Recalling Demise of the Psychosomatic Family Model

[chipmunk1]

https://jcoynester.wordpress.com/20...ing-demise-of-the-psychosomatic-family-model/

Recalling Demise of the Psychosomatic Family Model

Claims of being able to influence biomedical variables are important for getting papers accepted into scholarly journals and getting media coverage of the resulting articles. Such claims are also important for securing funding.

Thus, health and family psychologists feel pressure to demonstrate that they can affect not only adjustment to physical illness, such as quality of life, but also physical health outcomes such as progression of cancer, recurring heart attacks, or mortality. Claims of directly influencing biological processes, rather than indirectly, as through improving adherence, are given more attention, but typically have less scientific support. It is characteristic of hot topics that standards are relaxed for making claims so that hot topics often generate more false discoveries and exaggerated findings that cannot be replicated, as described by the work of John Ioannidis.

There have been consistent failures to demonstrate that psychological interventions directly affect the biology of cancer,including survival, but it does not stop claims from being made. I have referred to claims so-called psychoneuroimmunology, as tooth fairy science. That is because explanations are sought for claims when the basis for these claims has not been established