Originally published at: You can buy these nicely packaged placebo pills | Boing Boing
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If there are two brands of placebos on the shelf, and one is priced higher than the other, should I assume the higher priced one will be more effective?
How about if when I get home I just use a pricing gun to mark it up to crazy Shkreli-pricing?
“$1000 a pill? Wow, this has got to cure my crippling depression! And as a plus I only paid $25 for the bottle-- I’m feeling better already!”
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The Amazon reviews have some interesting use cases: to give to someone undergoing opioid withdrawal, and to let a dementia patient pack around.
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There’s been a fair bit of research that shows perceived cost can increase the placebo effect when people think they’re taking actual medication, and there’s been studies that show the placebo effect can still occur when subjects know they’re taking placebo, but I’m unsure if there’s any data out there that combines the two hypotheses.
Ex. cost study: Placebo effect of medication cost in Parkinson disease: a randomized double-blind study - PubMed
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I’m going to need to see a feel good TV commercial with vague symptoms to treat and alarming “rare but serious” side effects and a playful suggestion to ask my doctor if these are right for me before I consider them. Also my health insurance probably has a marked up version that is more effective, so I should make sure I’m getting properly gouged before trying anything risky.
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I’m assuming they’re out of patent coverage at this point, which makes me think there’s got to be a less-expensive generic alternative that works just as well.
EDIT: Though I bet the Zeebo manufacturers could get another twenty years of patent coverage if they could come up with an extended-release, abuse-resistant format.
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the placebo industry already has a wide variety of nicely packaged pills for the general public, the only difference here is that the labelling on these is accurate.
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Are the pills made with real placebo root?
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Yes, and diluted 30c
Just in case you haven’t come across this before: Homeopathic dilutions - Wikipedia
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I was given and consumed homeopathics, a tiny overpriced speck of sugar IMO, which actually did soothe my sore throat. I was surprised amazed at how well it worked, consistent and definitive.
I stopped taking it for reasons, but partly because I was afraid the day would come when the sugar speck wouldn’t help which would then bust the illusion and wonderment.
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Certainly more ethical and honest than homeopathy.
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I like the idea, but… 55 cents per pill? Is a scam okay if the seller says “Hey this is a scam”?
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But what if there’s a mix-up at the factory, and these are actually nocebos?!
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I just don’t trust placebo pills. Not until they’ve been scientifically studied, in a controlled environment. Ideally a blind trial, and compared to some other kind of pill that we KNOW isn’t going to have any kind of physiological effect.
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FYI this is not Skeptic (U.S. magazine) this is The Skeptic (UK magazine). The American one went bit off the rails.
https://www.skeptic.com/reading_room/george-michael-reviews-dangerous-by-milo-yiannopoulos/
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Do these blue placebo pills work as well as the red ones? Asking for my friend Neo.
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If you know they’re placebos, they’re not placebos.
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No thanks. The placebos that Amway sells as vitamins don’t work just fine at a fraction of the price.
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That just means it would have gone away anyway, or the symptoms were psychosomatic. I’m not trying to dismiss your lived experience, and I’m glad you got better. However…
The placebo effect is extremely poorly understood by most as some sort of “mind over matter” effect, likely because that’s how the press always reports it. However it only “works” on subjective self-reported symptoms that likely have little or no physiological basis. There’s a reason there are no cancer placebos or heart disease placebos. I hesitate to say “they only work on things that are only in your head in the first place” because that’s also an oversimplification, but it’s a more accurate oversimplification than the “mind over matter” story the press always tells about the effect.
Many placebo effects are also just data anomalies caused by imperfect statistical methods. So some reported placebo effects aren’t even “real” in that sense. None of this nuance ever gets explained to people though, so people think “placebos are magic!”. Even many science-minded people think this because placebo is so poorly explained everywhere.
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dangit’ @VeronicaConnor, I said I didn’t want the illusion destroyed for me! lol. But it does help explain a homeopathic person I once I knew.
And now you created a whole new set of self awareness issues I need to be concerned with. Thanks!
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