[quote=“tgarretteaton, post:64, topic:101769, full:true”]
Yes, absolutely. Everything I mentioned I gleaned from listening to “The Skeptics Guide to the Universe” podcast and “Skeptics with a K”– they have covered a few cases where people reverse the standard of evidence, but you’re right that in most cases it goes the other way and the control group is treated like it should be. That’s what I mean about it being a last bastion; they really have nothing else, so are clinging to supposed placebo magic.[/quote]
Okay…
I can see that you mean well here, but you’re basing your arguments on a partial understanding of reality, and you’ve gone a bit off base.
My knowledge of this subject comes from my time as a medical research scientist. You can see my doctoral thesis here:
The placebo effect is simultaneously
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The reason why physiologically inactive bullshit alt-med quackery nevertheless often has some minor therapeutic effect, and
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A genuine and significant factor in the effectiveness of scientific, evidence-based medicine.
The placebo effect is not just an explanation for the otherwise mysterious limited effectiveness of sugar pills; it is the manifestation of the hugely complicated way in which the physiological repair mechanisms of the body may be influenced by cultural and psychological means.
We account for it in research because we know that the psychological influence of the ritual of medical consultation itself has a consistent, measurable impact on health outcomes. This effect is not small; very often it outweighs the impact of whatever pharmaceutical or physiological treatment is being tested or delivered.
While it is true that a minority of quacks have retreated to a misuse of placebo terminology as a last-ditch defence of their unethical profession, this is no justification for discarding the baby with the bathwater. The purpose of modern scientific investigation of the placebo effect (overall, I’m not talking about one questionable researcher here) is to discover the ways in which the benefits of psychology may be best applied to maximise the therapeutic benefits of already effective treatments.
As an example: the evil cousin of the placebo effect is the nocebo effect. It’s the phenomena of people experiencing “side-effects” from drugs, even when the “drugs” are inert.
If you give people a sugar pill but tell them that it might make them nauseous, a statistically significant number of them are going to puke. And nocebo affects real drugs as well: people tend to get the side-effects that they expect to get, and the more effort that you put into warning people about possible side-effects, the more likely those side-effects are to occur. So how can we best inform patients without making them sick in the process?
We also know that medical treatments are more effective when patients are happy and confident about their medical care. White-coated doctors in fancy offices who can afford time to establish rapport with their patients get better results than hurried and scruffy medics in grungy clinics. So what is the most cost-effective means of achieving that benefit?
Etc. Placebo research isn’t just about sugar pills.
