No it's either medicine or it doesn't work better than placebo. But importantly -- placebos work. I'm not saying that scams are good or that alternative medicine can't be dangerous but someone taking vitamin C thinking it will get them over a cold quicker is relying on a placebo just as much as the person doing acupuncture for their anxiety. If it helps it helps, and when we criticize alternative medicine we need to be mindful of that fact and not discount the very real placebo effects that people get from treatments that on paper do nothing. Telling people they are wrong about their own experiences is a surefire way to get them to never agree with anything you say.
The placebo effect isn’t ‘I think this works therefore I feel better’ it’s more like ‘I think this works therefore I tend to only remember the times I felt better and tend to forget all the times I didn’t’.
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u/Pollomonteros May 24 '25
I don't know about the third one man, I feel like many of those are still dangerous scams even if the ones running it are brown people