In today’s blog I discuss the issue of “do healings really work?” It’s a good question, one that’s frequently got me into hot water. Today’s blog is partly drawn from a chapter from our Level 1 Reference Point Therapy manual.
Some of you know that last year I wrote that “XXX Healing doesn’t work.” I received what can be described as hate mail from the founder of XXX Healing saying, inter alia, that I must be stupid because it’s so obvious that XXX Healing works. This letter made me realize that what we are up against is ignorance – not only ignorance about healing but ignorance about what it means to say that something “works.”
Example: If I write a computer program and it works once on your computer, and never works again, does that mean it works? If my program works just sometimes, in perfect circumstances on a perfect computer, but not on “normal people’s” computers, can I claim it works? I think not.
Yet for some reason we, in the healing community, accept techniques that work on just one person in ten, or probably one person in a hundred. And we accept techniques that work in perfect circumstances, even if they don’t work on the normal people forking out thousands of dollars because they want the results that they read happened to someone else.
In order to say whether something – a computer program, a healing technique, anything – works, we need to think about statistics. The mere fact that it worked once or twice is clearly not enough. It’s the percentage that matters.
The people who say “XXX Healing works” aren’t bad people. They aren’t necessarily mean or greedy. But I think they are ignorant of the 2 most important words in the healing world: Placebo Effect. Not only that, but thanks to my friends at the US Federal Trade Commission, those people in XXX Healing are now breaking the law. (More on that later.)
Are you breaking the law? Do your healings really work? I think you’d better read on to learn about the Placebo Effect in Alternative Healing.
Last year I wrote a long article about the Placebo Effect (the link is at the end of this article). Today I want to give you a summary of the article, explaining why alternative practitioners must understand the Placebo effect:
- There are thousands of healing techniques around the world. Every single one claims some fantastic success story. Every healer’s website has (or should have) some amazing testimonial from someone who was healed of an incurable disease.
- It is very tempting to rely on testimonial evidence as proof that healing techniques work.
- People invest tens of thousands of dollars with healers or teachers because testimonials lead them to believe they will get the results they want. More often than not they are disappointed.
- This is such a problem that the USA Federal Trade Commission now has laws restricting healers using testimonials to promote their work. If you promote services in the USA you should read their guide: http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2009/10/endortest.shtm.
- This might sound unfair but the fact is that testimonials are not representative of results because even a sugar pull should heal a lot of people and get glowing testimonials – this doesn’t mean you should charge thousands of dollars for sugar!
How do we account for the fact that most if not all healing techniques work sometimes and none work all the time?
- When scientists test the effectiveness of a new drug they compare it to a sugar pill, called a placebo. Amazingly, many people heal, even from “incurable” diseases, just by taking the sugar pill. In fact there are medicines prescribed by doctors which have never been proved to be more effective than taking a sugar pill. Sometimes you are better off with the placebo!
- It’s hard to put a number to it, but some sources (quoted in the full article), suggest that the average effectiveness of a placebo can be as much as 40%. That means a new drug has to be significantly more than 40% effective to prove that it works. If a new drug heals just 30% of people when the placebo healed 40%, then we would say the drug is not effective.
- We believe that a similar rule should apply to alternative healing, especially “energy healing”. Every healer has a success story but can they claim that they have a success rate of more than 40%? (Or even 10%?)
Why is this important?
- If you are reading this manual there’s a good chance that you have already experienced some form of alternative healing, perhaps energy healing work. If you are a practitioner then it’s certain you would agree that some times it works, some times it doesn’t.
- In 2009 Simon was criticized for writing that another healing modality “doesn’t work.” People argued that it does work because 1 or 2 or perhaps 100 people had been healed. What these critics missed was that anything less than 40% can be explained as a placebo. If a healer sees 30,000 clients, then 100 healed people doesn’t count as proof that it worked. 30% of 30,000 = 9,000, so rather than proving something works, 100 testimonials is 8,900 too few even for a plain old sugar pill!
- I can’t emphasize this point enough – a handful (or even thousands) of testimonials doesn’t prove a healing technique works. This has to be the most misunderstand (yet fundamental) concept in the healing industry. Do not believe a healer who tells you their technique works just because they can point to someone who “miraculously healed of cancer.” It’s only relevant if they can prove that most (or all) of the clients heal of that condition.
- We need to understand – and teach our community – that something doesn’t really work unless it works better than a sugar pill placebo (40%). Just because you have hundreds of testimonials doesn’t prove it works – not if you needed many thousands of clients to get just hundreds of testimonials.
Where does Reference Point Therapy fit into this?
- In creating a new modality, we have an ethical obligation to maximize the effectiveness of our technique. We owe it to you to establish that what we do is significantly more effective than a placebo. This has never been done before (with the partial exception of Peak States).
