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The 'placebo effect' seems to be wholly the effect of the sum of biases and psychological effects on reported outcomes in the placebo (non-treatment) arm of med
by gcthomas 8y ago
The 'placebo effect' seems to be wholly the effect of the sum of biases and psychological effects on reported outcomes in the placebo (non-treatment) arm of medical trials. It doesn't mean there is an 'actual' effect, it is just that reported benefits by patients is affected by the situation. 'The nice doctor gave you pills, and trying to be helpful you might respond more positively when asked if you are any better.' Or 'patients with a temporary flare up in their condition were invited onto a trial, and - lo - they got better even without the active treatment.'
Placebo just refers to the bundled biases and other uncontrolled-for influences. It is not a real thing that can be used to make anyone actually better. Whenever there is a physical measurement that can be made about some affected body function, the placebo effect mysteriously disappears.
- TuringTest 8y ago> Whenever there is a physical measurement that can be made about some affected body function, the placebo effect mysteriously disappears. What matters is not that subjective feelings do improve?
- gcthomas 8y agoThe claim is that physical ailments improve, which isn't true if there are physical measurements takes.
- TuringTest 8y agoWell apparently there are physical measurable effects, as another poster commented below. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306437.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306437.php
- jen729w 8y agoIt depends what you have. I don't want to feel great if I still have terminal cancer. I want it cured.
- ikeboy 8y agoWith the exception of pain
- madeuptempacct 8y agoI don't think pain can be measured reliably at all, nor can it be reliably communicated.
- ikeboy 8y agoI suppose if you're a staunch Behaviourist you can say that
- prophesi 8y agoIt's such a shame that the two scientific fields that we desperately need to advance, psychology and neuroscience, often need to rely on purely subjective input.
- disgruntledphd2 8y agoHow would it ever be any different? You can't really remove subjectivity from the measurement of people and their brains.
- prophesi 8y agoOne trick is to figure out if there are any objective measurements that can be taken which line up with the subjective input. One example is taking an EEG recording while performing a backward-masking experiment (aka displaying subliminal images), and seeing if their subjective experience "I did see the second image" versus "I did not see the second image" line up with the EEG measurements in the prefontal lobe. https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes-Thoughts/dp/0143126261/ https://www.amazon.com/Consciousness-Brain-Deciphering-Codes...
- disgruntledphd2 8y ago
- cpncrunch 8y agoNo, it cant be just that. We know for example that lack of social support causes increase in pro inflammatory cytokines, among other real effects. It would be highly implausible for the placebo effect to not be rral.
- virgilp 8y agoI don't know about that. There's also the nocebo effect [1] that is rather well known. You make it sound like "placebo" is purely a bias thing, but AFAIK both placebo & nocebo effects, though presumably psychogenic, can sometimes induce measurable changes in the body. [1]https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3401955/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3401955/
- gcthomas 8y agoDon't you think it is intriguing that the placebo effect only gets reported for non-specific subjective complaints, and not physically measurable ones?
- gameswithgo 8y agoThis article lists a few physically measurable changes caused by placebo: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306437.php https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/306437.php
- SilasX 8y agoWhyDontPlacebosRegrowLimbs.com (Not a real site, just riffing off whydoesntgodhealamputees.com.)
- embwbam 8y agoThere’s a great chapter in Thinking Fast and Slow where he talks about how placebo might be only a statistical phenomenon: regression to the mean. Sick people are a statistically extreme group, and tend to revert to the mean over time without intervention.
- beaconstudios 8y agodoes that stand up to experiments pitting a placebo group against a control group that gets no treatment at all?
- disgruntledphd2 8y ago
- gameswithgo 8y agoI don't see the distinction. If you think you feel better you do feel better, doesn't matter why. However, unlike some, I do not think this justifies the use of nonsense medical practices. You can be kind and caring to the patient and NOT sell them kinesio tape or wathever.
- barbell 8y agoIn pain related studies the placebo effect seems to disappear when patients are given the endorphin blocking drug Naloxone. Seems like an actual effect to me.
- luxcem 8y agoI strongly believe that, "placebo" effect is probably just contextual effects. There is an experiment (I don't remember the name) with 4 cases: - A placebo pills and a nice, empathic, optimistic doctor - No pills and a nice and empathic doctor - A placebo pills and a cold and pessimistic doctor - No pills and a cold and pessimistic doctor The pills have practically no effect at all, doctor behavior can have a measurable impact. Besides I don't think there is a proven effect of placebo for other than psychosomatic symptoms (in particular pain and depression symptoms).
- wefarrell 8y agoI would take the time to closely read the article. It points to several cases where the placebo effect went beyond psychosomatic, specifically treating irritable bowel syndrome and preventing heart disease.
- Diederich 8y agoThe fundamental question here is simple. To what extent can the mind affect the body? There can be no argument that the mind has at least some effect: a straightforward example is mood and blood pressure. For now, let's assume that this extent can be large. Following is the assumption that, while we have learned a lot recently, the total map of mind/body connections is enormously larger than our current understanding of it. So, it seems possible to me that the placebo effect can have real, physical and measurable effects on a human body, given the above assumptions. One way or another, decades of research of, to varying degrees, confirmed this connection, though we haven't made much progress in understanding the underlying mechanisms of action.
- InclinedPlane 8y agoDidn't read the article huh?