Mr XYZ has a severe pain in the back and goes to an alternative healer named ABC, who gives XYZ a homeopathic medicine, which XYZ quite readily takes. A day later XYZ feels better already and says to his wife: "Darling, this man is fantastic. He has cured my back pain! This man is worth every penny!"

XYZ's wife is not so easily impressed. She says: "Well, honey, it's fabulous that your well again. However, there are a lot more explanations for this. For example the placebo effect. You may have just cured yourself by believing very strongly that ABC or his medicine will cure you. Or..."

communal reinforcement

cognitive dissonance

confirmation bias

Forer effect (a.k.a. subjective validation)

law of truly large numbers (coincidences)

placebo effect

post hoc fallacy

regression and the regressive fallacy

self-deception

shotgunning

testimonial evidence (anecdotes)

wishful thinking

http://skepdic.com/comreinf.html

http://skepdic.com/cognitivedissonance.html

http://skepdic.com/confirmbias.html

http://skepdic.com/forer.html

http://www.skepdic.com/lawofnumbers.html

http://skepdic.com/placebo.html

http://skepdic.com/posthoc.html

http://skepdic.com/regressive.html

http://skepdic.com/selfdeception.html

http://skepdic.com/shotgun.html

http://www.skepdic.com/testimon.html

http://skepdic.com/wishfulthinking.html