Placebo

I think the problem here is a misunderstanding because of the nature of this forum, what the word mind means and your indirect sourcing of the Noetic organization leads me to the assumption that the answer can be found through immaterialism. That assumption is wrong. 

It is very curious how ones state of mind can affect in some cases how cancers progress.

I guess step one would be to explain what the fuck immaterialism is. It seems to be a thing you made up. Another is the fact that you don’t just get to hide behind ignorance every time you can’t answer a question through your means.

Remember, it’s your worldview that’s placing arbitrary restrictions on the types of things that are possible. If something is appearing to contradict those world views, you can hide behind ignorance all you want, but you’re the one with the burden of proof to explain this phenomena in the context of your world view. If you can’t, or if you’re forced to give way to other people to figure out the answer, your position isn’t one held by rationality.

Courtesy of the Daily Grail, the New York Times has a shortish article on the role magical belief and talismans in medicine:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/well/...ogin=email

It's mostly about the author's own experience after being diagnosed with cancer, but also includes quotations from Ted Kaptchuk, a Harvard physician, taken from a much longer New Yorker article from 2011, entitled "The Power of Nothing":
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/...of-nothing

Again courtesy of the Daily Grail, and again from the New York Times, here's a longish article about Kaptchuk's collaboration with Kathryn Hall, a molecular biologist, who has been looking for a molecular basis for the placebo effect:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/07/magaz...icine.html

One interesting detail is that for some reason the strength of the placebo effect appears to have been increasing over the last few decades, at least in studies conducted in the USA.

But the main focus is on the molecular biology, and Hall's discovery that levels of an enzyme called COMT, previously believed to be associated with the response to pain and painkillers, were inversely correlated with the strength of the placebo effect. But puzzlingly, when another database was analysed, there appeared to be a correlation in the opposite sense. So either the analysis is flawed, or the relationship is a rather complicated one.

It struck me that - for those who are sceptical about the material basis of consciousness - it might be interesting to look for a correlation between COMT levels and psi performance.

I guess step one would be to explain what the fuck immaterialism is. It seems to be a thing you made up. Another is the fact that you don’t just get to hide behind ignorance every time you can’t answer a question through your means.

I think a reasonable definition of immaterialism (or non-materialism) would be any explanation for a phenomenon which postulates that consciousness is involved in creating  the phenomenon, and that this process cannot be reduced to a purely physical description.

It is very curious how ones state of mind can affect in some cases how cancers progress.

I agree - it is very curious, and I think you would agree that once this effect has been observed once, it is disingenuous for scientists to call additional examples of the same type 'spontaneous'. 

I mean spontaneous events are supposed to be unconnected with anything under consideration as a possible cure. 

Furthermore, an instance of a disease that waxes and wanes according to whether the patient is or is not given some treatment (orthodox or not) cannot reasonably be termed spontaneous.

To me, the important thing is that if even one case of cancer can be shown to be susceptible to a mental cure, serious research should be done into possible mental treatments. 

I suppose that most 'alternative therapies' could be considered 'mental.

I agree - it is very curious, and I think you would agree that once this effect has been observed once, it is disingenuous for scientists to call additional examples of the same type 'spontaneous'. 

I mean spontaneous events are supposed to be unconnected with anything under consideration as a possible cure. 

Furthermore, an instance of a disease that waxes and wanes according to whether the patient is or is not given some treatment (orthodox or not) cannot reasonably be termed spontaneous.

To me, the important thing is that if even one case of cancer can be shown to be susceptible to a mental cure, serious research should be done into possible mental treatments. 

I suppose that most 'alternative therapies' could be considered 'mental.

It is of interest to oncologists and should be investigated which it is.  It's likely spontaneous cancer remission has a grounded biological explanation rather than by shear force of will. Everyone that has cancer is wishing it goes away but wishing doesn't typically reach a positive outcome. Note there are thousands of diseases that never remit no matter how hard one wishes.
Alternative therapies that work also have grounded explanations therefore become medicine. Humans bodies are machines in essence.

It is of interest to oncologists and should be investigated which it is.  It's likely spontaneous cancer remission has a grounded biological explanation rather than by shear force of will. Everyone that has cancer is wishing it goes away but wishing doesn't typically reach a positive outcome. Note there are thousands of diseases that never remit no matter how hard one wishes.
Alternative therapies that work also have grounded explanations therefore become medicine. Humans bodies are machines in essence.

Spontaneous remission should be uncorrelated with other potential therapies that are being tried. If someone's cancer shrinks and grows in step with the believed quality of the treatment (which was worthless) then you need another explanation. I mean let's suppose one in 10,000 cancers at the stage that his was shrink in the way his did. That means that there is evidence p<=0.0001 that the specific treatment that the guy received was responsible for his remission!

Obviously that is not an exact calculation, but it surely illustrates that if you are going to explain the outcome of specific treatments by spontaneous events, you do need to take into account the probability that such an event would take place.

Thus you clearly need a better alternative explanation.

Courtesy of the Daily Grail - here's a transcript of a short news item on National Public Radio about research suggesting that placebos still work even if people are told they're placebos:
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/09/721685197...overlooked

By the way, did many of you, like me, assume that placebos would always be neutral inert saline type things?

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/...-vaccines/

By the way, did many of you, like me, assume that placebos would always be neutral inert saline type things?

https://childrenshealthdefense.org/news/...-vaccines/

Placebos can be anything whose effects won't interfere with the outcome(s) of interest, although if it's something other than an inert substance, it tends to be called an "active placebo".

BTW, if you wish to be well informed, a site devoted to misrepresenting information in order to fit a specific agenda is not the way to go about it, regardless of whether or not it happens to fit with your personal bias.

This stuff looks interesting (found by using google scholar and following "related articles" links):

https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Ad...e23d80e372
https://www.cochranelibrary.com/cdsr/doi....pub3/full
https://ebm.bmj.com/content/23/5/165.abstract
https://ebm.bmj.com/content/24/1/1.full
https://www.bmj.com/content/362/bmj.k3472

Linda