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Biofeedback - Replacing Medicine?

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Post by Squishalot

It's not the core premise, but it keeps getting brought up, and it's pissing me off. I was hoping to keep the argument regarding the validity of the scientific method on a separate thread as this one. I think that the two would get horribly inter-twined, and that the argument couldn't be salvaged.

With the hopes of possibly dispelling some tinfoil hat theories before you finish your new post, consider the following process:

The point I was making about researchers and results was related to the scientific method. I don't know why you chose to respond to it here, and once you did, I assumed you were happy to talk about it here. When I said 'core premise', I referred to your argument against research being conducted by paid researchers. If you want to discuss that elsewhere, then let's drop it and we'll take it up in another thread.

Post by Mousysqueak

The point I was making about researchers and results was related to the scientific method. I don't know why you chose to respond to it here, and once you did, I assumed you were happy to talk about it here. When I said 'core premise', I referred to your argument against research being conducted by paid researchers. If you want to discuss that elsewhere, then let's drop it and we'll take it up in another thread.

/agree.

Typing all of this referring to the chapter of the book is becoming a huge bear. I'm at 17,000 characters, and I'm just around half way through it. I've spent nearly 2 hours on it this evening, and I'm running on 4 days no sleep. I usually only go 3-4 at a time - I'm getting near the end of my rope.

I need some more time (probably a day or two) to finish typing this and make sure that there aren't any glaring errors.

Thanks for being patient with me.

Post by Kalisha

I don’t see a point in debating WNV any further. I’ve stated the story that caused me to trust this doctor. I understand if and why you see it to be illogical. There are plenty more stories that might change your mind about non-traditional medicine, but they go into a more personal nature than I’m normally willing to discuss on the internet.

The problem that Squishalot and I both seem to be having with your doctor, is that the things you're telling us about him are sending up huge red warning flags. Personally I'd be extremely weary of anyone claiming to be a victim of exposure to Agent Orange during the "old war years" and having "cured" his own cancer 17 times. It fairly reeks of a story being told to wow and take advantage of the impressionable. I think the only reason we've brought him up at all, is in hopes that you would step back and examine why you're so quick to condemn one side while upholding the other - not to put you in a position where you feel you have to defend the honor of this man or the merit of his treatments.

IF it has merit, and this is still in the if stage, it would take a long time to extract and perfect a “training” process for this.

1962-2011 isn't enough time to see the faintest glimmer of hope? I'm not sure you understand how the medical community at large works. Newer, better technology is continually being sought out and developed. If anyone believed that biofeedback had any merit whatsoever, it would have been picked up and developed further. It's not exactly some home baked remedy that any random person can cook up in their basement. It would take very specific technology and lengthy training to learn to read, understand, and act on the feedback being given.

An entire empire could be built off of biofeedback if it worked the way you want it to. People to build the computers, people to service the computers, people to tune the computers to each individual user, people to teach the user how to "plug in" and use the computer, people to check in with to verify your readings... The fact that this empire hasn't been built is very telling. People have made more money by extolling the (completely unconfirmed) medical and mystical benefits of açaí berries.

In traditional medicine, you’re tested for various things, and each one of those tests costs money. (They aren’t going to test you for free, are they?) Once you go through that testing process, and the doctor knows what you have, you’re treated – again costing money.

Well yes, and no. House isn't exactly a portrait of an actual, functioning hospital. People aren't sent through a battery of completely unfounded tests just because. Vitals are taken, basic lab work is done, symptoms and medical history are taken into consideration and the medical history of your family is examined. Then, if necessary, further testing is done.

I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and say that the costs of my doctor’s treatments are the same as that of traditional medicine. ... Even if he charged the exact same thing as a normal doctor, someone who went to my doctor wouldn’t be subject to the fees of being tested and such. So, I think it would be fair to say that my doctor is cheaper.

And what do you think the money you pay your doctor is going towards? Hospitals are paying for facilities, staff, medical supplies, multimillion-dollar pieces of machinery, malpractice insurance... and I think you'll find many hospitals do quite a lot of pro bono work in the form of clinics open to the public either completely free of charge or on a sliding scale based on income. If your doctor is charging anywhere near the same amount, you're being grossly overcharged.

(Also, is he going to take my insurance? If he's not in my HMO I'm going somewhere else.)

Wasn’t your ethics question based on money?

Yes.

The other part of it is preying upon the hope of those less fortunate (or who just really don't trust doctors), possibly doing more damage to those people (which is very much within the realm of possibility when you decide that testing is completely unnecessary because some old dude said it's cool), and having the audacity to pad your pockets with their money.

I would ask that you try to keep an open mind. Arguing the evidence (that you will see soon) with an open mind is quite different than arguing it with a closed mind.

I do have an open mind. I acknowledge that our current medical system has very real problems, that people are very over-medicated (particularly in the antibiotic and psychiatric departments), and that home remedies have their place. Just about anyone you talk to involved in the medical field will agree with those points.

On the other hand, I believe your mind could use a little bit of opening.

And with that I believe it's time to extricate myself from the conversation. I've stated and clarified my position, and I fear that we're veering too far off into the land of mysticism for me to add anything meaningful. And honestly, I have very little interest in reading whatever random thing you've found that's apparently convinced you the entire medical world is upside down. Reality and logic have this nasty habit of kicking me in the head.

(I feel the need to follow this up and say that nothing here is a personal attack of any sort - though I obviously don't agree with your views, I have nothing against you. It's late, my brain is addled, and there are oh so many words... Wall of text, go!)

Post by Mousysqueak

The problem that Squishalot and I both seem to be having with your doctor, is that the things you're telling us about him are sending up huge red warning flags. Personally I'd be extremely weary of anyone claiming to be a victim of exposure to Agent Orange during the "old war years" and having "cured" his own cancer 17 times. It fairly reeks of a story being told to wow and take advantage of the impressionable. I think the only reason we've brought him up at all, is in hopes that you would step back and examine why you're so quick to condemn one side while upholding the other - not to put you in a position where you feel you have to defend the honor of this man or the merit of his treatments.

I understand where you're going with this, but you have to realize that this guy isn't in some state-of-the-art place, with various technological machines. He owns a little shop (maybe 500 square feet), and he runs his private practice. This isn't one of those extremely-formal doctor's offices that we are both familiar with.

