Pitfalls of Thinking: Confirmation Bias (2/2)

Confirmation bias is a tendency to search for, interpret or remember information in a way that confirms preconceptions or working hypotheses. People can reinforce their existing attitudes by selectively collecting new evidence, by interpreting evidence in a biased way or by selectively recalling information from memory. Some psychologists use "confirmation bias" for any of these three cognitive biases, while others restrict the term to selective collection of evidence, using assimilation bias for biased interpretation.

I explore the use of confirmation bias in three areas:
1. Alternative health practices
2. Intelligent design creationism
3. HIV/AIDS denialism

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Confirmation
• bias
• alternative
• health
• intelligent
• design
• creationism
• null
• hypothesis
• ad
• hoc
• rationalization
• critical
• thinking
• science

[endofscene]

@Darkstar1484 The very fact of the placebo phenomenon indicates that the human mind is a very powerful agent and is indeed capable of curing the body. Now, if the human mind is capable of making us well then it must also be capable of making us sick.

What experiments have been done to test to what degree physical therapies work or to what degree it is our minds that cause them to work? What experiments have been done on the bone-pointing phenomenon, which is the reverse?

[pythor2]

Love it when they cherry-pick and quote mine. It's like I can picture them reading the passage or book, coming to that phrase, and then closing the book immediately to call their pastor and tell them the "gospel". HA. I can only imagine that they do the same thing with the Bible.

[sailornaruto39]

@slmrcs what i was calling status quo is not what it looked like sorry.I meant more so understanding the source. We trust doctors because we understand the scrutiny that their claims have to go through.

[Darkstar1484]

@slmrcs Those few people mat just be having a placebo reaction, IE the therapy or medicine itself does nothing. it's the individuals reaction to it. You seem to have a problem with the idea of testing something. Testing is how we understand if it works or if it doesn't. Then again maybe you'd be content with crystals and chanting, I'd rather use stuff that actually works when it comes to cancer and other life threatening conditions. Call me old fashioned that way.

[Darkstar1484]

@slmrcs That 'narrow' field being the one where we actually use science and evidence and things that actually work? DO you know what they call alternative medicine that actually works? They call it medicine.

[slmrcs]

Individual differences are ignored. Dismissed as irrelevant. Perhaps a therapy may totally fail the double blind study, but for a handful of people is what they need, do to more individual factors? Often in the "skeptic" community is an attitude that says "If I don't know something, if I and official western science has not yet realized something, the it doesn't exist." Reductionism replaces god, and is beyond self examination. Reductionism doesn't work for health, or sociology.

[slmrcs]

@Darkstar1484 Double blind placebo studies can be useful, but not the final determiner. The same diagnosis in conventional western medicine can have many different causes using other schools of medicine (TCM, german biological medicine - as explained by reckeweg, and more perspectives on how the body works most people never heard of). The double blind placebo controlled study is based on a narrow perspective that takes into account what makes people with a specific "disease" similar" however...

[slmrcs]

@sailornaruto39 Appeal to masses logical fallacy.

[Darkstar1484]

@slmrcs Not really, what it shows is that if there are alternate views they need to be tested scientifically. Figure out what would disprove them, double blind tests are an excellent example of that, where we can ensure that all that is being measured is the efficacy of the treatment and that the placebo affect will be controlled.