Freud & Assessing Un-Blinded Experimentation

[Hari Kumar <hari.kumar@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ds2UP: wrote:
"I'm assuming you mean "medical research" here; I'm entirely unsure how
you'd define the concept of a double blind in social sciences research,
most of which is not experimental.
And even in the medical context, I think that the demand that
psychoanalysis use double blind tests would be silly.  It's one thing to
give someone a placebo pill, but how in the heck do you carry on a
placebo version of a talking cure? "
COMMENT:
In fact there are many situations where it is impossible to blind a
placebo. The best that can be done - & frequnetly is - to use "standard
therapy". Think of a big machine based therapy that is so bloody big it
is "obvious" to the patient. What to do?
What is often NOT done then - & should be done much more frequently - is
to use a "blinded outcomes assessment".
Freudian therapy is in principle no different. Having never seen an
honest RCT of freudian thepay - one that straitfes for income of patient
by the bye - I will proclaim it sucks. Not to say that Freud's cognitive
insights - devoid of data - were helpful!
i.e. Whatever the outcome is - percent successful quotation of Karl marx
to walking a red line accurately - is done BLINDED to the initial
randomization.

By the way:
Is Ian is still reading - thx for your reply! But the poor benighted
ML-ist [Hereafter PBML-ist] did not get what it/she/he wanted. So - yes
that quotation was certainly expressive of Popper. What i was driving at
- was that you you were saying that there was a lot of literature
'attacking' [paraphrase of PBML-ist] Popper. ti sounded as you were
talking that this emanated from "respectable" Philosophical sources.
Please cite!
Cheers, H