Wait, if the researchers don’t know who got the pal ebo but placebos can cause actual effects how do they know which effects are from the medication and which are from the placebo? If someone got a placebo and experienced headaches but no one on the medication did do they still have to warn that the medication may cause headaches?
Comment on Gottem
hector@lemmy.today 1 day ago
That’s not how placebo’s are done. If the researchers know whom is getting the placebo the results are worthless, hence the double blind part.
And the placebo effect is real, in some people, some of the time. They did one with pain pills (and also found different colors had a higher effect rate for different conditions,) and for pain pills after they were given the pills they were administered nalaxone, and opiate antagonist that forces those drugs off of the receptors and reverses their effects, and the pain relief of those both experiencing effects from the placebo and those feeling the opioids were reversed.
Strongly suggesting the placebo fooled their body into releasing it’s own endogenous opiates.
It was in a New Yorker article, The Power of Nothing, with a bunch of other interesting material:
www.newyorker.com/…/the-power-of-nothing
Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 1 day ago
webpack@ani.social 1 day ago
the study is setup so that the person taking the pill and the person giving it to the participant who is recording the results both don’t know whether the pill is a placebo, but some other person knows or it’s written somewhere else what the person got so in the end they can know if the result was from placebo. the important part is the researcher at the time of recording/interpreting doesn’t know, because if they know they may be bias in favor or against the placebo.
Malgas@beehaw.org 1 day ago
The people interacting with patients don’t know which is which, but somebody does.
The whole point is seeing if the drug is better than a placebo, so you definitely need that information when it’s time to analyze data.
samus12345@sh.itjust.works 1 day ago
Plot twist: the researchers were also part of the experiment and were told he was getting a placebo when he actually wasn’t!
Tempus_Fugit@lemmy.world 1 day ago
A double-blind double-cross if you will.
tetris11@feddit.uk 1 day ago
Was it reproduced
Quibblekrust@thelemmy.club 4 hours ago
I don’t get it. Why would they assume that? You’re given a placebo pain reliever and it relieves pain. Then you’re given a nalaxone, which you, the patient, knows blocks opioids. In both cases, it could just be the placebo effect. You could be given water and told it’s nalaxone, and it could have the same effect.
Were they not told they were being given nalaxone? Were there four cohorts? Were some of the people who got placebo painkillers also given placebo nalaxone where it didn’t block the pain relief?
I can’t read the paywalled article.