Comments on: The Power of Placebo (Follow-Up) http://www.thinkingteacher.ca/2015/06/27/the-power-of-placebo-follow-up/ Presenting and promoting critical thinking skills to high school students. And anyone else... Tue, 07 Jul 2015 00:04:30 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=4.2.4 By: Bernie Garrett http://www.thinkingteacher.ca/2015/06/27/the-power-of-placebo-follow-up/#comment-38 Tue, 07 Jul 2015 00:04:30 +0000 http://www.thinkingteacher.ca/?p=214#comment-38 Good examples. At the end of the day because all medical conditions have some amount of neuro-endocrine control the placebo effect comes in to play virtually everywhere. What does not tend to change with placebo is effect size however, which tends to be about the same, apart from in those cases who were a) misdiagnosed, or b) spontaneously resolving.

The placebo effect is a fascinating subject, and you can only really account for it with repeat studies, and large samples. Of course, you are absolutely right, if someone gets better after receiving a placebo, they will tell everyone how well it worked for them. This is why a lot of alternative medicine remains popular.

Additionally, I recently heard an assistant in the pet store advising a customer that the homeopathic pet remedies worked wonders for her dog. In reality, you may as well save your money and give your pet water (which is actually what you are doing anyway).

So interestingly it seems the placebo effect can be vicariously transferred. I.e. if you expect someone else (or even an animal) to get better after a placebo some will. So the placebo effect may also have an influence there ( due to misdiagnosis, regression to the mean, and spontaneous resolution). Some experiments aimed at testing that would be very interesting!

Cheers
Bernie

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