The Power of the Placebo Effect in Audio & Beyond

[admin]

I never thought I could fall victim to the placebo effect being the skeptic that I am in nature. Last weekend's trip to the mall proved me wrong when I was stopped by an attractive booth babe trying to sell me a magical power bracelet to restore my balance and increase strength. This experience caused me to re-evaluate the influence of the power of suggestion and just how important it is to do controlled double blind testing in such instances. I wonder how long it will be before some exotic cable vendor starts slapping these power bands onto their speaker cables, or a company manufacturing sexual enhancement products adopts them for the bedroom touting it as safe and natural alternative to Viagra. Trust me it's coming.

Discuss "The Power of the Placebo Effect in Audio & Beyond" here. Read the article.

 

[Swerd]

Great story!

She had me with less body pain. Boy I'd like to have some of that. I warned her that I spent my career debunking snake oil products like this. She didn't mind and was ready to prove her product to me.

Never assume you’re smarter than an experienced salesperson. They’ve done it before - many times more than you have.

My own magic power bracelet was cryotreated and is easily three times better than yours .

As someone who works in the clinical trial field, I'd like to defend single-blind trials. Double-blind trials are not twice as good . In fact, there is nothing wrong with them if used appropriately. The real power comes from the number of people tested. A small trial of say 40 people is statistically much less powerful than a similarly designed trial of 400 people.

 

[Alex2507]

If you had just purchased the bracelets you would have felt better for days. Just because it's all in your head doesn't mean it's not happening. The stuff you believe is real if only for a time. Just how big a return on investment do you expect for 20 bucks? Twenty bucks barely gets you a two hours in a movie theater with popcorn and coke ... even with coke prices being what they are down south.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Awesome article. You see the term double-blind testing used a lot by a few manufacturers that don't even come close to adhering to the standard of double-blind. From a manufacturer perspective conducting a controlled listening test it can only be a single blind listening test. There is nothing wrong with that but to say otherwise is dishonest.

Harman seems to take the most steps to controlling bias and is the only manufacturer that I am aware of that uses a speaker shuffler?

 

[shadyJ]

Drawing the the placebo analogy, if placebos have a real effect in health and well being, why can't they actually affect what you are hearing? Would you dispute the mind is not so powerful as to alter the perception of audio? There are already many well-known optical and audio illusions wherein we do not perceive information correctly even when its right in front of us. Audio snake oil may all be in the mind, but to the one experiencing the effects of it, is it any less real? How do we know the brain doesn't 'enhance' sound depending on ones expectations with regard to hifi audio?

 

[3db]

I never thought I could fall victim to the placebo effect being the skeptic that I am in nature. Last weekend's trip to the mall proved me wrong when I was stopped by an attractive booth babe trying to sell me a magical power bracelet to restore my balance and increase strength. This experience caused me to re-evaluate the influence of the power of suggestion and just how important it is to do controlled double blind testing in such instances. I wonder how long it will be before some exotic cable vendor starts slapping these power bands onto their speaker cables, or a company manufacturing sexual enhancement products adopts them for the bedroom touting it as safe and natural alternative to Viagra. Trust me it's coming.

Discuss "The Power of the Placebo Effect in Audio & Beyond" here. Read the article.

Maybe you were just falling for her!!

 

[gene]

Awesome article. You see the term double-blind testing used a lot by a few manufacturers that don't even come close to adhering to the standard of double-blind. From a manufacturer perspective conducting a controlled listening test it can only be a single blind listening test. There is nothing wrong with that but to say otherwise is dishonest.

Harman seems to take the most steps to controlling bias and is the only manufacturer that I am aware of that uses a speaker shuffler?

Harman is about the only audio company I know of truly doing DBT testing. Their panel of listeners don't know the speaker models or brands under test and to my knowledge, their listeners don't work for Harman NOR are they intimately familiar with the sound of Harman speakers. This can be a huge bias as I pointed out in the article. After years of listening to speakers, I can pretty much identify a brand/model that I am very familiar with in a blind test. I may ask Sean Olive to comment more on this topic.

 

[MinusTheBear]

Harman is about the only audio company I know of truly doing DBT testing. Their panel of listeners don't know the speaker models or brands under test and to my knowledge, their listeners don't work for Harman NOR are they intimately familiar with the sound of Harman speakers. This can be a huge bias as I pointed out in the article. After years of listening to speakers, I can pretty much identify a brand/model that I am very familiar with in a blind test. I may ask Sean Olive to comment more on this topic.

His insight will surely be valuable to this topic. Harman is the only manufacturer that I know that invests in technology to help remove/control experimenter bias from controlled listening tests. This is taken from Sean Olives blog.

Trained listener Alex Miller is evaluating the sound quality of three loudspeakers in Harman's Multichannel Listening Lab. The automated speaker shuffler ensures that each speaker is heard in the exact same position. The acoustically transparent, visually opaque scrim means the tests are double-blind and not influenced by brand, price or other sighted biases. The computer randomly selects the presentation order of the speakers in each trial and listener controls the switching so that experimenter bias is removed from the test.

