Panda responds to me:
quote:
And this from Wiki
Oy. Wikipedia isn't a source.
At any rate, you seem to have missed your own source's point:
the authors later published a Cochrane review with similar conclusions
See? The same conclusions. From the review:
We studied the effect of placebo treatments by reviewing 202 trials comparing placebo treatment with no treatment covering 60 healthcare problems. In general, placebo treatments produced no major health benefits, although on average they had a modest effect on outcomes reported by patients, such as pain. However, the effect on pain varied from large to non-existent, even in well-conducted trials. Variations in the effect of placebo was partly explained by variations in how trials were conducted, the type of placebo used, and whether patients were informed that the trial involved placebo.
I certainly understand the need to do more study and some of the findings about how the brain works and how it can affect the body are fascinating, but the simple fact remains that comparing treatment-to-placebo and then declaring a placebo effect begs the question: It presumes that which is being claimed. Then there is the problem of the original claim: Beecher only included positive effects. That is, in his study of placebo, he only reported those who had improvement: Those who got worse were simply ignored.
Now, I understand the need to compare treatment to something that isn't treatment. How on earth do you know if the treatment actually does anything if you don't compare it to something that isn't the treatment? But that extends to placebo: How do you know the placebo is actually doing something if you don't compare it to something that isn't the placebo? The treatment isn't a good choice because we're hoping it will actually do something.
No, you have to compare it to letting the body do its own thing. So far, all the studies that actually had the three groups have not reported any clinical difference between taking a placebo and doing nothing. So if doing nothing is identical to taking a placebo, how is there any sort of effect?
Rrhain
Thank you for your submission to
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Minds are like parachutes. Just because you've lost yours doesn't mean you can use mine.