impact score of a paper? There are a lot of papers on meditation and even some claiming to make statements on the subject of life after death that I would love to see further scrutinized, while the former is pretty much accepted by everyone at this point, the latter is very much a question and a question that many neurologists and physicists believe is answered by no.
Which I will admit is rather depressing.
When you find a paper, Google the name of the journal + “impact factor”, and you should find something. Some journals display their metrics with different scores due to complications with the IF system, so you’ll need to judge those accordingly but they should come up with the same search keywords. There should be a body of literature with higher scores, not just single papers too. Also, look up your authors and see if this is actually something they’re qualified for. This all shows the idea has been established and accepted as part of the mainstream conversation. This is the academic “sniff test.”
The problem with hypnosis isn’t the absence of evidence, it’s the lack of significant effects (efficacy), notably as a standalone treatment. Most sciences measure this with a variant of a p-value. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P-value?wprov=sfla1 Note that interpretations of p-values are susceptible to placebo effects.
It’s also kind of important that the research is relatively newer because of some metascience trends have changed our understanding of things and we have different standards now.
If there is no absence of evidence, then we can’t disregard it as bullshit now can we? It sounds more like we haven’t found the right applications or we need to develop better methods of using it.
As for it’s not working as a standalone treatment, does anything these days? I’m on medication for bipolar and anxiety but I still need to regularly see my therapist. The medication by itself isn’t going to fix anything.
So tell me where exactly does the issue lie?
Efficacy. It needs to pass through this before it gets to effectiveness testing. Meta studies are important for examining this hence the wiki section mention earlier, which lists a bunch.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3726789/
Note that just being in the conversation doesn’t mean it’s not being cannibalised. Papers or trends may arise that put other researchers in a tizzy. If it’s an accepted practice, you are likely to see a lot of papers fine tuning methods.
The placebo thing shuffles it under their umbrella. There’s a lot of issues there with those.
If I understand what you were saying, is that we have evidence that there is something there, but that’s about all we have, and anyone claiming to have anything more than that when it comes to hypnosis is a charlatan who is best ignored. And that those who practice meditation need to be careful to avoid making big claims with it, and not have high expectations.
Because we have evidence that it works, but nothing more than that, Placebo is the best official classification it can have even if that doesn’t completely perfectly fit, but it is the best label we can give it for now until we know more.
Am I understanding correctly, or if I completely lost the plot? Because I’m only telling you as I understand it. Which I admit considering you have already corrected me on some terms that I did not know, my understanding may be more limited then I realized it was prior to entering this conversation.
You generally got it. ;) The grey areas keep things interesting. Methodology is also important to consider and pick apart more and more considerations of appropriate applications and working contexts. It may be that this practice should be re-categorised rhetorically too, e.g. the language that we use to talk about this subject causes too much confusion as this thread exemplifies.
Lots of things have once been seen as mystical woo, but later had some of the phenomena established with good investigations. From what I have seen, and I’m by no means an expert, that body of literature one would expect for this just isn’t there yet.
Ps: Determining a good IF score will depend on the niche-ness and topic as well but that is why you try not to examine literature in a vacuum of one or two papers. Naturally, those that read more on these specific subjects are the best judges.
Actually that is something I have wanted to ask about but I haven’t really found the right person to ask or the right forum, that being, how many instances do we see in which something that was previously completely written off of pseudoscience turn around and actually become established science.
Off at the top of my head the only thing I can think of is how the existence of germs was originally thought of as complete Insanity, and the paranoia of one addled individual who swore up and down that these invisible creatures where everywhere and were making everybody sick.
There is the matter of the Earth revolving around the sun being the reverse at one point, which is mistaken for a religious claim however at the time of galileo, other scientists came to completely different conclusions with their own telescopes and had refused to endorse his position due to a lack of evidence.
If I remember correctly, Galileo had an obsession with pillars that would have been even stronger evidence than what he thought he saw in the telescope had he just looked a little closely. One of those crazy little ironies I suppose.
And finally, the Big Bang Theory in a weird inversion of expectation was actually established by a priest, who was mocked by scientists who came up with the name Big Bang as a way of writing off his idea as a uniquely Catholic perspective that no way resembled good science. And then the steady state universe theory kind of collapsed and was replaced by the Big Bang Theory that had been so mocked. If I were correctly I believe Albert Einstein had his photograph taken with this priest.
But outside of that, I can’t think of anything, it would be cool to find a list of these somewhere.
What is and isn’t good science changes with changes in metascience (the science of science); which is also why it’s important to keep current with the literature, especially in today’s world. Philosophy and History of Science are fields that are having an exciting little boom right now with tonnes of great researchers and lay books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_science_and_technology?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy_of_science?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historiography_of_science?wprov=sfla1
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metascience?wprov=sfla1
(As an aside, I use wiki a lot for a quick jumping off point as I trust it a bit more after I started editing it; they do try their best and are vigilant and passionate.)
This guy set in motion a lot of current practices of “good science:” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper?wprov=sfla1
I like this guy from Durham in particular: https://markrubin.substack.com/ - he’s got some cool links in the about section, but his stuff is a little technical. Nice dude.