
Placebos Have Side Effects Too - fogus
http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.com/2009/10/placebos-have-side-effects-too.html
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trebor
This science and title is misleading. Placebo and nocebo are terms for both
sides of one effect: suggestibility.

If told they were testing a drug, warned of its side effects, and then given a
sugar pill, then of course the mind (which was tricked into thinking it got
medicine) would give both the healing boost and the side effects. Pretend that
it had none, and the patient probably wouldn't feel any.

This is a single unified thing, not two different effects.

~~~
ars
This was not reported very well. It does sound like suggestibility (they told
them what to except, and that's what happened).

Except that other studies have shown that both the healing, and the side
effects of placebos are real - patients in double blind studies had side, and
positive effects, without being told what to expect.

We had a long conversation about it here:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=783912>

~~~
trebor
I accept the realities of placebos and nocebos. I dispute the manner and
clarity in which it was described and communicated in, however.

I postulate that the recent article on luckiness is the same factor:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=878039>