1962-2011 isn't enough time to see the faintest glimmer of hope? I'm not sure you understand how the medical community at large works. Newer, better technology is continually being sought out and developed. If anyone believed that biofeedback had any merit whatsoever, it would have been picked up and developed further. It's not exactly some home baked remedy that any random person can cook up in their basement. It would take very specific technology and lengthy training to learn to read, understand, and act on the feedback being given.

An entire empire could be built off of biofeedback if it worked the way you want it to. People to build the computers, people to service the computers, people to tune the computers to each individual user, people to teach the user how to "plug in" and use the computer, people to check in with to verify your readings... The fact that this empire hasn't been built is very telling. People have made more money by extolling the (completely unconfirmed) medical and mystical benefits of açaí berries.

The literature I am currently typing (and ohmygosh, this is taking a long time) was published in 2002. So, this hasn't really been developed - the logic behind my points is only ~8 years old. It's not out of the testing process, let alone in the let's-apply-this-to-other-things phase. Hoping to have it up within 12 hours, but my GF may decide that she wants to watch some movies again. -.-

Well yes, and no. House isn't exactly a portrait of an actual, functioning hospital. People aren't sent through a battery of completely unfounded tests just because. Vitals are taken, basic lab work is done, symptoms and medical history are taken into consideration and the medical history of your family is examined. Then, if necessary, further testing is done.

The point here is that they will do some test.

And what do you think the money you pay your doctor is going towards? Hospitals are paying for facilities, staff, medical supplies, multimillion-dollar pieces of machinery, malpractice insurance... and I think you'll find many hospitals do quite a lot of pro bono work in the form of clinics open to the public either completely free of charge or on a sliding scale based on income. If your doctor is charging anywhere near the same amount, you're being grossly overcharged.

Private practices don't have anywhere near all those expenses, so yeah, I'm with you there.

(Also, is he going to take my insurance? If he's not in my HMO I'm going somewhere else.)

Wasn’t your ethics question based on money?

Yes.

The other part of it is preying upon the hope of those less fortunate (or who just really don't trust doctors), possibly doing more damage to those people (which is very much within the realm of possibility when you decide that testing is completely unnecessary because some old dude said it's cool), and having the audacity to pad your pockets with their money.

I would ask that you try to keep an open mind. Arguing the evidence (that you will see soon) with an open mind is quite different than arguing it with a closed mind.

I do have an open mind. I acknowledge that our current medical system has very real problems, that people are very over-medicated (particularly in the antibiotic and psychiatric departments), and that home remedies have their place. Just about anyone you talk to involved in the medical field will agree with those points.

On the other hand, I believe your mind could use a little bit of opening.

This is also partially due to the fact that you still don't have my logic in front of you...

And with that I believe it's time to extricate myself from the conversation. I've stated and clarified my position, and I fear that we're veering too far off into the land of mysticism for me to add anything meaningful. And honestly, I have very little interest in reading whatever random thing you've found that's apparently convinced you the entire medical world is upside down. Reality and logic have this nasty habit of kicking me in the head.

(I feel the need to follow this up and say that nothing here is a personal attack of any sort - though I obviously don't agree with your views, I have nothing against you. It's late, my brain is addled, and there are oh so many words... Wall of text, go!)

I'd ask that you wait a day or two, read this damned literature when I get it up, and we can go from there.
Grant me that much - at least read it.

Post by 534868

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Mousysqueak

^ This is the kind of thing that I was getting at with the whole placebo-thing, but no one has the logic behind behind how I made the conclusion that a placebo could out-perform an actual drug.
I'm still typing this chapter of this book, and I'm going to post it in a couple hours. Just a warning, It's going to be well over 40,000 characters.

I'd be interested to see how you respond to it, peek.

Post by Mousysqueak

Disclaimer: This will be LONG. If you don’t want to read it all, that’s fine. I’ll explain how I got my original idea (the topic of the thread) out of this at the end of this. Feel free to pick this apart with a fine-toothed comb. I’m interested to hear about any flaws in the science of it. Also, I did not add or remove anything to this – the quote is as exact as I can get it. No one is perfect though, so I might have missed a couple tiny details (a comma here and there or something).

This quote is Chapter 10 of Lynne MeTaggart’s book, The Field. The book itself revolves around a theoretical principle of Quantum Physics known as the Zero Point Field. The chapter references the Field repeatedly – I’d ask that you keep any Field-related discussions on hold. Write down your ideas, and let’s wait until I get around to creating a thread about it. The beginning of the chapter references some things from previously discussed scientists, but those concepts aren’t completely necessary to type. Plus, I don’t want to type an entire book.

Wowhead doesn't like the spacing that gets put in when I used in Word. It makes this hell to read, but I can't look at fixing it until tomorrow. Sorry! D=

The chapter is from page 181 to page 196. I will do my best to replicate the formatting of the citations page as accurately as possible, although some of the random markings might be different. Footnotes will be referenced in parenthesis, as there’s no earthly way that I’m going to learn to sub/superscript things on Wowhead.

