Talk:Placebo effect

Painless childbirth
Mary Baker Eddy's Science and Health has an anecdote about a woman who gave birth to a child painlessly (under "Cancer and Consumption Healed"). There also seem to be testimonials like these on the Internet. Are there any reliable sources on the subject?--Krej talk 00:27, 14 April 2013 (UTC)

Marcus Aurelius quote
So... that's probably a representational quote of his philosophical beliefs, namely stoicism. I'm not really sure that the notion that you can decide the lens through which you perceive reality and thereby take control of your own feelings about things is necessarily related or similar to the placebo effect. The quote doesn't really seem to tie in too well with the body of the causes paragraph either. ikanreed You probably didn't deserve that 17:03, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * While I think that the Marcus Aurelius quote is at least decently on target (despite the above, which is correct), the hilarious Black Knight quote should really go in the Denialism article instead. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:19, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Feel free to move it. Just don't try to cross the bridge. ;-) Bongolian (talk) 17:22, 20 October 2016 (UTC)
 * Done! ^^ (Moved it to "Willfull ignorance"). Reverend Black Percy (talk) 17:22, 20 October 2016 (UTC)

Placebo effect definitition
Webster's: improvement in the condition of a patient that occurs in response to treatment but cannot be considered due to the specific treatment used

Oxford: A beneficial effect produced by a placebo drug or treatment, which cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo itself, and must therefore be due to the patient's belief in that treatment.

Placebo effects are real. Both dictionaries agree.

Placebo effects are NOT caused by the treatment. Both dictionaries agree.

Therefore, placebo effects are not caused by placebos nor by placebo treatments. The Oxford definition says this directly. "cannot be attributed to the properties of the placebo".

Oxford suggests that "must therefore be due to the patient's belief in the treatment".

This is simply idle speculation. The patient is a living, breathing being, doing all it can to address the illness and symptoms. To suggest that every effect that is "not considered due to the specific treatment" is due to the patient's belief in the treatment is self centered nonsense. It might be true some of the time, it might even be true a lot of the time, but it is not rational to assume it is true all of the time.

In addition, the statement that placebo effect is due to the patient's belief in the treatment leads to a problem with the definitition. If we treat the patient by changing their belief, is it a placebo effect? By definitition, it is not, because the treatment caused the effect.

There is another important option to consider. The doctor, who believes the effect was not caused by the treatment could be wrong. The scientific history of clinical studies gives several examples of exactly this.

Placebo effect is, at present, simply an excuse to not investigate real cause.

Therefore, the definitition of placebo effect provided here: "The placebo effect is a psychosomatic phenomenon in which symptoms of a disease or condition lessen" is simply wrong, and the analysis that follows is based on a faulty definitition.

There is a simple definitition of placebo effect that does not lead to this problem.

Placebo effect: a real improvement in the condition of the patient, after a treatment, that is not understood by the attending physician. --Tracychess (talk) 13:13, 4 April 2017 (UTC)tracychess
 * You wrote
 * "Placebo effect is, at present, simply an excuse to not investigate real cause."
 * What? It's not. The placebo effect is a proven effect in and of itself — it's the literal power of expectation. This is why placebos are dependent upon perception and expectation in the first place.


 * Also, I've no idea why you'd cite dictionary definitions in place of academic resources. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 13:38, 4 April 2017 (UTC)

Open label placebo "remedy" for writer's block
Smithsonian magazine article leaves me wondering wtf. CamelCasePragmatist (talk) 06:21, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

Technical versus colloquial definition problem
The term "placebo effect" is being used incorrectly. In a technical term, during an experiment, the placebo effect is when the patient improves independent of the actual treatment, i.e. they were given the placebo instead of actual medication. There's plenty of reasons this could be; regression to the mean, self-reporting as feeling better than they are, etc.; but nevertheless the experimental use of "placebo effect" is not magic. Even Adam Ruins Everything gets this wrong. &mdash; Unsigned, by: Rdxdave / talk
 * If you can incude a citation that confirms what you're saying then go ahead and change the page accordingly. Bongolian (talk) 03:12, 4 November 2020 (UTC)