Dr. Placebo — Half Quack and Half Savant - Miller-McCune
[Cue the drum roll] Ladies and gentlemen, introducing tonight, the magical, the amazing, the astounding, the one, the only [cue the cymbal] — DR. PLACEBO!! Performing sleights of hand that will amaze you, entice you, and lure you into miracle cures that will release you from your hard-earned cash. Come see never-before effects. Well, maybe always-seen effects. Step right this way …
OK, perhaps I’m more cynical than skeptical here, but given the successful selling of sham products such as balance bracelets and homeopathy, it’s important that we learn to think critically about one of the most powerful forces in medical research, the placebo effect.
Much has been written on the placebo effect — and an exciting new take is on the way from Miller-McCune — so our focus here is to critically investigate the role of these fake treatments and beliefs in our daily lives and how to use our skeptical skills in dealing with them. It’s important to realize that even when placebos have a positive impact, the effects can be short-term and end up masking more serious symptoms, preventing people from seeking reliable and effective treatments.
Simply stated, a placebo (Latin for “I will please”) is a substance or procedure given to a control group when used in scientific research designs to compare with an equivalent group receiving the real treatment or pill. In medical research, the look-alike treatment is often a sugar pill that does not have any real effect on the illness, allowing comparisons to be made between the actual medicine and the fake one.
It’s fairly common that about a third of people in the control group receiving the placebo report positive changes or lessening of symptoms. Sometimes recipients of the placebo claim negative side-effects (the “nocebo” effect), such as headaches or nausea. Surprisingly, some patients say they have positive outcomes even when told outright that they were receiving a fake treatment!
The power of the mind and its psychological impact has been a common explanation for how the placebo effect works. But continuing research also points to important physiological and neurological brain changes with placebo treatments. Indeed, with real treatment and medicines, some part of the cure can be attributed to patients’ expectations that the substance is working. Recent evidence suggests that placebo medicines are showing more effectiveness that the real pills, again illustrating some powerful physiological responses of patients to social, psychological, and biological expectations.