Puthoff, Braud and the other scientists had been left with an imponderable: the ultimate usefulness of the non-local effects they had observed. Their studies suggested a number of elegant metaphysical ideas about a man and his relation to his world, but a number of practical considerations had been left unanswered.
How powerful was intention as a force and exactly how ‘infectious’ was the coherence of individual consciousness? Could we actually tap into The Field to control our own health or even to heal others? Could it cure really serious diseases like cancer? Was the coherence of human consciousness responsible for psychoneuroimmunology – the healing effect of the mind on the body?
Braud’s studies in particular suggested that human intention could be used as an extraordinarily potent healing force. It appeared that we could order the random fluctuations of the Zero Point Field and use this to establish greater ‘order’ in another person. With this type of capability, one person should be able to act as a healing conduit, allowing The Field to realign another person’s structure. Human consciousness could act as a reminder, as Fritz Popp believed, to re-establish another person’s coherence. If non-local effects could be marshaled to heal someone, then a discipline like distant healing ought to work. What was clearly needed was a test of these ideas in real life, with a study so carefully designed that it would answer some of these questions, once and for all. In the early 1900s the opportunity arose with the perfect candidate – a scientist rather skeptical of the remote healing with a group of patients who’d been given up for dead.
Elisabeth Targ, an orthodox psychiatrist in her early 30s, was the daughter of Russell Targ, Hal Puthoff’s partner and successor in the SRI remote-viewing experiments. Elisabeth was a curious hybrid, drawn to the possibilities suggested by her father’s remote-viewing work at SRI, but also shackled by the rigors of her scientific training. At the time, she’d been invited to work as director of the California Pacific Medical Center’s Complementary Research Institute, as a result of the remote-viewing work she’d done with her father. One of her tasks was to formally study the treatments offered by the clinic, which consisted largely of alternative medicine. Often she seemed to be teetering between both camps – wanting science to embrace and study the miraculous, and wanting alternative medicine to be more scientific.
A number of different strands in her life began to converge. She’d received a phone call from a friend of hers, Hella Hammid, announcing that she had breast cancer. Hella had arrived in Elisabeth’s life through her father, who’d inadvertently discovered in Hella, a photographer, one of his most talent remote fiewers. Hella had called to ask if Elisabeth knew of any evidence that alternative therapies such as distant healing – something not unlike remote viewing – could help to cure breast cancer.
In the 1980s, at the height of the AIDS epidemic – a time when diagnosis of HIV was almost certainly a death sentence – Elisabeth had chosen this specialty in San Francisco, the very epicenter of the US epidemic. At the time of Hella’s phone call, the hottest topic in medical circles in California was psychoneuroimmunology. Patients had begun to crowd into special town-hall meeting given by mind-body devotees such as Lousie Hay or into workshops on visualization and imagery. Elisabeth herself had been dabbling in her own studies of mind-body medicine, undoubtedly because she’d had nothing much else to offer patients with advanced AIDS, even though she was deeply skeptical of Hay’s approach. One of her own early studies had shown that group therapy was as good as Prozac for treating depression in AIDS patients (1). She’d also read of the work of David Spiegal at Stanford Medical School, showing that group therapy dramatically increased life expectancy for women with breast cancer (2).
In her sensible, pragmatic hearth, Elisabeth suspected the effort was a combination fo hope and wishful thinking, and perhaps a bit of confidence engendered by the support of the group. They may have been psychologically better, but their T-cell counts certainly weren’t improving. Still, she harbored a shred of doubt, possibly derived from the years she’d spent observing her father’s work on remote viewing at SRI. His success strongly argued for the existence of some sort of extrasensory connection between people and a field that connected all things. Elisabeth herself had often wondered if one could use the special ability observed in remote viewing for something besides spying on the Soviets ore predicting a horse race, as she had once done.
Then in 1995, Elisabeth received a phone call from Fred Sicher. Fred was a psychologist, researcher and retired hospical administrator. He’d been referred to her friend Marilyn Schlitz, Braud’s old associate, who was not the director of the Institute of Neotic Sciences, the Sausalito-based organization that Edgar Mitchell had set up many years before. Fred now at least had the time in his life to investigate something that fascinated him. As a hospital administrator, he’d always been something of a philanthropist. At Schlitz’s suggestion, he approached Elisabeth about the possibility of working with him on a study of distant healing. With her unique background, Elisabeth was a natural choice to head up the study.
Pray was not something Elisabeth had much experience of. She had inherited from her father not only her melancholic Russian looks and thick black tresses, lightly tinged with grey, but also her passion for microscope. The only God in the Targ family home had been the scientific method. Targ had imparted to his daughter a sense of thrill of science, with its capabilities of answering the bi questions. As he’d chosen to work out how the world works, so his daughter had chosen to figure out the workings of the human mind. As a 13-year-old, she’d even wangled a place working in Karl Pribrams’s brain research laboratory at Stanford University, examining the differences between left and right hemisphere activity, before deciding on an orthodox course of study in psychiatry at Stanford.
Nevertheless, Elisabeth had been highly impressed by the Soviet Academy of Science during a visit she’d made there with her father, and the fact that laboratory study of parapsychology could be so openly carried out by the establishment. In officially atheist Russia, they had only two categories of belief: something was true or not true. In America, a third category existed: religion, which placed some things strictly beyond the reason of scientific investigation. Everything scientists couldn’t explain, everything connected with healing, or prayer, or the paranormal – the territory of her father’s work – seemed to fall into this third category. Once It was placed there, it was officially declared out of bounds.
Her father had built his reputation on designing impeccable experiments, and he had taught her respect for the importance of the air-tight, well-controlled trial. She grew up believing that any sort of effect could be quantified, so long as you designed the experiment to control for variables. Indeed, Puthoff and Targ between them had demonstrated that the well-designed experiment could even prove the miraculous. The outcome was gospel, regardless of whether that outcome violated the researcher’s every expectation. All good experiments ‘work’: the problem is simply that we may not like the conclusions.
Even as Targ senior shifted his thinking to embrace certain spiritual ideas, Elisabeth remained the cool rationalist. Still, throughout what was an orthodox training in psychiatry, she’d never forgotten her father’s lessons: received wisdom was the enemy of good science. As a student she would seek out dusty psychiatric writings of nineteenth century, before the advent of modern psychopharmacology, when psychiatrists lived in sanatoriums, writing down the rantings of their patients in an attempt to gain further understanding of their conditions. Somewhere in the raw data, Targ believed, separated out from the dogma of the times, lay the truth.
Elisabeth agreed to collaborate with Sicher, even though privately she doubted it was ever going to work. She would put distant healing to the purest test. She would try it out on her patients with advanced AIDS, a group so certain to die that nothing other than hope and prayer was open to them anymore. She would find out whether prayer and distant intention could cure the ultimate hopeless case.
She began trawling through the evidence on healing. The studies seemed to fall into three broad categories: attempts to affect isolated cells or enzymes; healing of animals, plants or microscopic living systems; and studies of human beings. Included was all of Braud and Schlitz’s work, which showed that people could have an influence on all types of living processes. There was also some interesting evidence showing the effects humans could have on plants and animals. There’d even been some work showing that positive or negative thoughts and feelings could somehow be transmitted to other living things.
In the 1960s, biologist Dr. Bernard Grad of McGill University in Montreal, one of the earliest pioneers in the field, was interested in determining whether psychic healers actually transmit energy to patients. Rather than using live human patients, Grad has used plants which he’d planned to make ‘ill’ by coating their seeds in salty water, which retards growth. Before he soaked the seeds, however, he had a healer lay hands on one container of salt water, which was to be used for one batch of seeds. The other container of salt water, which had not been exposed to the healer, would hold the remainder of seeds. After the seeds were soaked in the two containers of salt water, the batch exposed to the water treated by the healer grew taller than the other batch.
Grad then hypothesized that the reverse might also happen – negative feelings might have a negative effect on the growth of plants. In a follow-up study, Grad had several psychiatric patients hold containers of ordinary water which were to be used to sprout seeds. One patient, a man being treated for psychotic depression, was noticeably more depressed than the others. Later, when Grad tried to sprout seeds using water of the patients, the water that had been held by the depressed man suppressed growth (3). This may be one good explanation why some people have green fingers and others can get nothing living to grow (4).
In later experiments, Grad chemically analyzed the water by infrared spectroscopy and discovered that the water treated by the healer had minor shifts in its molecular structure and decreased hydrogen bonding between the molecules, similar to what happens when water is exposed to magnets. A number of other scientists confirmed Grad’s findings (5).
Grad moved on to mice, who’d been given skin wounds in the laboratory. After controlling for a number of factors, even the effect of warm hands, he found that the skin of his test mice healed far more quickly when healers had treated them (6). Grad also showed that healers could reduce the growth of cancerous tumors in laboratory animals. Animals with tumors which were not healed died more quickly (7). Other animal studies have shown that amyloidosis, tumors and laboratory-induced goiter could be healed in laboratory animals (8).
Other conducted scientific studies had shown that people could influence yeast, fungi and even isolated cancer cells (9). In one of them, a biologist named Carroll Nash at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia found that people could influence the growth rate of bacteria just by willing it so (10).
An ingenious trial by Gerald Solfvin showed that our ability to ‘hope for the best’ might actually affect the healing of other beings. Solfvin created a serious of complex and elaborate conditions for his test. He injected a group of mice with a type of malaria, which is usually fatal in rodents.
Solfvin got hold of three lab assistants and told them that only half the mice had been injected with malaria. A psychic healer would be attempting to heal one-half of the mice – not necessarily all those with malaria – although the assistants would not know which mice were to be the target of the healing. Neither statement was true.
All the assistants could do was to hope that the mice in their care would recover, and that the psychic healer’s intervention would work. However, one assistant was considerably more optimistic than his colleagues, and it showed. At the end of the study the mice under his care were less ill than those cared for by the other two assistants (11).
Like that of Grad’s healers, the Solfvin study was too small to be definitive. But there had been earlier research by Rex Stanford in 1974. Stanford has showed that people could influence events just by ‘hoping’ everything would go well, even when they did not fully understand exactly what they were supposed to be hoping for (12).

