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Comment by alisson | Hacker News Reader

Only the banana peel is not that placebo since it offers really good protection even though if it don't have any healing property. The last time I used banana peel was when I accidentally got two toes's nails removed at once! I went to the hospital and they just made a bandage but when I got home and replaced them with banana peels, something like if my nails were the banana peels, the inside part of the peel touching my skin (or meat?) and i felt so much better than the hospital's bandage that I could even wear shoes, it was 5 months ago. I tried to search for some science I found only this: http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?pid=S0102-86502013000100006&... but they tested unriped and I just use the inside part of the peel of a ripe banana, I didn't find anything so specific yet, I need to dig deeper.

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There are two dangers in what you are saying here.

Firstly, The thing is about the placebo effect, is that it is an actual effect.

Placebos are tough to account for in studies specifically because they actually DO help, for something to have medicinal properties it needs to have a greater effect than a placebo. Placebos even have been known to work when people know they are placebos.

The second one is that humans are terrible at self diagnosis / analysis, we are way too emotionally influenced, too biased, and there are too many variables to make conclusions on treating yourself. That's where scientific studies do a good job of removing biases and variability from the equation.

I'm not saying banana peels definitely don't help, because I honestly don't have a bloody clue, but I would caution telling other people about it with such certainty until there is some well researched initial evidence behind it.

I agree with everything your saying, but he did link to an actual study which provides some support. Further, a lot of our drugs like aspirin where discovered in nature. So, while far from enough evidence to change my behavior it is interesting.

There's a huge field of research here. It's shocking to me how people jump in to disparage the commenter when it takes just a few seconds to check if there's research - try Googling "plantains wound healing site:nih.gov"

How about just linking to something compelling, instead of saying "search this site for this"

Because there are hundreds of studies, and everyone's better served by looking at what's out there for themselves. I could have linked to the Google search, but that would've been pretty condescending.

While that's true, I and many other people on here aren't qualified to decide which are compelling. Since you seem to be purporting to have those qualifications, why not link to a few notable studies, or an applicable literature review, instead of saying "search for this".

"Since you seem to be purporting to have those qualifications" - which qualifications did I purport to have? Googling to verify that research does indeed exist?

We all, by merit of commenting here and having access to the Internet, have these qualifications.

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