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and you can now buy placebo pills on Amazon for $8 to $15 a bottle.

The fuck? Shouldn't those be like $2?

The doctors told her there were no active ingredients in the pills, and the word placebo was labeled clearly on the bottle.

I didn't know that the control group were actually told they were the control group.

Makes me wonder if the physical act of taking a pill triggers a placebo effect in the brain.

thibodeaux wrote:

The doctors told her there were no active ingredients in the pills, and the word placebo was labeled clearly on the bottle.

I didn't know that the control group were actually told they were the control group.

That was news to me as well. Seems like it'd be damaging to the study.

Vince wrote: Makes me wonder if the physical act of taking a pill triggers a placebo effect in the brain.

I mean, the article is implying exactly that.

thibodeaux wrote:

The doctors told her there were no active ingredients in the pills, and the word placebo was labeled clearly on the bottle.

I didn't know that the control group were actually told they were the control group.

Well, we don't know how many groups there were in this study. Maybe they did 4 groups?
Medicine - Know it
Medicine - Don't know it
Placebo - Know it
Placebo - Don't know it

Or maybe they were just testing the placebo effect, and there was "Know it" and "Dont know it" groups.

Or, maybe she was told AFTER the study, and mis-remembered.

They said the whole test was about telling them ahead of time. IBS was just the group they picked. They wanted to know if taking a placebo would help people. I'm guessing it stems from how many people are helped by one when they don't know it. They wanted to find out if they got better because they believed they might/should because they are talking medicine or if the ritual of taking meds makes you better. I didn't read the whole article, but was anyone treated with actual meds or was it 100% placebos?

Lolz the control group was given unlabelled placebos, whereas the experimental group was given labelled ones...lmao that would be hilarious.

Cakedaddy wrote: I didn't read the whole article, but was anyone treated with actual meds or was it 100% placebos?

I didn't read it either. It's got to be one of the combinations I did above to be meaningful.

I remember a study years ago where they gave morphine and a placebo to a group of chronic pain sufferers. After removing the subjects that were not experiencing the placebo effect, they added a morphine inhibitor to the IV drip unbeknownst to the subjects. Both groups started complaining about the pain returning.

So the brain is weird.

I remember on BS, they did a small experiment with MSG. They claim nobody should have adverse reactions to MSG because it's just salt. People in the experiment who got MSG and had previously suffered were told they didn't get it and had no effects, and vice versa.

I think the MSG thing went back to a doctor that wrote an article years ago about his having a reaction to it without any substantiating study. So people believed that they too had an intolerance for MSG.

Kind of like people thinking they are suffering from a spider bite when they only two spiders in the US that bite are the Brown Recluse and Black Widow.

Vince wrote: Kind of like people thinking they are suffering from a spider bite when they only two spiders in the US that bite are the Brown Recluse and Black Widow.

What about snake bites?

Which is an ongoing point of.contention.

GORDON wrote: Which is an ongoing point of.contention.

Vince wrote:Kind of like people thinking they are suffering from a spider bite when they only two spiders in the US that bite are the Brown Recluse and Black Widow.

That sounded crazy, and the Internet confirms.

Cakedaddy wrote:

Vince wrote:Kind of like people thinking they are suffering from a spider bite when they only two spiders in the US that bite are the Brown Recluse and Black Widow.

That sounded crazy, and the Internet confirms.

Well, where I live it feels like all the spiders are black widows. Aside from the daddy longlegs.

Cakedaddy wrote:

Vince wrote:Kind of like people thinking they are suffering from a spider bite when they only two spiders in the US that bite are the Brown Recluse and Black Widow.

That sounded crazy, and the Internet confirms.

Can someone post this link? They are the only two species that are poisonous, but other spiders bite, right?

Wolf spiders bite...

This isn't the article I read, but this is the guy that they were talking to in the one I did read, but can't find now. I've seen two articles talking about his study and they are only taking part of his quote (probably because they're positive that they were bitten by a spider). Here's the quote:

Many spiders aren’t even capable of piercing human flesh. Buddle said he has observed spiders “moving their fangs back and forth against his skin,” all to no avail.

I've seen the direct quote here where they lead in with "some spiders" or "many spiders", etc. But the original article I read by him (or rather where they were quoting him) said he'd taken every non-venomous species native to the US and none were able to penetrate.

Also, it looks like there are two species that people call grand daddy long legs. One is also known as the cellar spider and the other isn't even an actual spider called a harvestman. The harvestmen are the ones I'm actual familiar with being called a Granddaddy longleg.