Not just smoke and feathers!
www.essentiafoundation.org
Dr. Currie argues that framing the effectiveness of shamanic medicine in terms of placebo effects alone does not do justice to the sophistication of shamanic practice. The latter, she maintains, is based on a complex, multi-tiered metaphysics whereby cause and effect relations beyond the visible material world are deliberately exploited by the shaman.
  • Solumbran@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    10 days ago

    I did not deny that they feel better. On the contrary, my point was exactly that they do feel better. And that it doesn’t matter.

    If you have a cancer, and shaman healing makes you feel better, you’ll still die.

    The scientific protocol allows to determine what is the source of the feeling, for example by comparing with placebo.

    Does shaman healing work better than someone doing fake shaman healing rituals? I doubt it, but bring up studies that prove me wrong and I’ll be fine with it, at least to some extent.

      • Solumbran@lemmy.worldEnglish
        22·
        9 days ago

        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.spaceOPEnglish
          21·
          9 days ago

          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.worldEnglish
            2·
            8 days 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?)