This can open new research also on how works for example homeopathy and acupunture?
When you run a well-conducted trial you find zero benefit to homeopathy. When you run a poorly-conducted study, with poor blinding or weak randomization you find some benefits to homeopathy. When you don't even run a study, but just give people homeopathy in clinics they'll tell you it works because they say they can feel a difference.
http://khanism.org/science/doubt/
Also, the placebo effect shouldn't be used dismissively. If you convince someone they should be feeling pain (tell them they're next to a low frequency transmitter that causes pain when they're really next to an empty speaker box), that pain is real in the sense their nervous system can have a physical reaction to it. It is in their heads, but perceptions can generate physical responses.
The classic study was on asthma treatments. Patients would subjectively report feeling better when on the placebo treatment, but the objective measurements of lung function showed no difference.
If people report being in less pain or less depressed when on a placebo treatment but attempt & complete suicide at the same rate... well, fuck.
Homeopathy doesn't work, that's a fact, what part about that known fact seems to confuse you? Why are you insisting something that is KNOWN to not work, works? What don't you get?
> Clinic results are differente from test with placebo reply
No they aren't.
So no actual evidence then?
a lot of things rely on it for their justification. the best example i think i can give in the context of wanky hipster startups would be "agile methodologies"... despite the completely different area of concern they are also attributed properties which are inherently difficult to measure and perform experimentation with. i've seen very little evidence except for anecdotal evidence to back the claims surrounding them (although certainly, they are based on quite reasonable conclusions to reach with no evidence at all - by using logic and "common sense" to derive from better known quantities)
The bias most commit is thinking that a data point is more valuable because you know more about it.
Just because you know the story behind it doesn't mean it's more important.
if 1000s of people are telling the same story, thats 1000s of potential data points... they lose value from being ill defined rather than being small in number.
They don't exist in isolation though. If thousands are telling the same story and there is no independent corroboration then it's more likely that one person told a story and thousands repeated it.
i don't think its particularly crazy to suggest that people practising mental discipline can alter their minds or perceptions.
its very easy to convince oneself that the left arm is paralysed for instance... or to hallucinate by fixating on an object or point in space.
also, its very well evidenced that psychology has an effect on health...
on the other hand there is no evidence of, nor any need for explanations involving, "mystical energies" of any kind, as far as i can see.
Medicine.
Homeopathy is a very specific thing, where you take a substance with a bad effect and dilute it so much there's none left, in an attempt to cause the opposite effect, with more dilution being better.