Science, the Law of Attraction, and the Placebo Effect

Like most Americans, I was raised immersed in the culture of the scientific method. TRUTH can only exist in the presence of empirical evidence. Faith… well, that’s something different—no less real, but not at the same level as Truth. That’s no trivial conviction today. Again and again we see citizens fervently protecting our children’s school books from “unscientific,” faith-based concepts. Meanwhile, others blame the scientific method for slowly strangling religion over the last five centuries.

But I’m digressing. This isn’t about religion at all. It’s about accepting the existence of truth in something you can’t prove scientifically. There are many holistic health treatments out there that, for the most part, lack scientific credibility, and yet people have been employing them for centuries. Successfully, in fact—much to the chagrin of the scientific community.

Before I talk too much about these skeptical scientists (a group to which I owe some allegiance, by the way), let me point out that our scientific world is far from perfect. We have some real biases we haven’t quite worked out. For one, we tend to favor things that cost a lot. I have a friend that uses an expensive hand-held computer device for nothing but writing down phone numbers and occasional notes. He illogically refuses to acknowledge that my 25-cent notebook and pen do the exact same thing, with a greatly reduced risk of accidental data loss. Similarly, most of us are far more likely to pop an aspirin for a headache rather than ask someone for a scalp massage, despite the fact that medical science to this day is unable to explain exactly why aspirin works. True, it’s more convenient to simply take a pill than to bother a fellow human being, but hasn’t our society created that somewhat illogical situation? Incidentally, massage and aspirin have roughly the same measured effectiveness for short-term relief from minor aches and pains. For longer-term relief, massage comes out ahead!

So what would be the expected response from our scientifically-molded public about such healing methods as the laying on of hands, energy manipulation, or vibrational medicine? Generally it’s something between measured skepticism and flat out rejection. After all, these are treatments that have no reasonable scientific explanation. Like aspirin.

But what happens when these skeptics are presented with overwhelming success stories. For example, patients suffering from clinical depression who were put on a simple massage therapy treatment plan had a 77 percent higher improvement rate over a control group—that’s a success rate comparable to traditional psychotherapy and medication. In 2004, a study conducted by Britain’s Institute of Neurological Sciences concluded that high blood pressure patients receiving actual reiki treatments had significant reductions in diastolic pressure compared to control groups, again without the use of expensive medications. And then repeatedly, we see documented cases of patients with terminal illnesses who achieved complete recovery simply because they willed it to be so.

Many are unwilling to accept such results without a scientific explanation, and the explanation that is most often attributed by the scientifically-minded is the placebo effect, often in such a way as to suggest that the mere application of the term “placebo” dismisses whatever unscientific healing method was used to achieve the positive results. And yet, the placebo effect itself is a truly incredible, and unscientific, phenomenon.

Placebo “drugs” first gained widespread notoriety in the 1950s when studies found that sugar pills patients believed to be actual prescription drugs were at least half as effective, and in some cases 70 to 90 percent as effective as the actual medication. Countless similar studies have been conducted over the past half-century that included pills, activities, or simple verbal suggestions. The common thread among the successful results, regardless of the placebo used, was that the patients truly believed they were going to be cured.

Ironically, the same detractors who shrug off spontaneous remission, faith healing, and successful energetic work as placebo, tend to be the least likely to accept a universal energetic Law of Attraction. And yet the placebo effect is probably the clearest proof that a Law of Attraction exists, that is to say that the universe can be manipulated purely through individual will power…


What are your thoughts on the placebo effect, a universal Law of Attraction, and the application of scientific method? We’d love to hear from you. Post your response here, or you can also email us at essence@echohealing.org. Look for an upcoming article in The Essence for a consolidation or possible reconciliation of those thoughts sent to us.