1. small sample, 60 people is not enough to draw great conclusions. 2. they should have included people who had never taken statins before. It's quite possible that the brain was re-generating the side-effects because it was used to before by association. They can't even have a control group for that.
It's also not at all clear what symptoms the participants are rating. Are they symptoms of their underlying condition, common side effects of the drug, or side effects they had experienced previously?
I don't see how this matters? If the symptoms were the cause of the underlying condition, they would show up roughly as often between "no pill" and "placebo."
This just seems to be the mindset of most people, and though there has been a bit of research suggesting some people are more susceptible to the placebo effect I've never seen something showing people are commonly immune to it.
> The statin study, which took place at Hammersmith Hospital, focused on 60 patients who had all come off the drugs in the past due to severe side effects. They were given 12 bottles - four contained a month's worth of statins, four a month's worth of dummy pills and four were empty. Every day for a year they would score, from zero to 100, how bad their symptoms were. The study showed an average score of: 8 in those taking no tablets 15.4 while taking dummy pills 16.3 while taking statins
> The Imperial researchers said 90% of the severity of their symptoms was present when the volunteers were taking dummy pills they thought could be a statin.
Why is this “utter bullshit”? Looks like a reasonable conclusion to me?