Post by Mousysqueak

Elisabeth was surprised to find that scores of studies – at least 150 human trials – had been done on healing. These were instances in which an intermediary would use one of a variety of methods to attempt to send healing messages, through touch, prayer or some sort of secular intention. With therapeutic touch, the patient is supposed to relax and attempt to direct his or her attention inward while the healer lays hands on the patient and intends the patient to heal. A typical study involving ninety-six patients with high blood pressure and a number of healers. Neither doctors nor patients were told who was being given the mental healing treatments. A statistical analysis performed afterwards showed that the styolic blood pressure (that is, the pressure of blood flow as it is being pumped from the heart) of the group being treated by a healer was significantly improved, compared with that of the controls. The healers had employed a well-defined regime, which involved relaxation, getting in touch with a Higher Power or Infinite Being, using visualization or affirmation of the patients in a state of perfect health, and giving thanks to the source, whether it was God or some other spiritual power. As a group, the healers demonstrated overall success and, in certain individual instances, extraordinary results. Four of the healers enjoyed a 92.3 percent improvement among their total group of patients (13).
Perhaps the most impressive human study had been carried out by a physician Randolph Byrd in 1988. It had attempted to determine in a randomized, double-blind trial whether remote prayer would have any effect on patients in a coronary care unit. Over 10 months, nearly 400 patients were divided into two groups, and only half (unbeknownst to them) were prayed for by a Christian prayer group outside the hospital. All patients had been evaluated, and there were no statistical difference in their condition before treatment. However, after treatment, those who’d been prayed for had significantly less severe symptoms and fewer instances of pneumonia and also required less assistance on a ventilator and fewer antibiotics than the patients who hadn’t been prayed for (14).
Although a large number of studies had been carried out, the problem with many of them, as far as Elisabeth was concerned, was the potential for sloppy protocol. The researchers hadn’t constructed trials tightly enough to demonstrate that it was truly healing that had produced the positive result. Any number of influences, rather than any actual healing mechanism, might have been responsible.
In the blood-pressures healing study, for instance, the authors didn’t record or control whether the patients were taking blood-pressure medication. Good as the results were, you couldn’t really tell whether they were due to the healing or the drugs.
Although Byrd’s prayer study was well designed, one obvious omission was any data concerning the psychological state of the patients when they’d started the study. As it is known that psychological issues can affect recovery after a number of illnesses, notably cardiac surgery, it may have been that a disproportionate number of patients with a positive mental outlook had landed in the healing group.
To demonstrate that healing was what had actually made patients better, it was vital to separate out any effects that might have been due to other causes. Even human expectation could skew the results. You needed to control for the effects of hope or such factors as relaxation on the outcome of trials. Cuddling animals, or even handling the contents of Petri dishes, could potentially bias the results, as could the act of traveling to a healer or even a warm pair of hands.
In any scientific trial, when you are trying to test the effectiveness of some form of intervention, you need to make sure that the only difference between your treatment group and control group is that one gets the treatment and the other doesn’t. This means matching the two groups so closely as you can in terms of health, age, socioeconomical status and any other relative factors. If the patients are ill, you need to make sure that one group isn’t more ill than the other. However, in the studies Elisabeth read about, few attempts had been made to make sure the populations were similar.
You also have to make sure that participation in a study and all the attention associated with it doesn’t itself cause improvements, so that you have the same results among those who have been treated and those who haven’t.
In one such study, a six-week distant healing study of patients suffering from clinical depression, the test was unsuccessful – all the patients improved, even the control group who hadn’t been subject to healing. But all the patients, those who received healing and those with no healing, may have had a psychological boost from the session, which might have overwhelmed any actual effect of healing (15).
All these considerations represented a tremendous challenge to Elisabeth in putting together a trial. The study would have to be so tightly constricted that none of these variables affected the results. Even the presence of a healer at certain times and not others might tend to influence the outcome. Though a laying on of hands might aid in the healing process, to control properly in a scientific sense meant that patients should not know whether they were being touched or healed.
Targ and Sicher spent months designing their trial. Of course, it had to be double-blind, so that neither patients nor doctors could know who was being healed. The patient population had to be homogeneous, so they selected advanced AIDS patients of Elisabeth’s with the same degree of illness – the same T-cell counts, the same number of AIDS-defining illnesses. It was important to eliminate any element of the healing mechanism that might confound the results, such as meeting the healer or being touched. This meant, they decided, that all healing should be done remotely. Because they were testing healing itself, and not the power of a particular form of it, such as Christian prayer, their healers should be from diverse backgrounds and between them cover the whole array of approaches. They would screen out anyone who appeared overly egotistical, only in it for the money or fraudulent. They’d also have to be dedicated, as they’d receive no pay and no individual glory. Each patient was to be treated by at least ten different healers.
After four months of searching, Fred and Elisabeth had their healers – an eclectic assortment of forty religious and spiritual healers all across America, many highly respected in their fields. Only a small minority described themselves as conventionally religious and carried out their work by praying to God or using a rosary: several Christian healers, a handful of evangelic, one Jewish kabbalist healer and a few Buddhists. A number of others were trained in non-religious healing schools, such as the Barbara Brennan School of Healing Light, or worked with complex energy fields, attempting to change colors or vibrations in a patient’s aura. Some used contemplative healing or visualization; others worked with tones and planned to sing or ring bells on behalf of the patient, the purpose of which, they claimed, was to reattune their chakras, or energy centers. A few worked with crystals. One healer, who’d been trained as a Lakota Sioux shaman, intended to use the Native American pipe ceremony. Drumming and chanting would enable him to go into a trance during which he would contact spirits on the patient’s behalf. They also enlisted a Qigong master from China, who said that he would be sending harmonizing qi energy to the patients. The only criterion, Targ and Sicher maintained, was that the healers believed that what they were using was going to work.