- Through our research we isolated the key ingredient that accounts for why healings work sometimes, not other times. We call it “acknowledgment.” We believe that healings work when this ingredient is there, and usually doesn’t work when it’s not there. Through this understanding we believe we have answered the questions of why healing techniques appear to be less effective than placebos, and how we can create the most effective technique possible.
- This chapter is in this manual to add to the scientific rigor and credibility of RPT. It does not mean that we don’t believe in healing work – only that we don’t believe in “snake oil.” Unfortunately many (some might say most) healing techniques are less effective than a sugar pill when it comes to actual healing (not just short term release pain). We can change that through adding the missing ingredient.
Our conclusion
- We can never really say for sure that what we do isn’t a placebo. All healing is partly placebo because if people didn’t believe it would work they wouldn’t spend money on it. Ultimately we believe all that really matters is the success rate.
- A success rate of 20% is still a “good thing” – that’s thousands of people being healed. On the other hand it suggests that these healing techniques are operating at 20% less effectiveness than a sugar pill! That’s a lot of money and time being wasted, albeit with good intentions.
- We firmly believe that we have developed a technique which will generate 90-100% success. This is the only real test and proof of a technique. At this time we lack the data to show you conclusive proof – RPT is still new. With your help and that of the other RPT practitioners, through the Million Persons Trial, we will have the data we need to establish that healing work can be 90% (or more) effective.
At the end of the day we are left with a slightly cynical, yet optimistic conclusion: You can never prove that healings are not a placebo, but I can prove to you that RPT works.
What can you do to help?
- This is your call to action. We are aiming to transform the consciousness of the healing world. We want healings to REALLY work (as in 90% not 10%).
- Regardless of what healing technique or modality you use, start to look at the success rates.
- If you know anyone who is a healer, talk to them about this article. Ask them if their techniques work and what percentages. If (like 99% of healers) they take a few testimonials as proof that it works, explain to them about the placebo effect.
- Please – link to this article on your website, in blogs and discussion forums. I want people to know about this because this article exposes the biggest myth (and frankly, the biggest fraud) in the healing world.
Humorous side note: If you share Simon’s Australian sense of humor you will probably enjoy this Australian comedy segment on placebos or “selling snake oil”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I7z0-FMUFFA.
For more information including scientific studies and analysis of the Placebo effect and its implications for alternative healing, please read this article. www.referencepointtherapy.com/documents/PlaceboEffect.pdf. It’s slightly dated but contains more information than this extract.
Leave a comment
Discussions and comments have been really great lately on this blog, Thank You! I really value your feedback. Please let me know what you think about this article. Do you agree with me that any technique less effective than a sugar pill simply doesn’t work? Or do you think that I’m too harsh? (If the latter, how would you feel if you were the client paying thousands of dollars for something less effective than sugar?) I value your thoughts.
Blessings
Simon
gary begue 
Tom Jones 
Nicola Munn 
Sheer Curtains 
A very good article that sums up many of my thoughts about RPT. What you write about the USA Federal Trade Comission is interesting – if you tune up the restrictions given to healers in the US, you kind of get a feeling of how we have to adapt RPT to Norwegian law. Though we have even more restrictions – just saying (writing or promoting) that a healing technique work is at the bordeline of breaking the law (i know i mention it quite a lot, but it irritates me
) . So we have a need to get RPT validated and tested through and through. “Anecdotal evidence is no evidence”
It’s fortunate that RPT has such focus on aknowledgment, plenty of my curriculum (and the curriculum for doctors, nurses etc) mention the importance of aknowledgment and the effect it can have in healing a patient. So there we have a “beachhead” – or perhaps it’s better to call it common ground.
Since the topic of this post is placebo (and science) I have a question about the science behind RPT. Several healing modalitites propose that their method work because of quantum mechanics, whether it’s theta, quantum touch, or some other kind of work.
You’ve earlier talked about the Holographic Universe-model (http://tinyurl.com/35pabff) – based up on the holographic principle, which is plausible, but yet to be confirmed. I havn’t read Talbot’s book. As I’ve understood, most of his claims ( f.ex. that the holographic universe might explain psychic phenomena) has not yet been validated. You do mention that the Holographic Universe is a theory and you don’t claim it to be “true” – but the talk about the holonomic brain, the holographic universe etc makes me wonder: why is that most healing modalities claim to be backed up by controversial quantum-theories? For the holographic brain model to work, the Orch-OR-model must work (and maybe it does) – but nonetheless, is there no other way to create a good framework for the technique?
I hope I’ve expressed myself clear enough, and I don’t know if you have the answer to my question. I am a proponent of Quantum-Mind theories and the theories of Penrose and Pribram – my main concern is skeptics – the technique work, and I want everyone to get a share of it, so I wish for RPT to have a theoretical background that can be accepted by most people. And “quantum woo” (ie. theories like Penrose’s etc) is – as I’ve experienced – often one of the reasons why people turn away from healing modalities.
Sorry for my long rant, I had to vent a little…
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