this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2024
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Yes. If you give two sets of people sugar pills and tell one set they are sugar pills, and the other that they're eg painkillers, the latter group will report (on average) a reduction in pain related issues while taking them.
This is why alternative treatments that don't medicinally do anything, like homeopathy, can appear to be effective - people believe they work and so they do, but if they just believed a cheap sugar pill they would help them, it would do for much cheaper. Even better get real meds that you believe in, and you get actual medicinal effect with a placebo boost.
Good Pharmaceutical trials are generally "blind" for this reason, ie there will be a control group getting a placebo to compare the effect of the medicine to that, rather than to nothing as comparing to nothing would make most things appear effective. Even better is "double blind" where the researcher doesn't know until after either, so that their interactions or behaviour don't give anything away, and that they don't bias their analysis.
Weird question. Do you know what would happen if you gave two groups a painkiller, told one group that it should help and told the other that it shouldn't work (or that it was a placebo)? I'm curious if the drug would still work as well if the patient was told it isn't supposed to.
I'd google it, but I have no idea what keywords to use lol.
Yep, look up the nocebo effect. It's exactly that.
It's not so common being an issue like the example describes irl for medication as generally people who don't think something will work simply don't take it, so it becomes more a compliance issue, but certainly is a concern for eg physical treatments - patients are more likely to report pain during a procedure if they go into it expecting it to be painful. Also mentioning side effects of medication makes patients more likely to experience them.
That's super interesting, thank you!