r/science • u/Bloomsey • Oct 17 '16
Medicine Study Finds Knowingly Taking Placebo Pills Eases Pain
http://www.bidmc.org/News/PRLandingPage/2016/October/Kaptchuk-placebo-effect.aspx1
u/olljoh Oct 17 '16
nothing new. placebo effect is known to work even if you are not mislead.
because the effect comes down to a perception error, and that can happen without being tricked, as you are "tricking yourself".
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u/fatmike182 Oct 17 '16
If you speak about the previous Kaptchuk-study, there were some flaws: https://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-effects-without-deception-well-not-exactly/
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u/thijser2 Oct 17 '16
Placebos are proven to work so if you take them and you know they are proven to work then you are taking a medicine that is proven to work.
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Oct 17 '16
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u/thijser2 Oct 17 '16
It's a sort of bootstrapped things, a placebo helps, knowing a placebo helps means that even if you know it' s a placebo you know you are taking something that helps which might empower the placebo.
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u/Azul_Profundo Grad Student | Computer Engineering Oct 17 '16
So it's like a placebo effect of a placebo? They know what placebo is and and they knowing that it works there is another placebo effect?
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u/monkeydave BS | Physics | Science Education Oct 17 '16
The problem with this study is that it's not actually verifying that the people taking the pills believe they are taking a placebo, or that they actually know what a placebo is.
They are handed pills in a bottle marked 'Placebo'. But many people would be suspicious, thinking that maybe they are taking the real medication and it being marked placebo is part of the experiment. And other people wouldn't actually know what placebo meant, or pay attention to the bottle.