Read more about it here: http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/6179170/but_power_balance_holograms_do_really.html

noen Says:
December 24th, 2010 at 7:13 pm

But the placebo effect can be quite significant. Sugar pills can be more effective than so-called powerful medicine, and that’s even when people are told they are getting a sugar pill. Prozac for instance is less effective than placebo

Citation needed.

All those touchy feely things that you hate so much? All that “believe in yourself” crap and the “visualize good things” and the positive thinking messages that come wrapped up in religious or quasi religious garb? That stuff actually works and has been shown to work in clinical trial after trial.</blockquote?

Citation needed.

Placebo doesn’t work, you think it works but it doesn’t hence why they use placebos when they are researching/testing drugs before they go on the market. I don’t know where you get your information but I think you need to ask for a refund.

No you didn’t say that. Not even once. What you did say several times was that placebo was better than prozac. Now you have opened your goalposts a bit and allowed that for severe depression, placebo is not in fact better.

the reason skeptics tend to look down on placebo is because placebo is lying.

“noen, that is shameless quote mining. The meta-analysis you referred to included three different pharmacological types, not just Prozac. You also neglected to mention that the authors published a follow-up article in which they noted that “unfortunately, during its initial coverage, the media often portrayed the results as “antidepressants do not work”, which misrepresented our more nuanced pattern of findings.” Emphasis is mine.”

Thanks for pointing that out (especially the follow-up article). You beat me to it!

Not discussing Prozac since I know nothing about it… but there’s a reason why people are given anti-depressants. You can’t just tell someone who’s depressed to cheer up, be positive, and visualise good things. Particularly if they’re suicidal.

To me, your attitude smacks slightly of victim blaming. “If only that person had been more positive in their views, they wouldn’t have felt like killing themselves”. If that truly worked, mental health issues wouldn’t even exist.

Whether or not any one medication works, I think it’s entirely unfair to categorise medications as unnecessary. I don’t believe you’re doing that, but would you mind clarifying your position?

Whether or the powerbands lived up to their claims was not my concern. I simply wished to point out that the placebo effect is very powerful, more powerful than many prescription drugs claim to be, and works even if you know its a placebo. The mind is powerful thing and can have very real effects on the body. There are of course limits.

–

Mike G said
“you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between patients given a placebo vs. antidepressants just by interviewing and observing them.”

But it works better than placebo, even though you couldn’t distinguish placebo from prozac patients…… but it works better because the study was “misunderstood”……. sounds like BS to me. I wonder why that is? Why is my BS detector going off? I wonder, should I check wikipedia and see?

Oh!! Looky looky:

Fluxentine controversy
“The authors concluded that “although the difference [between the placebo and antidepressants] easily attained statistical significance”, it did not meet the criterion for clinical significance, as used by National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (UK), “for any but the most severely depressed patients.”

Statistically significant is not the same as clinically significant which means that I was right above, before I even checked wiki, to doubt its efficacy.

In other words, prozac “works” slightly better than placebo for all but the most severely depressed patients. Didn’t i say that? Yeah, several times now.

It seems to me that many people here and other so-called skeptics are only skeptical when it advances their atheistic positivism. But when the science contradicts their ideology they suddenly turn into believers of the received orthodoxy from those in authority.

Guess what? All those touchy feely things that you hate so much? All that “believe in yourself” crap and the “visualize good things” and the positive thinking messages that come wrapped up in religious or quasi religious garb? That stuff actually works and has been shown to work in clinical trial after trial. People who have the faith that you despise live longer, healthier and happier lives than you ever will.

deal.

Let’s move into a different realm. If I make a false claim about you (slander or libel) should you be able to sue me?

Now you might argue that this is a civil not a criminal matter and the same rules do not apply. But you asked whether such false statements should be subject to a “legal” penalty. Plus, the First Amendment doesn’t cover only criminal issues.

But if I make a false claim about you, actual damage to you may result, people may no longer do business with you, people may shun you, people may even engage in physical violence towards you if the falsity is inflammatory enough.

Should you not have a right to demand I compensate you for damage to your reputation, livelihood, or person?

Unrestricted free-speech such as you propose would leave you with no remedy.

Johnson, B.T. & Kirsch, I. (2008). “Do antidepressants work? Statistical significance versus clinical benefits”. Significance 5 (2): 54–58.

It’s essentially a direct response to the misinterpretation of the authors’ paper that you cited. From the abstract: “Our authors’ reanalysis of drug trials was widely reported as implying that antidepressant drugs such as Prozac are overprescribed and useless. The truth, as Blair T. Johnson and Irving Kirsch explain, is more complex, and more interesting.”

They found that “analyses showed that patients on drug improved significantly more than those on placebo.” The difference in improvement is greater for more depressed individuals. HOWEVER, while the differences are statistically significant, they’re not dramatic enough to be clinically significant, meaning that you wouldn’t be able to distinguish between patients given a placebo vs. antidepressants just by interviewing and observing them.

Power Balance made specific claims about factual matters, meant to be taken literally. They didn’t say, “Power Bands make life more fun!” which would have been meaningless and therefore protected. They said, “Power Bands will improve your balance, strength, and flexibility”. You see the difference between that and a Coke ad? Your argument relies on a false equivalency.

No, I said lying in advertising shouldn’t be a crime. Or rather, if it were a crime, you would have to punish virtually every firm that ever advertised for itself.

As I said, the essence of advertising is creatively deceiving the consumer (i.e. lying). That is neither good nor bad, it is just the way things are. And I can’t see any justification for penalizing Power Balance without also penalizing all the firms I listed in my previous comment.

Power Balance bracelets don’t actually improve you athletic performance? News flash: Opening a Coke will not allow you to open happiness, there exist locations where Energizer batteries are actually not trusted, and whether or not Six Flags amusement parks contain more flags and more fun is a matter of scientific debate.

Advertisements are almost never true from an empirical, scientific perspective; Power Balance is no exception. And punishing Power Balance for doing what every other firm on this planet does seems to be making an unjustified exception.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9C8al3rWDQ

There are 30 million users and 3 billion dollar industry around Prozac, which is no better than placebo. Is that fraud?

Are you from marketing?

I think the test is did the product cause harm. I also believe that lying is not illegal but fraud is. There is a difference legally. The power band thingie is relatively harmless and if people believe it helps them then it does so it isn’t really even fraud. “Athletic performance, balance, stamina, and so on” are matters of psychological belief so if you believe in it, it works. This is why top performing athletes are so superstitious. At their performance level any edge you can get makes a difference. Visualization also works. If you visualize some goal that you wish to achieve the act of imagining it will help you to reach that goal that you might not have otherwise.

That is why faith is so valuable. Faith is the ability to act even though all evidence says you should not. People who act on faith, that is, people who believe in themselves, will in the long run be more successful than those who never act unless they are sure they will succeed.