Posted: May 15, 2017 12:40 pm
:nod: pointed out mulitple times, repeatedly ignored.
I think it is my later point that has been missed. Terminal patients going for last-resort quackery frequently believe the treatment has been successful, not because it has been, but because they need to believe it has been. Self-reporting is absolutely worthless as an assessment of actual results.
In fact self-reporting only has value when used to assess what it actually is, which is a change in self reporting. You can ask people what they believe the effectiveness is of a life-coach/motivational speaker, then ask them again just after a course, and a month after that. Chances are they will be sceptical at first, much more positive just after, and a month later probably as sceptical as before if not more so, because they realise the effects were more self-delusion than anything else, and they settled back into old habits almost immediately.
Such a speaker will have no difficulty in obtaining positive results from attendees, he just has to time his requests for comment correctly. Give them enough time to realise the con, and the results might just be negative. Sometimes even the positive results are not real, since some people will immediately settle into old habits, but blame themselves for what they believe to be their failure, and continue to report that the course was good and worthwhile, even though if they were honest with themselves they would realise that everyone else did the same and there were no positive results.