Have any non-crazy scientific experts who don’t believe in crystal healing and spoon bending, actually proposed any reason this is not a classic case of correlation not causation?
It would seem to be pretty bogus. AFAIK, you can’t be "hypnotized’ into doing anything you dont want to do, other than perhaps a little nap.
*The Amazing Kreskin wants you to snap out of it.
The famed mentalist on Friday bashed believers of hypnosis, saying a Florida school district got fleeced into paying the families of three students who died after allegedly being put in a trance by their principal.
“Talk about a disgraceful abuse of scientific mumbo jumbo,” Kreskin wrote in a rant about the recent $600,000 settlement the Sarasota County School District reached with grieving families this week. “There is the immense power of suggestion but hypnosis is B.S.”…The legendary soothsayer, who has about 60 years of experience under his belt, reiterated his longstanding $100,000 offer to anyone who can scientifically prove that hypnotic trances exist.
Kreskin was sued in New Jersey court in 1986 by a hypnotist who unsuccessfully sought to demonstrate hypnosis.
“My $100,000 offer which has never been taken on since that 1986 trial, has never been taken on by either a stage hypnotist, a psychiatrist, a scientist, or ruthless lawyer, says something about my position,” he said.
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No doubt the school authorities or their insurers decided that paying out, no doubt on the basis of *sine praeiudicio * was the cheapest option compared with the costs of the lawyers, the bad publicity and the unlikelihood of recovering costs from the families
From my quick reading, it doesn’t look like there needs to be a direct hypnotized-dead connection for the case to work. I don’t think that you could hypnotize someone to kill themselves, but I do think that an authority figure giving inappropriate directions to teenagers could cause serious problems, either directly pushing them to suicide or convincing them that they’re cured and don’t need therapy that they actually do need. It was illegal for him to hypnotize the kids (practicing without a license) and the school board had apparently told him not to do it, but never followed through even though they knew that he did.
I’d be willing to bet that, if you read through it, lawsuit ends up saying something that summarizes more as ‘the principal did some illegal stuff instead of following correct procedure, the school board knew he was doing illegal stuff instead of sending kids to a licensed professional, but didn’t stop him, therefore the district is liable for damages’ than ‘the principle hypnotized them into killing themselves’.
If a person who was greatly troubled thought they were undergoing therapy, but it turned out that some unlicensed quack was performing useless hypnotic treatments, that disturbed person’s condition might worsen and they might harm themselves. The hypnosis doesn’t directly cause deaths, but if used instead of actual treatment could facilitate them. Just like if your principal treated your bacterial infection with ginger root instead of antibiotics. Ginger root doesn’t cause death, but you might die anyway.
Well, yes, but but if turned out that some* licensed* quack was performing useless hypnotic treatments, they’d still be just as useless. If your Chiropractor give you some homeopathic pills, they wont work either.
Obviously, a highly suggestible person can be led to drink a glass of Kool-aid, which would be fatal if, unknown to the subject, it had been laced with arsenic. That would be an extreme example, but it doesn’t take much imagination to think of all kinds of scenarios in which a person unwilling to voluntarily cause certain consequences, can be influenced to do things for which he is unaware that those consequences may be latent…
As I posted in another thread, he hypnotized one kid that committed suicide later the same day. The kid’s friend said in a disposition that the dead kid was always distant after being hypnotized, sometimes couldn’t remember his name and had once asked him to punch him in the face.
Settling the case isn’t proof that hypnotism was to blame. Hypnotism might be bunk, but good luck proving it against that kids testimony and the fact that the principal was told to stop hypnotizing kids but didn’t.
This, maybe. It’s been several days now since this hit the news, so I don’t have the link handy – but I remember seeing something like this in some article somewhere. One if the dead kid’s friend stated that he had seen some bizarre behavior during that period of time, which he had not seen before, thus implying that the alleged “hypno-therapy” had done some kind of damage. That kind of testimony could give the lawsuit legs.
All sorts of riduclous things have been settled in civil court cases. But has any legitimate scientific authority in the area ever suggested there is a causal relationship between the bizarre behaviours, the deaths and the hypnotism? And what mechanism do they propose for it?
You’re right, which is why I carefully avoided using the word “hypnosis” in my post. Suggestibility is what it is, regardless of whether it crosses a line into the conventional realm called hypnosis.
Anti-depressant drugs can have the side effect of increasing the suicide rate of those using them.
One explanation is that depression can be so debilitating that suicidal patients can’t be assed to off themselves without a bit of relief from the meds.
IF (big if) like the meds, hypnosis were to somehow relieve the lack of motivation from a suicidal depressed person, yet not actually cure the depression…