What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick?

Re:What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? by consp on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @09:38AM (#18399362)

Good luck finding an ethics board who will let you do that experiment on actually sick people.

"Ah, people with pain. One group will get nothing and the other a placebo."

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Re:What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? by SilasX on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @10:22AM (#18399688)

Pretty sure they do that all the time?

Reminds me of the old joke, where a respected scientist is announcing he has some great cure for the disease of the day and is presenting the impressive results to an audience, when someone pipes up and asks:

'How did this compare to the control group?'

The presenter is indignant and says, "Excuse me? You're asking if I randomly selected half of these poor souls to be deprived of the medicine, just to see what would happen to them?"

'...yes.'

"Of course not! That would have condemned half of them to an avoidable death!"

'...but which half?'

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Re:What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? by minor3rd on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @11:01AM (#18399969)

I love this. It's not even a joke really.

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Re:What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick? by beaconstudios on Wednesday November 07, 2018 @09:43AM (#18399396)

so do it with the common cold or something equally untreatable/fairly harmless.

not that I was proposing such a study - I was asking if we have already done them and what the data says if we have.

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