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Seth Roberts sentence of the day
Natasha is now taking flaxseed oil, and I tell her it will make her smarter. Someone once asked me, isn't Seth's proposal based on a placebo effect? I wonder -- when the individual is genetically special and also the basic unit of analysis -- how exactly is a placebo effect defined? It either works or it doesn't.
Here is Seth buying Planet Earth, as all wise men should.
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 7, 2007 at 01:31 PM in Food and Drink | Permalink
Comments
I think you relax the limit to which every human is considered a completely serparate individual. Or is placebo statistically defined? As in a measure of correlation between effect and knowledge about the substance?
Posted by: Erik at Aug 7, 2007 2:00:43 PM
Flaxseed oil is also known to help you hit home runs.
Posted by: ah at Aug 7, 2007 4:17:33 PM
with the ladies?
Posted by: shawn at Aug 7, 2007 4:24:31 PM
How much are you taking now? What are your own observations of the gains? I took 2T at night for a while and wasn't convinced enough to develop the habit for swallowing something mildly-moderately unpleasant. It did seem to change my sleep, possibly for the better, & improve balance a bit (but maybe just a touch more than normal variation). My bridge game certainly didn't suffer, but definitely didn't improve beyond normal variation.
Posted by: fmb at Aug 7, 2007 10:49:19 PM
You might say the Placebo effect is irrelevant in the case that you mention--if it works, it works--but my understanding is that the Placebo effect could still be weeded out through the right experimental treatments. The common definition of Placebo is to say that the benefits or other observed effects are "in the person's head" rather than coming from the treatment, but in practice, the experimentalist has no interest in 'proving' that the benefit is in a person's head.
More accurately, the "Placebo effect" is a combination of factors introduced by the experimenter to hold as much as possible constant beyond the treatment being considered.
So however flaxseed oil is defined, the Placebo effect would be a combination of factors introduced by the experimenter to hold everything constant except the "flaxseed oil effect." If people in the non-flaxseed oil (Placebo) treatment gain the same benefits, than that's evidence against a claim that flaxseed oil caused the benefits.
Posted by: Michael Parente at Aug 7, 2007 11:15:55 PM
If you're after omega 3's, fish oil is a much better source. The omega 3 in flax seed oil has to be converted to a useable form by the body, and that conversion process is imperfect.
Posted by: Some Random Economist at Aug 8, 2007 9:45:40 AM
Has anyone figured out why Seth Roberts hasn't put Weight Watchers out of business yet?
I'm only half joking.
Posted by: Random dude at Aug 8, 2007 2:35:08 PM
"Has anyone figured out why Seth Roberts hasn't put Weight Watchers out of business yet?"
Weight Watchers spokesperson:
http://www.worldartcelebritiesjournal.com/celebr93.jpg
Seth Roberts spokesperson:
http://www.dsng.net/uploaded_images/mich_tyler1-715994.jpg
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