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 Content-Type: text/html; [ AUTOMATICALLY SKIPPING HTML ENCODING! ] Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=25802