(September 11, 2017 at 10:03 pm)Astreja Wrote: The placebo effect depends primarily on belief. If someone knows they're ingesting a placebo it generally has no effect; that's why trials of new drugs use a blinded control, and look for a statistically significant variation between the placebo control and the drug being tested.
Actually that's wrong, placebos work even if you are told outright its a placebo. The brains funny like that.
"Though the placebo effect is typically associated with deception in order to invoke positive expectations, studies carried out by Harvard Medical School have suggested that placebos can work even without deception. In an attempt to implement placebos honestly, 80 patients suffering from IBS were divided into two groups, one of which receiving no treatment, while the other were provided with placebo pills. Though it was made clear the pills had no active ingredient, patients still reported adequate symptom relief.[58] Another similar study, in which patients suffering from migraines were given pills clearly labeled placebo, but still reported improvements of their symptoms."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placebo
You can fix ignorance, you can't fix stupid.
Tinkety Tonk and down with the Nazis.
