"Why do ineffective treatments seem helpful? A brief review" (Hartman, 2009) (not illness specific)

[Dolphin]

[This is timeless. It doesn't require any knowledge of mathematics or statistics (except "mean" in "regression to the mean" i.e. the average). The abstract doesn't really do it justice - it covers some cognitive fallacies and generally a lot more than what is in the abstract. Doesn't require much knowledge of biology, that I recall]

Free full text: http://www.chiromt.com/content/17/1/10

Why do ineffective treatments seem helpful? A brief review.

Chiropr Osteopat. 2009 Oct 12;17:10. doi: 10.1186/1746-1340-17-10.

Hartman SE.

Source

Department of Anatomy, College of Osteopathic Medicine, University of New England, Biddeford, Maine 04005, USA. shartman@une.edu

Abstract*

After any therapy, when symptoms improve, healthcare providers (and
patients) are tempted to award credit to treatment.

Over time, a particular treatment can seem so undeniably helpful that scientific verification of efficacy is judged an inconvenient waste of time and resources.

Unfortunately, practitioners' accumulated, day-to-day, informal impressions of diagnostic reliability and clinical efficacy are of limited value.

To help clarify why even treatments entirely lacking in direct effect can seem helpful, I will explain why real signs and symptoms often improve, independent of treatment.

Then, I will detail quirks of human perception, interpretation, and memory that often make symptoms seem improved, when they are not.

I conclude that healthcare will grow to full potential only when judgments of clinical efficacy routinely are based in properly scientific, placebo-controlled, outcome analysis.

PMID: 19822008 [PubMed] PMCID: PMC2770065

*I gave each sentence its own paragraph