Sunday, May 24, 2009

The power of wishful thinking

Have you ever been watching a sports match, football or tennis, and wished very hard for one side or the other to win? And somehow you feel that you are having either a negative or a positive influence on the outcome.
This was the case many years ago when we were living in Washington DC, and I became a supporter of the Washington Redskins. Whenever I turned on the TV to watch their match, they started to lose. It became so bad that my son asked me not to watch them, and he even had me cover my eyes when a crucial play was on.
I love watching tennis and snooker. In tennis, when Federer and Nadal are almost even, I am rooting for Federer and my wife for Nadal (he's more macho), and it's as if we are battling for control over the airwaves for the fate of the ball.
Now you know that this is impossible. Noone can influence the outcome of a game or any event taking place thousands of miles away or even nearby purely through thought processes. If you want a scientific explanation, the energy or power emitted by the brain (which can be measured) is negligible and could not move the flight of a ball even one millimeter up close.
Many years ago I had an Uncle and Aunt who were spiritualists and astrologers. They believed in psychokinesis, the ability to focus the mind to change physical reality. Their favorite example was a seer of some kind who caused small clouds to disperse, but in fact there was no way of knowing if this was his fault or merely a fortuitous breeze. I opted for the latter explanation. My Aunt also read my astrological chart and assured me that one day I would be famous, so at least she was consistent.
This belief in the power of thought is pervasive in alternative medicine, since there is no greater force than wishful thinking. Recently I went to my usual Friday morning coffee/tea group in the town square and there was a young woman there, the daughter of one of the regulars. This young woman is a spiritual healer, and offered to cure my back pain from a recent injury (I tried to move my whole bed in one go). She put her hand close to my back and looked blank for a few minutes, and then said that she had finished. Of course, I felt nothing, but I wanted so hard not to disappoint her that I said, of course, that I felt better. I pointed out to her that since "energy" is a form of radiation, if she really could produce energy from her hands, it should be detectable by a simple spectrometer. Over a few days the pain in my back did recede, but it may have been due to the rub-ins with Ben Gay that my wife did, or the hot showers that I had, or even spontaneous improvement.
This is something that those who talk about non-conventional cancer cures and other quackery should note. There is a spontaneous cure rate for all cancers. Only the most virulent of viruses, such as Ebola virus are nearly 100% fatal. For example, many years ago a famous oncologist claimed that he had found a gene therapy cure for multiple myeloma, and his cure rate was ca. 30%. But, a cancer epidemiologist published a study pointing out that the spontaneous cure rate for this terrible disease is also ca. 30%, so the net result was unfortunately no cure! Such is the power of wishful thinking or the placebo effect, that people will believe in cures that have no actual basis, hence the need for double blind studies, where neither the doctor nor the patient knows what they are receiving.
Anyway, even though the laying on of hands in my case did not seem to work, I am ready to undergo another attempt, as a contribution to science. And I'm still hoping that my Aunt will be proved right.

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