[perihelion]

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504763_162-20026483-10391704.html
http://hms.harvard.edu/public/news/2010/122210_kaptchuk/

Here's a weird one for you psychology / biomedical types.  Apparently there was a recent study where patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) were given placebo pills to "address" their symptoms.  With a twist.  The doctors told the patients in advance that what they were getting was a placebo pill.  The bottles even had "placebo" printed on them.  Even knowing this, about twice as many of the placebo patients versus control patients (who took nothing) reported adequate symptom relief.

So, the Placebo Effect works even when you KNOW you are taking a sugar pill???

[Topgun]

The reason is because people have been told that placebos work, even though its just mental, so when they take placebos people think "hey this will make me feel better cuz Im cunfuzin mah brain".

[Rodo]

Or maybe they don't know what a placebo is, which would be disturbing.

[perihelion]

That's what I thought at first, but the article states they took some pains to explain what it meant.  No active ingredients, everything inert, all that.

[Rodo]

You made me read the articles...


Now wait, it says that they took a group of people and splitted them up, one half would take the pills and the other was told to do nothing?

So what does this test prove? If I get a doctor that tells me: you know... you're about to be given a placebo, but LOOK! you're on the winning team!, the other group gets nothing... I might probably feel better.

And what about the other poor people, if my doctor told me: Well you know... I can't do anything for you... well I would just feel like CRAP all day long, and even if they knew that they were not being treated because of a "test" I would still feel like crap because I'm getting no treatment at all, not even placebos!

This just proves that if your doctor is a dickhead, you'll feel worst.

[Scotty]

So what does this test prove? If I get a doctor that tells me: you know... you're about to be given a placebo, but LOOK! you're on the winning team!, the other group gets nothing... I might probably feel better.

This paragraph, it confuses me.  AFAIK (someone who knows better can shed more light on it), you're never told that the other group (if you know about them at all) gets anything different.

[Snail]

Awesome, now I can give myself placebos.

[MP-Ryan]

I saw this earlier today.

It's an interesting twist on an old phenomenon, that's for sure.  The placebo effect has been documented for well over a century.

My slightly educated guess is that, although the subjects had the procedure painstakingly explained to them in advance, the simple fact that they are receiving a "treatment" of an entirely inert substance creates the same subconscious effects as receiving it unknowingly.  It's yet more evidence for a significant and unconscious mental component in physical health.  Expectations do influence results - a concept that shouldn't be all that that foreign to the physicists among us =)

But before you all go making your own sugar pills at home and popping them, there IS a variable that the researchers did not and cannot control for in this study:  the notion of medical intervention.  The study design ensures that those in the placebo group receive more time with the researchers (presumably discussing their ailments) than did the control group.  That is its own kind of placebo effect, one which needs to be controlled for in order for these results to be truly significant.

[Rodo]

This paragraph, it confuses me.  AFAIK (someone who knows better can shed more light on it), you're never told that the other group (if you know about them at all) gets anything different.

They don't, actually there's nothing said in the article that suggests that, but as you can see there's nothing that directly denies my conclusions either.

I just think that this study is just kinda.... silly, we already know that placebos influence in people's minds.
Think on it this way: If you put someone under an informed placebo treatment and someone else under NO treatment at all what are you measuring?

For me they are not measuring whether giving placebos is better than giving nothing (which I guess was the goal of this study), but whether humans are more sensible to negative or positive response from medical treatment.

[Herra Tohtori]

Awesome, now I can give myself placebos.

Remember that if you dilute the placebo to, let's say ten ppm with water, it will give you exponentially higher placebo effect too.

Just like watered down booze will make you more drunk...

Seriously, they should do a research on homeopathic placebo treatments... Give a control group normal placebo, and the other a homeopathic version. It could be enlightening for the psychology of how pseudoscience (inc. pseudemedicine) works...

[MP-Ryan]

I just think that this study is just kinda.... silly, we already know that placebos influence in people's minds.
Think on it this way: If you put someone under an informed placebo treatment and someone else under NO treatment at all what are you measuring?

How the placebo effect actually works.

Methinks you missed the point of the study.  It was designed to give insight into the parameters of the placebo effect - something it did fairly well by demonstrating that it is potentially far more pervasive than originally thought (this new data puts a hiccup in double-blind experimental methodologies).

[Klaustrophobia]

maybe sugar has an effect on IBS?

[StarSlayer]

A friend in needs a friend indeed,
A friend with weed is better,
A friend with breasts and all the rest,
A friend who's dressed in leather

[redsniper]

maybe sugar has an effect on IBS?

I don't think 'sugar pills' necessarily contain sugar anymore, just inert ingredients. Even if they did, that would be a negligible amount of sugar compared to what most people get in their normal diet nowadays.

[Klaustrophobia]

that was a joke

[redsniper]

Well then maybe I should eat my delicious poeslaw quietly.

[karajorma]

Coincidentally I've been reading Bad Science recently and it had a whole chapter on the Placebo Effect cause it's so strange. For instance people who take 2 placebo pills get better than people who take only one. People who take an injected placebo get better than both. People get better taking the exact same aspirin pills when taken out of a fancy brand name box than when taken out of a generic aspirin box. It's a carnival of the bizarre. 

People really need to learn more about the Placebo Effect cause it completely torpedoes the whole "Homeopathy made me feel better regardless of what science says." Wrong. Science is quite firm on the subject. It will make you feel better. The issue is whether taking £10 homepathic pills will make you feel better than 0.1p placebos after the same consultation (Here's a clue. It won't! ). It's the consultation which is having the effect.

[StarSlayer]

Didn't someone on these boards post a IT Placebo Effect where they added a "Turbo" button to a few employees' machines?

[castor]

The issue is whether taking £10 homepathic pills will make you feel better than 0.1p placebos after the same consultation (Here's a clue. It won't! ). It's the consultation which is having the effect.

I guess a hefty price tag makes it easier (for some) to believe there is an effect, which in a way focuses the mind. Though I'd point out that the alternative - training the mind to know better - isn't necessarily cheap either.

[Rodo]

Didn't someone on these boards post a IT Placebo Effect where they added a "Turbo" button to a few employees' machines?

LOL!

I want my turbo button back!