They had one other common element: success in treating hopeless cases. Collectively, the healers had an average of 17 years of experience in healing and reported an average of 117 distant healings apiece. Targ and Sicher then divided their group of twenty patients in half. The plan was that both groups would receive the usual orthodox treatment, but only one of the two groups would also receive distant healing. Neither doctors nor patients were going to know who was being healed and who wasn’t.
All information about each patient was to be kept in sealed envelopes and handled individually through a each step of the study. One of the researches would gather up each patient’s name, photograph and health details into a numbered folder. This would then be given to another researcher, who would then renumber the folders at random. A third researcher would then randomly divide the folders into two groups, after which they were placed in locked filing cabinets. Copies in five sealed packets would be sent to each healer, with information about the five patients and a start date specifying the days to begin treatment on each person. The only participants in the study who were going to know who was being healed were the healers themselves. The healers would have no contact with their patients – indeed, would never even meet. All they’d been given to work with was a photo, a name and a T-cell count.
Each of the healers was asked to hold an intention for the health and well-being of the patient for an hour a day, six days each week, for ten weeks, with alternate weeks off for rest. It was an unprecedented treatment protocol, where every patient in the treatment group would be treated by every healer in turn. To remove any individual biases, healers had a weekly rotation, so that they were assigned a new patient each week. This would enable all of the healers to be distributed throughout the patient population, so that the healing itself, not any particular variety of it, would be studied. The healers were also to keep a log of their healing sessions with information about their healing methods and their impressions of their patients’ health. By the end of the study, each of the treated patients would have had ten healers, and each of the healers, five patients.
Elisabeth was open-minded about it, but the conservative in her kept surfacing. Try as she might, her training and her own predilections kept surfacing. She remained fairly convinced that the Native American pipe smoking and chakra chanting had nothing to do with curing a group of men with an illness so serious and advanced that they were virtually certain to die.
And then she saw her patients with end-stage AIDS getting better. During the six months of the trial period, 40 percent of the control population died. But all ten of the patients in the healing group were not only still alive but had become healthier, on the basis of their own reports and medical evaluations.
At the end of the study, the patients had been examined by a team of scientists, and their conclusion had yielded one inescapable conclusion: the treatment was working.
Targ almost didn’t believe her own results. She and Sicher had to make certain that it was healing that had been responsible. They checked and rechecked their protocol. Was there anything about the treatment group that had been different? Had the medication been different, the doctor different, their diets different? Their T-cell counts had been the same, they had not been HIV positive for longer. After re-examining the data, Elisabeth discovered one difference they’d overlooked: the control patients had been slightly older, a median age of 45, compared with 35 in the treatment group. It didn’t represent a fast difference – just a ten-year age gap – but that could have been factor in why more of them had died. Elisabeth followed up the patients after the study, and found that those who’d been healed were surviving better, regardless of age. Nevertheless, she knew they were dealing with a controversial field and an effect that is, on its face, extremely unlikely, so science dictates that you have to assume the effect isn’t real unless you are really sure. Occum’s razor. Select the simplest hypothesis when confronted with several possibilities.
Elisabeth and Sicher decided to repeat the experiment, but this time to make it larger and to control for age and any other factors they’d overlooked. The forty patients chosen to participate were now perfectly matched for age, degree of illness and many other variables, even down to their personal habits. They amount they smoked, or exercise they took, their religious beliefs, even their use of recreational drugs were not equivalent. In scientific terms, this was a batch of men who were as close as you could get to a perfect match.
By this time protease inhibitors, the great white hope drug of AIDS treatment, had been discovered. All of the patients were told to take standard triple therapy for IDS (protease inhibitors plus to antiretroviral drugs such as AZT) but to continue their medical treatment in every other regard.
Because the triple therapy appeared to be making a profound difference on mortality rates in AIDS patients, Elisabeth assumed that, this time, no one in either group would actually die. This meant she needed to change the result she was aiming for. In the new study, she was looking for whether distant healing could slow down the progression of AIDS. Could it result in fewer AIDS-defining illness, improving T-cell levels, less medical intervention, improved psychological well-being?
Elisabeth’s caution finally paid off. After six months, the treated group were healthier on every parameter – significantly fewer doctor visits, fewer hospitalization, fewer days in hospital, fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses and significantly lower severity of disease. Only two of those in the treatment group had developed any new AIDS-defining illnesses, while twelve of the control group had, and only three of the treated group had been hospitalized, compared with twelve of those in the control group. The treated group also registered significant improved mood on psychological tests. On six of the eleven medical outcome measure, the group treated with healing had significantly better outcomes.
Even the power of positive thinking among the patients had been controlled for. Midway through the study, all the participants were asked if they thought they were being treated. In both the treatment and the control groups, half thought they were, half thought not. This random division of positive and negative views about healing meant that any involvement of positive mental attitude would not have affected the results. When analyzed, the beliefs of the participants about whether they were getting healing treatment did not correlate with anything. Only at the end of the study period did the subjects tend to guess cor

