4 ms·

Is it possible to design double blind test on the effectiveness of fasting? Or how do we rule out the possibility of placebo effect?

• ganafagol 6y ago
  That would mean you would need to make the study participants be unable to tell whether they are in the treatment group or in the control group. So either you design food that looks, smells and tastes like normal food but had only 10% of the calories. But that's what the diet industry is trying already and they are not really succeeding. Or you make everybody think they are fasting but give the control group all the nuitrition via IV while the treatment group only gets water with a bit of salt. Or a mix of these two. But then this will only give you actual calorie intake as parameter you are investigating. That's quite different from actual fasting though, i.e., empty intestines could play a role, no matter calorie intake. Or the type of food you are ingesting, i.e., when fasting you don't ingest "bad" food, but maybe you'd get the same effet by just avoiding the "bad" food. In other words, this is really hard. But then, why does it matter? If it works, why do you care if it's placebo effect or not? As long as you can't (believably) fake it, you could not exploit just the placebo effect anyway. In other words, the harder a double blind study is, the less useful is the knowledge about whether something is placebo effect or not. Those two effects are different consequences of the same phenomenon.
  • yegle 6y ago
    If it's really just placebo effect, I can't help but linking it to various cults who claim they can cure this and that, and their claims might be right due to placebo effect.
  • dotancohen 6y ago
    > That would mean you would need to make the study > participants be unable to tell whether they are > in the treatment group or in the control group. Not necessarily. The eaters / non-eaters know what they are doing. But the scientist recording their progress (weight, height, other factors) would not know if this subject had eaten or not eaten. Then, another scientist, also not knowing, would compile the gathered data into conclusions about the subjects. This is how animals are studied.
    • ganafagol 6y ago
      That's not how human medical research works though. Single-blinded studies blind the patient. Double-blinded studies blind the patient as well as the researcher applying the treatment. If you make a trial for a new migraine pill, you want to know whether it actually works or whether the mere act of taking something and believing in it is what works. So you give half the patients the medicine and half the patients just sugar. They can't tell, so the mere act of taking a pill won't make a difference. If you also can't tell (double blind) then they can't (not even subconsciously) deduce from your actions whether they just the control group. If you would not give the control group a sugar pill, they could be stressed out about not getting treatment and just that fact would distort your result. For the most part, animal research works similarly, btw.
• zupa-hu 6y ago
  As we are aware that we are starving (hungry), you would need to make patients unconscious. But that seems possible to me. Edit: I meant possible :)