Strange

Sorry, you don't get to shift the burden of proof. You are making a claim, it is up to you to support it. I did say, "if you do an actual experiment..." So, if you don't think anyone else has ever measured angular momentum, then go ahead and do it yourself. But do it properly. Stop messing about. Generate some real data to support your case. Submit it to a scientific journal. Get a Nobel Prize. It can't be too hard if the deviation from expected results are as enormous as you claim. Doing an idiotic caricature of science with yootoob videos gives you about as much credibility as an Apollo hoax believer. Sadly, this is what people like you always say. You have failed to address any arguments against your idea. You claim that angular momentum is not conserved and have provided zero evidence for that.

I didn't say it wasn't your conscious self (whatever that means). But I see Delta1212 has answered far better than I could ...

Because one believes that is a more effective method. That is because some people don't seem to understand why it is a fallacy, or even what "appeal to authority" means. It isn't an "appeal to authority" (in the sense of the fallacy) to refer to experts as the best source of information. That is an example of the fallacy: he would never tell you something that is incorrect because he is a renowned expert. There are, for example, Nobel Prize winners who will tell you equally ridiculous things and some people will assume that they must be right because they have a Nobel Prize. Of course not. Saying that it is always wrong to listen to experts would also be a fallacy!

1. I don't think all pain has an "organic cause" (if by that you mean some sort of physical damage) which is why I think pain relief can be different from medications such as vaccinations, chemotherapy, where there can be no placebo effect. (Of course, even psychological reasons for pain are ultimately "organic" causes.) 2. That is a very odd definition of telekinesis, but ... 3. There is zero evidence that telekinesis is possible. So using it as an explanatory mechanism is not very helpful. In terms of physics, that doesn't really make any sense. There is no evidence that belief has any role in quantum physics. You seem to be confused about what the observer effect is. It certainly has nothing to do with telekinesis. I think it is stretching the definition of the observer effect to say the placebos are an example. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Observer_effect_(physics)

That is why I said "by itself".

I assume you would have to read the book to understand the point he is making. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consciousness_Explained The quote by itself means nothing.

I'm not sure this is directly relevant (it is about the meaning of the word) but it is sufficiently interesting... http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170315-the-invention-of-heterosexuality

No, it is still a fallacy. If a world-renowned astro-physicist and expert on general relativity tells you that black holes are full of cheese, you should not believe that because of his authority. You should never argue that X is true because so-and-so says so (even if they are the world's leading expert on X).

Telekinesis is moving (-kinesis) things at a distance (tele-). However, every controlled experiment to detect such effects has failed to find anything. But do try and organise the experiment you suggest; another data point is always valuable.

And also, if you do an actual experiment, with measurements, rather than trying to analyse yootoob videos, you will find that angular momentum is conserved. This is the sort of thing that is done in physics labs at school and university thousands of times a year. If there were really a problem, I think someone would have noticed by now. Your reliance on bogus "logic" and yootoob (and avoidance of real data) totally undermines your case.

So it seems you agree that argument from authority (i.e. saying that what someone says must be correct because of who they are) is a fallacy.

Some points like that have been made, but not so explicitly. I assume the placebo effect is strongest where there is a psychological element to either the symptom or how it is reported. In the case of painkillers or antidepressants, those may both be true. The only real way of knowing how effective the drug/placebo is, is to ask the patient how they feel. On the other hand, there are things that can be measured and will be completely unaffected by a placebo (vaccination, chemotherapy, bone density (bisphosphonates), etc.) And then there are things in between. For example, blood pressure can be measured objectively but can be affected by psychological factors.

I guess (if it does work) it works because they are more convinced by taking something that looks like medicine rather than a mint or an apple. I don't know if anyone has done any research into this aspect (I'm sure they have - and someone who cares could find it ) Well, not quite. The placebo is chemically inert (if you look at the websites of companies who sell them, they say this explicitly). So they have no physical effect. And the effect can vary from possibly being close to that of a real drug (I suppose) to having zero effect (e.g. a placebo vaccination would not prevent you catching a disease). Well, it is a hypothesis. All it needs now is evidence.

That is why science uses things like double-blind trials (and placebos). Not a term that either I or Google have heard of. There is at least one study that shows that might not be true (I have read some of the article criticising that but am not entirely convinced by all of their arguments). If people are buying placebos because they think they make them feel better, then presumably they make them feel better! This may be something other than the real placebo effect, closer to self-hypnosis, perhaps.

I don't think it is gullibility. The placebo effect is a real thing.

This is why we have representative democracy. The elected representatives attempt to produce a balance between individual rights and the wishes of the majority. There will always be a percentage who are more or less unhappy with the result. There will be a proportion who think they should be allowed to have more than one wife (because in their tradition that has always been allowed); there will be people who think they should be allowed to marry 11 year old girls (because that has always been allowed in their tradition); there will be a proportion who think interracial marriages should not be allowed (because that is part of their culture); and, yes, there will be those who think same-sex marriages should not be allowed. But not everything decided by the majority is automatically accepted (see also: representative democracy). They are tempered by things like human rights (in this case); whether the action is legal (again, this case); costs (the majority might want something that the country just can't afford); and so on. Democracy is not (if you'll excuse the phrase) black and white. Well, you would have to explain what rights are being violated. Because I can't think of any. Is there a human right not to see, or live in the same country as, same-sex marriages? Is that defined in the US constitution or the European Convention on Human Rights or by the UN? I don't understand the question. A friend of The Donald, eh? As soon as you see statistics you don't like, you call them fake. You were the one who initially said "more than 50%" but had to retract it when you found a source said "35%".

Again, as with all your attempts to support this nonsense, that says NOTHING about quantum effects. That is a discussion of the problem, not EVIDENCE one way or the other.

Yep. Just googled for buying placebos online and there are a number of suppliers. They explicitly say that they rely on the placebo effect. That is a hypothesis. The next step would be to find a way of testing that hypothesis against the others suggested so we could work out which is right.

Wouldn't the researchers prefer that placebos did nothing at all - so they could compare their drug against "nothing". (Which is why placebos were used originally.)

I saw that. I assume there is a market for pills that look exactly like aspirin (or whatever) but are just made of sugar. I can't imagine why except that the placebo effect may be stronger if it looks like the real thing than if you just suck a mint. http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/82164-the-quote-function-a-tutorial-in-several-parts/ Put your cursor in the address bar of the browser, select the text (Ctrl-A), copy the text (Ctrl-C), put the cursor in your post and paste the link (Ctrl-V).

I think that is a bit unfair; he and Wallace spent many years collecting data before each (independently) came up with the idea of natural selection.

That doesn't make that sort of hate speech OK.

As the same experiment can be done with electrons and other massive particles, it cannot be connected to travelling at the speed of light.

They weren't. You just were not consciously aware of it before. (Because that would be too confusing.)

So they need to develop placebos that produce similar side-effects but without the therapeutic effect. I guess that could be ethically difficult for more serious side effects.