Thread by @ProfDFrancis

Here is the article!

It is absolutely hilarious! There are several giveaways that this is not really a doctor. Which can you spot?

Thank you to various people who sent me details of circumventing the Telegraph's paywall. I generally avoid doing that, for articles where the _authors_ would want me to pay to read (as it is their living).

I subscribe to publications to support them.

SCIENTIFIC papers are written by people who would be absolutely delighted to give you copies of all their work for free. They have zero interest in anyone charging you to read their work

So I am happy to let them communicate with me via sci-hub.se or any other means

1. Hilariously insane pullout quote.

This is the kind of thing that @mshunshin says when he is being super-sarcastic about something I have said.

The only person who believes that, is the person who believes that all viruses evolved inside a test tube or a basement laboratory in China.

What next, "You can get pregnant from a toilet seat"?

2. The article argues that the PLACEBO effect is obviously true, and yet the NOCEBO effect (being the same thing, with clinical harm rather than benefit) cannot exist.

Well, when his bank account is a negative number, he can tell the bank he doesn't believe in negative numbers!

3. The line of reasoning that:

I don't like the result of the experiment, so

"It cannot possibly be true."

Here's a fun quiz! See if you have a higher IQ than the newspaper chappie, whoever he is.

How many patients attended to be screened?

How many patients attended to be screened?

Can we randomize people who don't agree to be screened?

So if people won't come to be screened, sign the consent form and pick up the tablets, how do you enrol them into a study?

Concealed?

It's not concealed, you moron!

It is PUBLISHED. On the same website that you read the article on!

nejm.org/doi/suppl/10.1…

See the article, which you read and were clearly unable to understand?

May I draw your attention to this bit?

You just CLICK.

It says he is a doctor, but it doesn't seem likely that he is medically qualified.

Otherwise he would realise that placebo and nocebo are the same thing, just with an opposite sign.

And that you can't enroll patients in a trial who don't agree to be enrolled!

After a couple of columns of nonsense about nocebo effect, he ran out of inane things to say, and moved on to drivel about viruses being killed by "air".

Advice for the Telegraph:

When giving Medical advice, you should get a *Medical* doctor, as our friend Donald would say.