If it's possible for that disease to get better at all, then we can't be sure at all it was in the hypnotism.

If someone says a prayer, or a faith healer lays hands on them, while it may not do anything at all, it opens up a window of relation. If the disease happens to get better at all within the next few weeks or months, then a person may relate it back to that useless event. That's how our minds work.

So halfway through the video I said to myself "That's interesting, but meaningless in itself. The only way you know if it's related to the hypnotism is if you can reproduce it." Then I find out he can't. So that settles that. The hypnotism was useless and purely a coincidence.

Also, if we're talking about the power of suggestion, who cares if the doctor believes or not? Doesn't it only matter if the person with the disease believes it or not? Also, wouldn't it be easy to find a nutjob to do the hypnotism that actually believes it can cure?

1)haha, youll totally meet those nutjobs in costa rica, you can ask them about it.
2)i think the point was that that the disease doesnt get better. its a congenital defect.
3)you can tell when someone is insincere.
4)they should do more tests on people who self heal. alternative medicine types are all kinds of into, but mostly into the kind where you buy whatever theyre selling. cancer patients are also all kinds of into it, i would be too if i were trying to survive a terminal illness. there are multiple documented cases of people self healing. i dont think theyve been studied thoroughly.
5) suggestion is very powerful

Upvote for the discussion.

*promote *brain (where else does hypnosis/suggestion/placebo effect work?)

Promoting this video back to the front page; last published Sunday, February 1st, 2009 8:20am PST - promote requested by kronosposeidon.

Adding video to channels (Brain) - requested by kronosposeidon.

>> ^peggedbea:
1)haha, youll totally meet those nutjobs in costa rica, you can ask them about it.

I mean, if the doctor actually believes what he says, he has the power to revolutionize the treatment of this disease. If he believes the only reasons hypnosis doesn't work is because he doesn't believe it, he should gather up some nutjobs that do believe it. Maybe he could just tell these people it's warts. Then maybe they could reproduce the same results! This would be amazing. Why is he just sitting on his ass saying "oh well, I'm not sincere anymore so it can't work."

2)i think the point was that that the disease doesnt get better. its a congenital defect.

Well I mean, it's not like he lost a limb. It obviously can get better, because it DID get better! He was born with it, and I'm sure he still has the disorder, it just got much better for a while.

My point is, you should expect these things to happen. Cancer can go into remission. Sometimes it'll go into remission immediately after someone imagines the cancer melting off their body. You should expect these things to happen to individual people at some point. You should expect a person to exist that is so amazed by this that they tell the story to everyone who will listen. This is such a great story you should expect it to end up on TV even. That's great, but if you can't reproduce it and show a statistical difference between your group and a control group, you can't draw a causal relationship between the two events.