Post by Mousysqueak

Just to be sure, Elisabeth conducted fifty statistical tests to eliminate whether any other variables in the patients might have contributed to the results. This time, there were no more than chance.
The results were inescapable. No matter which type of healing they used, no matter what their view of a higher being, the healers were dramatically contributing to the psychical and psychological well-being of their patients (16).
Targ and Sicher’s results were vindicated a year later, when a study entitled MAHI (Mid-America Heart Institute) of the effect of remote intercessory prayer for hospitalized cardiac patients over 12 months showed patients had fewer adverse events and even a shorter hospital stay if they were prayed for. In this study, however, the ‘intercessors’ were not gifted healers; the qualify to take part, they simply needed to believe in God and the fact that He responds when you pray to Him to heal someone who is ill. In this instance, all the participants were using some form of standard prayer and most were Christian-Protestant, Roman Catholic, or nondenominational. Each was given a particular patient to pray for.
After a month, symptoms in the prayer group had been reduced by more than 10 percent compared with those receiving standard care, according to a special scoring system developed by three experienced cardiologists from the Mid-America Heart Institutes, which rates a patient’s progress from excelled to catastrophic. Although the healing didn’t shorten their hospital stay, the patients being prayed for were definitely better off in every other regard (17).
More studies are now under way in several universities. Elisabeth herself began a trial (which, at the time of writing in 2001, is still going on) comparing the effects of distant healers with nurses, a group of health professionals whose caring attitude toward their patients might also act as a healing mechanism (18).
The MAHI study offered several important improvements over Randolf Byrd’s study. Wheras all the medical staff in Byrd’s study had been aware that a study was being carried out, the medical staff in the MAHI study had no idea.
The MAHI patients also didn’t know they were participating in a study, so there would not have been any possible psychological effects. In Byrd’s study, of the 450 patients, nearly an eight had refused to be involved. This meant that only those were receptive to, or at least didn’t object to the idea of, being prayed for would have agreed to be included. Finally, in Byrd’s study, those doing the praying had been given a great deal of information about their patients, whereas in the MAHI study, the Christians had virtually no information about the people they were praying for. They were told to pray for 28 days, and that was it. They had no feedback about whether their prayers had worked. Neither Targ nor the MAHI study demonstrated that God Himself answer prayers or even that He exists. As the MAHI study was quick to point out: ‘All we have observed is that when individuals outside of the hospital speak (or think) the first names of hospitalized patients with an attitude of prayer, the latter appeared to have a “better” CCU experience.’ (19)
In fact, in Elissabeth’s study, it didn’t seem to matter what method you used, so long as you held an intention for the patient to heal. Calling on Spider Woman, a healing grandmother star figure common in Native American culture, was every bit as successful as calling on Jesus. Elisabeth began to analyze which healers had the most success. Their techniques had been profoundly different,. One ‘flow alignment’ practitioner based in Pittsburg felt, after attempting to work with several of the patients, that there was a common energy field in all of them, which she came to think of as an ‘AIDS energy signature’, and she would work on getting in touch with their health immune system and ignore the ‘bad energy’. With another it was more a case of working psychic surgery, spiritually removing the virus from their bodies. Another, a Christian in Santa Fe, who carried out the healing in front of her own alter with pictures of the Virgin and saints and many lit candles, claimed to have summoned up spirit doctors, angels and guides. Others, like the kabbalistic healer, simply focused on energy patterns (20).
But what they all seemed to have in common was an ability to get out of the way. It seemed to Elisabeth that most of them claimed to have put out their intention and then stepped back and surrendered to some other kind of healing force, as though they were opening a door and allowing something greater in. Many of the more effective ones had asked for help – from the spirit world or from the collective consciousness, or even from a religious figure such as Jesus. It was not an egotistic healing on their part, more like a request: ‘please may this person be healed’. Much of their imagery had to do with relaxing, releasing or allowing the spirit, light or love in. The actual being, whether it was Jesus or Spider Woman, appeared irrelevant. The success of the MAHI study suggested that healing through intention is available to ordinary people, although the healers may be more experienced or naturally talented in tapping into The Field. In the Copper Wall Project in Topeka, Kansas, a researcher named Elmer Green has shown that experienced healers have abnormally high electric field patterns during healing sessions. In his test, Green enclosed his participants in isolated rooms made with walls constructed entirely of copper, which would block electricity from any other sources. Although ordinary participants had expected electrical reading related to breathing or heartbeat the healers were generating electrical surges higher than 60 volts during healing sessions, as measured by electrometers placed on the healers themselves and on all four walls. Video recordings of the healers showed these voltage surges had nothing to do with physical movement (21). Studies of the nature of the healing energies of Chinese Qigong masters have provided evidence of the presence of photon emission and electromagnetic fields during healing sessions (22). These sudden surges of energy may be physical evidence of a healer’s greater coherence – his ability to marshal his own quantum energy and transfer it to the less organized recipient.
Elisabeth’s study and the work of William Braud raised a number of profound implications on the nature of illness and healing. It suggested that intention on its own heals, but that healing is also a collective force. The manner in which Targ’s healers worked would suggest that there may be a collective memory of healing spirit, which could be gathered as a medicinal force. In this model, illness can be healed through a type of collective memory. Information in The Field helps to keep the living healthy. It might even be that health and illness of individuals is, in a sense, collective. Certain epidemics might grip societies as a physical manifestation of a type of energetic hysteria.
If intention creates health – that is, improved order – in another person, it would suggest that illness is a disturbance in the quantum fluctuations of an individual. Healing, as Popp’s work suggests, might be a matter of reprogramming individual quantum fluctuations to operate more coherently. Healing may also be seen as providing information to return the system to stability. Any one of a number of biological processes requires an exquisite cascade of processes, which would be sensitive to the tiny effects observed in the PEAR research (23).
It could also be that illness is isolation: a lack of connection with the collective health of The Field and the community. Indeed, in Elisabeth’s study, Deb Schnitta, the flow alignment practitioner from Pittsburgh, found that the AIDS virus seemed to feed on fear – the type of fear that might be experienced by anyone shunned by the community, as many homosexuals were doing the beginning of the AIDS epidemic. Several studies of heart patients have shown that isolation – from oneself, one’s community and one’s spirituality – rather than physical conditions, such as a high cholesterol count, is one of the greatest contributors to disease (24). In studies of longevity, those people who live longest are often not only those who believe in a higher spiritual being, but also those who have the strongest sense of belonging to a community (25).
It might mean that the intention of the healer was as important as his or her medicine. The frantic doctor who wishes his patient could cancel so he could have his lunch; the junior doctor who has stayed up for three nights straight; the doctor who doesn’t like a particular patient – all may have a deleterious effect. It might also mean that the most important treatment any doctor can give is to hope for the health and well being of his or her patient.
Elisabeth began to examine what was present in her consciousness just before she went in to see her patients, to make sure that she was sending out positive intentions. She also began to study healing. If it could work for Christians who didn’t know the patients they were praying for, she thought, it could also work for her.
The modus operandi of her healers suggested the most outlandish idea of all: that individual consciousness doesn’t die. Indeed, one of the first serious laboratory studies of a group of mediums by the University of Arizona seems to validate the idea that consciousness may live on after we die. In studies carefully controlled to eliminate cheating or fraud, the mediums typically were able to produce more than eighty pieces of information about deceased relatives, from names and personal oddities to the actual and detailed nature of their deaths. Overall, the mediums achieved an accuracy rate of 83 percent – and one even had been right 93 percent of the time. A control group of non-mediums were only right, on average, 36 percent of the time. In one case, a medium was able to recite the prayer a deceased mother used to recite for one of the sitters of a child. As Professor Gary Schwarz, who led the team, said, ‘The most parsimonious explanation is that the mediums are in direct communication with the deceased.’ (26)
As Fritz-Albert Popp described it, when we die we experience a ‘decoupling’ of our frequency from the matter of our cells. Death may be merely a matter of going home or, more precisely, staying behind – returning to The Field.