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/

 

[Pyrrho]

Drawing the the placebo analogy, if placebos have a real effect in health and well being, why can't they actually affect what you are hearing? Would you dispute the mind is not so powerful as to alter the perception of audio? There are already many well-known optical and audio illusions wherein we do not perceive information correctly even when its right in front of us. Audio snake oil may all be in the mind, but to the one experiencing the effects of it, is it any less real? How do we know the brain doesn't 'enhance' sound depending on ones expectations with regard to hifi audio?

It is more complicated than that. With health, it can make some people believe their cancer is cured when it isn't. So they don't get proper treatment and they die a horrible death from cancer. With audio, it is generally just that they are wasting money and time. But the skills given up in order to be a sucker will also likely impact other areas of one's life. Normally, being retarded in audio choices means that one will be retarded in some other choices as well. Do you really want to be making bad choices in your life, so that maybe you can enjoy audio more? Of course, those who make retarded choices in audio usually are not happy with their systems, which is evidenced by the fact that many are always trying something new. If they were fully satisfied with what they had, they would not feel the need for changing their systems or trying other things.

 

[gene]

I assume the people running the tests and interpreting the data at Harman work for Harman so that is a source of bias that also must be considered. No tests, DBT or otherwise are free from bias which should be noted when interpreting results.

 

[majorloser]

So now we all know what Gene bought Clint for Christmas.

 

[Swerd]

Drawing the the placebo analogy, if placebos have a real effect in health and well being, why can't they actually affect what you are hearing? Would you dispute the mind is not so powerful as to alter the perception of audio? There are already many well-known optical and audio illusions wherein we do not perceive information correctly even when its right in front of us. Audio snake oil may all be in the mind, but to the one experiencing the effects of it, is it any less real? How do we know the brain doesn't 'enhance' sound depending on ones expectations with regard to hifi audio?

Of course the mind effects what we hear. That's the whole point. Our ears are hardwired to the brain, and we cannot hear sounds without our brains interpreting them. Other brain functions, such as attitudes, beliefs, and expectations cannot be eliminated from this process. I like your use of the word perception to cover both the ears and the brain as opposed to hearing with the ears alone. That’s why I laugh at the phrase "trust your ears" when most of the time we cannot distinguish hearing from perception.

However, it is possible (with blind tests) to use our brains to identify what perceptions comes from hearing genuine physical sounds and what perceptions originate downstream from the ears.

The debate about audio snake oil comes down to this: How much do you want to pay for something that is only an illusion?

 

[KEW]

Any good scam will have some fact showing behind it:

Why 7.83 Hz? It is the fundamental electromagnetic frequency (EMF) the earth resonates at (AKA the Schumann resonance):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schumann_resonances

But then again, this doctor has done a few impromptu experiments involving (re)connecting the human body to the earths EMF:
http://www.spacedoc.net/Earthing_The_Most_Important_Health_Discovery_Ever_5

Understand, I'm not saying anything yea or nay about this, I only wish I was smart enough to know truth. I just have a penchant for keeping up with the fringes!

I think placebo could reasonably explain the good doctor's test results.

**********************************************************

When I was young, I understood placebo effect to be that a person might think he felt better, but no change actually occurred (it was just a sugar pill, after all). However, more recent research has proven positive measurable changes in the physiology of those given a placebo.

From Scientific American Mind February, 2009:

Placebo effects can arise not only from a conscious belief in a drug but also from subconscious associations between recovery and the experience of being treated—from the pinch of a shot to a doctor’s white coat. Such subliminal conditioning can control bodily processes of which we are unaware, such as immune responses and the release of hormones.
Researchers have decoded some of the biology of placebo responses, demonstrating that they stem from active processes in the brain.

 

[KEW]

I think (if I could disavow myself from certain knowledge), and after spending $2,000 on audio cables, it is entirely possible that I could hear "better" sound.

It definitely seems reasonable for there to be endorphins at play, improving the overall sensation of what we hear.

But I would not rule out an improvement at our ear!
We know that if our sinus are congested, our hearing is impaired.
Is it unreasonable to believe (after spending a small fortune and going through the ritual of changing out all of the "normal" cable with the "amazing" cable) that the sense of anticipation might cause a person to have subtle physiological changes (such as a heightened physical tension) which could make their ears a bit more sensitive than normal (i.e. a little extra resolution comes from the mechanism of the human ear - not out of the speaker)?

The problem is that all of these "audible improvements" rely on a level of anticipation/expectation which will not be maintained over time, so even if we could eliminate knowledge that cables don't effect sound, the placebo effect would only last so long (or so it seems to me)!

 

[Frans]

So now we all know what Gene bought Clint for Christmas.

A Plácido Flamingo?

 

[Alex2507]

How much do you want to pay for something that is only an illusion?

... about twenty bucks.

 

[gmichael]

... about twenty bucks.

Only if the 20 is also an illusion.

 

[soulgolem]

Can't believe those things are still legal (bracelets)

 

[ErnieM]

No tests, DBT or otherwise are free from bias which should be noted when interpreting results.

A very postmodern response - and, if I may add, very true!

 

[mtrycrafts]

Can't believe those things are still legal (bracelets)

Oh, this is in the US. In England, it would be illegal
Magnets are still legal to peddle. As are a number of useless herbs and diluted so called medicines. An endless consumer marketplace full of snake products and claims.