Comments on: The Placebo-Singers

By: Phil Goetz

Phil Goetz — Sat, 05 Jul 2014 14:02:44 +0000

While the placebo effect is real and significant, it’s hard to judge whether awareness of it has done more good than harm. M.D. culture teaches doctors to dismiss anything that contradicts what they’ve been taught as placebo effect (or whatever you call its opposite, when patients imagine something harms them). The Placebo takes the place in modern medicine that God took in medieval theology, providing an instant, thought-preventing explanation for any irregularity.

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By: Jack

Jack — Tue, 01 Jul 2014 01:11:14 +0000

The latin word associated with placebo, “placo,” is closer to appease, assuage, pacify, or placate than “please,” making it a bit more directly related to the modern concept.

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By: Watchmaker

Watchmaker — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 13:07:31 +0000

All drugs have the negative effect of “being expensive.” Most have other negative effects, too.

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By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 27 Jun 2014 00:38:24 +0000

That mangled link works, but here’s a clean link.

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By: Anon

Anon — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 22:13:41 +0000

I wanted to hear one of these requiem’s and found this on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saplszGqtTc"youtube.

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By: Alrenous

Alrenous — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 11:10:11 +0000

I see, thanks.

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By: James Babcock

James Babcock — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 06:21:34 +0000

While we’re on the topic of placebos and people faking grief to get free stuff, another possible source for the placebo effects is patient fraud. Someone enters a study that pays to recruit patients, falsely claims to have a condition, receives a bottle of pills which might or might not be placebos, and either throws it away or sells it on the black market. At the end of the study, they tell the experimenters that they got better, to head off any attempts to refer them for actual treatment. If there are a few people like this in each study, that generates a strong placebo effect.

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By: Paul Torek

Paul Torek — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 01:45:20 +0000

Along vaguely similar lines, Scott wrote

How do we know it’s a drug placebo effect, and not just … people feeling special and liked because someone is doing a study on them?

The latter deserves the name “placebo” I think. And it deserves a chance, alongside “drug placebos”, unless it proves far less effective.

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By: Elissa

Elissa — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 01:21:11 +0000

Thanks! You’re an awesome person, so your good opinion means a lot. I’m actually feeling a lot closer to normal than I’d expected to be at this point in recovery.

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By: Scott Alexander

Scott Alexander — Thu, 26 Jun 2014 00:48:45 +0000

Indeed.

My two favorite results from this field are:

1. The placebo effect increases with the probability that the drug is real. People who are (falsely) told they are receiving the real drug get a better placebo effect than people who are told they are getting a 50-50 chance of drug or placebo, who get a better placebo effect than those who are told outright it’s a placebo (although even this does a little).

2. Drugs considered stronger or more dangerous produce better placebo effects. In one study, a researcher produced a particularly strong effect by giving the drug to the patient with a pair of tweezers, saying it was so powerful he was afraid to touch it.

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