Post by Mousysqueak

Please don’t kill me for putting all of that up. I realize that it’s terrifyingly long. Citations and a little note from me below:

Hell, you can find the citations here. Just click to look inside the book, and go to page 243. I’m going to have a seizure if I have to type all the italics and stuff.

Anyway, now that I’ve ~~forced~~ encouraged you to read this, here’s where I got my original idea for the thread.

This field of “science,” if you can call it that, is highly controversial. The research presented here can probably be argued to the point of it being invalid, and I invite you to do that. However, the current result (assuming that the science is “valid”) is that intention can cause effects in the healing of many things – including advanced stage AIDS.

Assuming that this is true, and I’m taking it as true until someone rips the science to pieces, this is where I went with the idea: If others can channel their “energies” or whatever you want to call them into another, and these energies help in the healing process of many things (AIDS being the most profound), then why can’t those “energies” be directed inward. Why can’t one person channel his/her OWN energies into themselves, increasing their healing rate/overall health.

The closest thing to manipulation of your own “energies” that currently exists is Biofeedback. In order for Biofeedback to do this, it would have to be greatly modified – it might even be necessary to create a whole new concept of self-manipulation on an electromagnetic level. If this works (and this is a HUUUUUUUGE if), it could replace medicine as a whole. This is what I was originally getting at, and it raised hell when I didn’t have the logic behind it – now I do. Thoughts?

Post by 124027

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Mousysqueak

I agree that the results of Targ's experiments were just somewhat of an "accident," in that she found things that she wasn't looking for.

However, the link that you provided me with only stated that the participants in this study were selected based on the type of AIDS and the number of AIDS-defining illnesses. Targ went to an almost neurotic (albeit necessary to eliminate a large percentage of variables) detail of matching her subjects, down to:
The forty patients chosen to participate were now perfectly matched for age, degree of illness and many other variables, even down to their personal habits.

I still agree that her results need to be further tested before they can be considered to have some merit, but they would need to be tested in an experiment that has as few variables as possible. It doesn't seem logical to test something when the thing being tested has fewer variables than the test itself. I'm not saying that you need to scour the internet for 1000 years to find something that was perfectly designed to test Targ's experiment, but I think it needs to be somewhat closer than just accounting for the type of AIDS and the number of AIDS-defining illnesses.

Post by 124027

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Mousysqueak

...
I'm not entirely sure where you got that - I never said anything about the way humans are "built."

I'm also not looking for an "exact" copy of Targ's experiment. However, it's not scientifically correct to say that a similar experiment with less control for variables gives an accurate representation of an experiment that took greater steps to ensure that there were less variables. If somehow, you can use an experiment with more things that could have created your result to prove/disprove an experiment that had fewer variables, I'd love to see a source on that. Last I checked, you can't do that.

Also, going back to the citations page, it appears as though Amazon.com removed page 243 from the "Look-Inside-The-Book" preview. I can assure you, it was there when I posted it.

The #1 (which I believe is what you are referring to) is actually from Chapter 9 of the book. It is cited after something in Chapter 9. Here's the kicker - the whole 45,000 character post that's above is Chapter 10.

The first citation of Chapter 10 is "Interview with Elisabeth Garg, California, October 28,1999."
The experiment you are citing is also 20 years old - if you read the chapter you would see that this book was written in 2001, and the experiments referred to happened in the '80s and '90s, not the '60s.

I'd offer to type the missing page, so you could go through that citation page, but I don't quite see the purpose in doing that - you could have easily seen that the page you were looking at on Amazon.com had Chapter 9 written right above #1. This means that you either missed it, or you went right to the citations page without even noticing the first line below the disclaimer of the first post that includes the chapter. I'll repost it for you:

Disclaimer: This will be LONG. If you don’t want to read it all, that’s fine. I’ll explain how I got my original idea (the topic of the thread) out of this at the end of this. Feel free to pick this apart with a fine-toothed comb. I’m interested to hear about any flaws in the science of it. Also, I did not add or remove anything to this – the quote is as exact as I can get it. No one is perfect though, so I might have missed a couple tiny details (a comma here and there or something).

