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[Article] Not just smoke and feathers! - framing the effectiveness of shamanic medicine in terms of placebo effects alone does not do justice to the sophistication of shamanic practice (www.essentiafoundation.org)

submitted 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) by Anuttara@leminal.space to c/interestingshare@lemmy.zip

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cross-posted from: https://leminal.space/post/31736049

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[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world -1 points 10 hours ago (1 children)

So you're not reading what I'm writing, or not understanding it? A trial versus placebo allows you to test whether people feel better because of a practice, or just because they convinced themselves they feel better. If any dude that pretends to be a shaman has the same positive effect as an actual shaman, then shamanism is bullshit. It's as simple as it gets.

The study you linked is basically just a summary of a bunch of papers that contain extremely small sample sizes (one person for most of them), no comparison with placebo, and the conclusion is "our sources are very unreliable, people's beliefs in shamanism matter heavily for it to work, and overall we can't be sure that it works, but it could be worth looking into". It means absolutely nothing at all, if anything, it means that it's unlikely that shamanism has anymore healing properties than any other magical belief.

[–] Anuttara@leminal.space 2 points 8 hours ago* (last edited 8 hours ago) (1 children)

u asked for studies to prove u wrong & i gave u a 2025 review of 16 papers and now u move the goalposts because u don't like the results.

it's mental health. if a ritual helps someone with ptsd and literally changes their heart rate and brain waves, it's working. hrv and gamma waves don't just 'convince themselves' to change. u can't say it's 'nothing' just because it's not a pill.

[–] Solumbran@lemmy.world 1 points 3 hours ago

Yeah, sorry, by "study" I obviously meant "proper study"

Then if they can't convince themselves, prove it by comparing with placebo. And if you can't, it's just another scam like homeopathy that goes "it works but you can't prove it through science", which is worthless.

All of this is just basic scientific protocol, I did not move anything, I said from the start that it needs to be proven scientifically.

Also, the study you linked, as I already said, concludes that it is absolutely not proof of anything, and that beliefs matter a lot it in (so people don't convince themselves, but yet their beliefs affect the results?)