Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer ... [whose] results seriously challenge the beliefs of mainstream science.

[FatPhil]

I can't say I'd heard of her before today, I grew out of Freakonomics when I was about a third of the way through their first book, and I think they're the ones who have given her much of her publicity. However, the last few nights have been mostly sleepless and I've been doing a lot of reading - much of it on Andrew Gelman's blog ( https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/ - but don't follow that link, he cross-links everything, so once you're in, it's like the La Brea tar pits). Several hundred dendritic clicks into this extravaganza, I finally reached this externally-linked article:

Hotels and houseplants: why we should doubt Ellen Langer's mind-over-matter miracles

By Mike Hall 26th June 2024
...

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/06/...oubt-ellen-langers-mind-over-matter-miracles/

Most of what he described was just common-or-garden psych woo, stuff that can be easily face-palmed into non-existence, but when I reached the paragraphs where it sounded like actual harm could occur, I thought it was worth popping the link here; she's clearly a serial pseudo-academic bunk-source, and clearly she's potentially harmful. For context, perceptions of time seem to be her thang - if the clock on the wall is set to advance quickly, your bruise will heal quicker (sorry, that's paraphrase, I'm trying to be brief and cut to the chase, the harmless dumb ones are not the important ones), and much more:

Perhaps of even greater concern is the work Langer has not published. In an interview for the New York Times in 2014, Langer spoke about applying her 'Counterclockwise' method to cancer patients. Her proposed study would have twenty-four women with Stage 4 breast cancer taken to a private resort in Mexico, outfitted to resemble 2003. The women would be encouraged to behave as if it were 2003, as if they did not have cancer, with the environment around them designed to reinforce that. After a week, measurements would be taken to see if their tumours had shrunk, and to check for other biological markers of cancer.

I don't know if this study ever went ahead. According to the New York Times, the study was set to commence in spring of 2015 – but at the time of writing no results have been published.

Other unpublished studies include one in which Langer claims to have found that breast cancer survivors who describe themselves as 'in remission' showed poorer health than those who described themselves as 'cured'. Another study, described as being 'in progress' in the New York Times interview, asks if mindfulness can stem the progression of prostate cancer.

I was lead to that article from the "this recent post" link in Gelman's blog here:

Freakonomics does it again (not in a good way). Jeez, these guys are credulous:

Posted on October 28, 2024 9:43 AM by Andrew
...
LEVITT: I've read the work of many scholars and I can honestly say that you win the prize for the body of research that most consistently finds results that are completely the opposite of what I would have predicted. You and I have completely different models of how the world works. And the data keep supporting your model. . . .

That's not true! The data don't keep supporting Langer's model. Just for starters, see the two links given above, or this discussion by linguist Mark Liberman from 2009). Or my recent paper with Nick Brown. Or this recent post at The Skeptic.

https://statmodeling.stat.columbia....-in-a-good-way-jeez-these-guys-are-credulous/

Technically, there could be a "Freakonomics" /People Debunked/ thread! (maybe there is, I've not checked!)

 

[Tezcatlipoca]

...[/ex]
https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/06/...oubt-ellen-langers-mind-over-matter-miracles/

Most of what he described was just common-or-garden psych woo, stuff that can be easily face-palmed into non-existence, but when I reached the paragraphs where it sounded like actual harm could occur, I thought it was worth popping the link here; she's clearly a serial pseudo-academic bunk-source, and clearly she's potentially harmful. For context, perceptions of time seem to be her thang - if the clock on the wall is set to advance quickly, your bruise will heal quicker (sorry, that's paraphrase, I'm trying to be brief and cut to the chase, the harmless dumb ones are not the important ones), and much more:

This is the funniest thing I've seen all month and I'm really curious about her study here it has to be so bafflingly bad. What "time" did she use? Did she consider the cultural element to time and processing time? Some cultures have very different concepts of the "future" times that don't really pair with ours at all, would they just not heal? Aaah so bad but hilarious.

 

[Ann K]

Her proposed study would have twenty-four women with Stage 4 breast cancer taken to a private resort in Mexico, outfitted to resemble 2003. The women would be encouraged to behave as if it were 2003, as if they did not have cancer, with the environment around them designed to reinforce that.

I wonder what is so magical about 2003 ...a year when women were more likely to have their medical complaints ignored and their cancer not properly treated, because so high a proportion of medical studies were done exclusively on male subjects. Unfortunately, with Trump's insistence on expunging anything from research papers that sounds like "DEI" to him (including the word "female"), we seem to be returning to those days.

Rant concluded.

As of a few days ago:

NIH research grants that promote diversity, equity and inclusion and what the Trump administration calls "gender ideology extremism" can now be terminated, following a Supreme Court decision, POLITICO's Josh Gerstein reports.

By a 5-4 vote, the justices lifted an order a federal court judge in Boston issued forcing the NIH to restore funding for more than 1,700 grants focused on heart disease, HIV/AIDS, Alzheimer's disease, alcohol and substance abuse and mental health issues.

The administration had requested relief on the grounds that the federal government shouldn't be required to pay for research — which it said amounted to $783 million in grants — not aligned with President Donald Trump's executive orders and his administration's priorities

https://www.politico.com/newsletter...ys-trump-can-end-dei-research-at-nih-00518578

In January of this year:

Researchers say threats to federal research funding and President Donald Trump's promise to eliminate any policy promoting "diversity, equity and inclusion" are threatening a decades-long effort to improve how the nation studies the health of women and queer people, or improve treatments for the medical conditions that affect them. Agency employees have been warned not to approve grants that include words such as "women," "trans" or "diversity."

https://19thnews.org/2025/03/women-lgbtq-health-research-trump-funding/

 

[Z.W. Wolf]

Thirty-three participants were given standardized bruises by applying suction to their skin. There are also reasonable questions about how much a bruise would be expected to heal over the course of twenty-eight minutes; the true clock duration of this study. The healing assessments in this case were done by a combination of self-reports, and non-expert assessment using a crowd-sourcing platform. Like the blood glucose study, this effect has not been replicated – though in fairness it was published only a few months ago.

Great suffering cats...



Wouldn't a bruise be visibly spreading in the course of twenty-eight minutes? Not healing.

https://www.viaveincenter.com/blog/... take weeks to,to limit bleeding and swelling.

The colors you see in bruises are caused by the visible bleeding (trapped blood) beneath your skin, in response to a bump/pressure from an outside object, or from skin penetration or trauma. Over time, the trapped blood (now outside your veins but under the skin) pools, and then firms or clots. The bruise remains until the bleeding stops–and until the body clears away all the clotted/leaked blood.

As the body heals, bruises change color, shape, and size. These changes occur as the blood's hemoglobin loses oxygen, and is broken down by your body. Bruising can take weeks to fade away, and the amount of time is different for each person. Bruised areas can swell and get worse in the first few days.

 

[Burrito7]

Other unpublished studies include one in which Langer claims to have found that breast cancer survivors who describe themselves as 'in remission' showed poorer health than those who described themselves as 'cured'.

Wow, groundbreaking stuff. I wonder what the causal direction is here.

 

[Ann K]

As the body heals, bruises change color, shape, and size. These changes occur as the blood's hemoglobin loses oxygen, and is broken down by your body. Bruising can take weeks to fade away, and the amount of time is different for each person. Bruised areas can swell and get worse in the first few days.

They can also change position as the blood descends. I have had a couple of severe bruises that kept sinking down my hip day by day. I also kidded my mother some days after her pacemaker was installed in her shoulder, and she ended up with one white breast and one purple one.