X-Message-Number: 25802
From: "Joseph W. Morgan" <>
Subject: The Double-Blind Gaze
Date: Tue, 15 Mar 2005 08:33:54 -0700

I try to temper my enthusiasm for high tech with a little skepticism.


The current issue of Skeptics magazine has an article titled The Double-Blind 
Gaze for former holistic M.D. Steven Bratman.  Dr. Bratman now believes that 
anything less than a randomized double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of a 
medical treatment is ineffective.  Confounding factors such as the placebo 
effect, the re-interpretation effect, observer bias, natural course of an 
illness, regression to the mean, and the study effect obscure the results of 
less rigorous tests to both the patients and the researchers.


This seriously calls into question almost all nutritional supplements and even 
what constitutes a healthy diet since none of these things have been rigorously 
tested.


For example, I recently purchased a bottle of highly-touted Protandim. With its 
proprietary ingredients I don't know what I am ingesting.  There is no claim 
that it has been rigorously tested.  Rather than being on the leading edge of 
life extension technology I may just be a sucker.

Joseph W. Morgan

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