The Placebo Effect on the Web
If you've read much about medical research, you've probably come across the term "placebo effect." It refers to the fact that something as simple as a sugar pill (or "placebo"), administered as a drug, may actually have a beneficial effect. It's not entirely clear whether the patient has to believe that the placebo is a real drug for the placebo effect to take place. One 1964 study found that some patients experienced the placebo effect even when they had been told that the pill they were taking wasn't a real drug.
Well, like everyone else, the placebo effect now has a blog of its own. You can actually buy placebos there -- 700-count bottles of sugar pills -- but mainly you'll just want to read some of the clear, and light-hearted, posts about how the placebo effect works and how much we still don't understand about it. Light-hearted though some of the posts may be, the placebo effect is a serious and important factor in such areas of research as whether certain antidepressant medications really work.
