The Nocebo Effect

While most people have heard of the placebo effect (when an inert "drug" like a sugar pill or a sham surgical procedure like inserting random acupuncture needles is followed by people feeling better) its opposite, the "nocebo" effect, is less appreciated.

A nocebo effect occurs when people feel ill or are convinced they have symptoms after being told that something is harmful. For the past few months, I have been collecting claims about adverse health effects made by opponents of wind farms. Today the total stands at 113 different diseases and symptoms in humans and animals.

Other than perhaps the aftermath of a nuclear blast on population health, there is nothing known to medicine that comes close to the morbid apocalypse that is being megaphoned by anti-wind groups.

It is not just illnesses and symptoms that occur but "deaths, yes, many deaths mainly from unusual cancers", which have strangely never come to the attention of any coroner.