This quote is Chapter 10 of Lynne MeTaggart’s book, The Field. The book itself revolves around a theoretical principle of Quantum Physics known as the Zero Point Field. The chapter references the Field repeatedly – I’d ask that you keep any Field-related discussions on hold. Write down your ideas, and let’s wait until I get around to creating a thread about it. The beginning of the chapter references some things from previously discussed scientists, but those concepts aren’t completely necessary to type. Plus, I don’t want to type an entire book.

I have no problem with you pointing out the flaws in the science of what I posted. However, the least you can give me would be to get the chapter correct.

Post by 124027

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Mousysqueak

Apologies, let me rephrase. "I'm not exactly sure you understand human physiology or how humans react to disease on a biological level."
Okay, would you care to enlighten me, in that case?
However, an experiment with variables that do not affect the results may have those variables removed.

It sounds to me like you're saying that the variables are not affecting the result. Is this what you mean? If so, how do you know that they will not affect the experiment?

It's there, re-reading it now.
It wasn't there when I posted my last response - nice to know it's back up.

Nope, was referring to chapter 10.
I'm somewhat confused now:
You CANNOT claim that this medication cures rashes unless you repeat the experiment with a group specifically testing for rashes. This is what Targ's experiement claimed to do. This is the first (and only) citation I looked at, and I'm expecting to see a trend.
Can you clarify which citation you are referring to? It would help us get on the same page.

Apologies, that was a missed key on my part. My point still stands.

I agree with your point that Targ's results in her earlier experiments weren't planned for at all, but I'm still somewhat confused. In the later third (ish) of the chapter, she designed an experiment specifically to see if remote healers would have greater/less effect on advanced AIDS patients. How would a result that the remote healing did have a greater effect be "unexpected" in this case, and therefore invalid?

Thinking that maybe you haven't read it all . I can understand why - It's HUUUUUGE. Look at the later part of the chapter, and take a look at Targ's last experiment. I'd be interested to know what you think about it.

Post by 124027

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Mousysqueak

My point, in regards to how humans react to disease, refers to a couple of things:

Humans are inherently different from one another, not just on a outwardly physical level, but on a genetic level. Since infection rates and severity largely is altered on a genetic level: rate of protein interaction, immune response etc you must account for it in your experiments. However, in Targ's time, methods of deriving genetic makeup were largely unknown. Therefore a large degree of interference to disease rates was unknown.

I'm with you here.

Now you'd think that the best course of action would be to get individuals as closely related as possible to remove as many variables as possible. And generally that's true. But, here's the problem, how do you get two people as genetically as close as possible if you can't check their genetics? You can't. Therefore you compensate in the opposite direction. You take as many people as possible, from as large a genetic background as possible, making genetics a null point as genetic differences become averaged together.

What exactly are you saying here about Targ's experiment? In your first paragraph, you stated that people are genetically different, and this wasn't able to be accounted for in Targ's project. Then, in your second, you stated that it wouldn't matter anyway, because genetic differences would "average out."

This also allows for another factor: If you're trying to create a cure to effect as many people as possible then you want to test as many people as possible, otherwise you just end up proving that a medical treatment only effects a small group of people.

Isn't this what she did? See above - I'm confused about where you're going with this.

The experiment has been conducted, peer tested and later repeated showing no results beyond those fished for. That makes them a non result.

To define "fished for" I'm going to explain the Sharpshooter Fallacy - If I take a pistol and shoot 12 times into a barn door I'll get 12 results. If I then step up and paint a target around a group of holes that I've shot I can't say I hit that target. I wasn't aiming for that target, I was aiming blind.

The same applies in any form of research because it applies in basic logic. You come up with an idea, test that idea properly and see if your results match. You can't test your idea, get results and then alter your idea to fit the results. You can use your results to come up with another idea and then test that experiment separately using a new test but you MUST retest.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1305403/?tool=pmcentrez
This is the experiment I'm referring to. I've stuck to reading her actual papers rather than a secondary source to avoid bias. My initial reading and the initial references I went searching for were all from Chapter 10 however.

I'm still somewhat confused here. You're saying that she was looking for any result, and when she got something, she decided that the achieved result would be the goal of the experiment? Can you show me where she said that?

Various forms of distant healing (DH), including prayer and "psychic healing," are widely practiced, but insufficient formal research has been done to indicate whether such efforts actually affect health. We report on a double-blind randomized trial of DH in 40 patients with advanced AIDS. Subjects were pair-matched for age, CD4+ count, and number of AIDS-defining illnesses and randomly selected to either 10 weeks of DH treatment or a control group. DH treatment was performed by self-identified healers representing many different healing and spiritual traditions. Healers were located throughout the United States during the study, and subjects and healers never met. Subjects were assessed by psychometric testing and blood draw at enrollment and followed for 6 months. At 6 months, a blind medical chart review found that treatment subjects acquired significantly fewer new AIDS-defining illnesses (0.1 versus 0.6 per patient, P = 0.04), had lower illness severity (severity score 0.8 versus 2.65, P = 0.03), and required significantly fewer doctor visits (9.2 versus 13.0, P = 0.01), fewer hospitalizations (0.15 versus 0.6, P = 0.04), and fewer days of hospitalization (0.5 versus 3.4, P = 0.04). Treated subjects also showed significantly improved mood compared with controls (Profile of Mood States score -26 versus 14, P = 0.02). There were no significant differences in CD4+ counts. These data support the possibility of a DH effect in AIDS and suggest the value of further research.

Some of the notation and numerical representations are a little bit over my head, but I don't see anything here stating that she had no idea what result she was going for. In order for your Sharpshooter Fallacy to apply, she should have no idea what to expect, right? At least, she would be going into the experiment with no goal in mind. Anywhere where you can show me where this is?

Post by 124027

This post was from a user who has deleted their account.

Post by Mousysqueak

Okay, I understand where you're going with this, and I agree that this does need quite a bit more testing before it becomes anything other than "odd."

However, the link you provided above was, according to the premise, wrong. In order to test something that gives a given result, it would be more logical to remove even more variables than were removed in the thing being tested, correct?

Targ removed age, personal habits, etc. from her second experiment (looks to be the second link in your last post). The link a few posts back (that makes Targ's research "null") doesn't account for this, therefore allowing for even more possible things to affect the experiment than were in Targ's experiments. Correct?

I'm still with you, in that there needs to be a great deal more research on this. However, it doesn't seem right to make this null-and-void due to variables when the experiment to prove it to be null-and-void had more room for error.

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