Why are Placeboes Getting Better?

[Strange]

So they need to develop placebos that produce similar side-effects but without the therapeutic effect. I guess that could be ethically difficult for more serious side effects.

[dimreepr]

I've taken meds in the past that did wonders for the aches and twinges that happen as we age. This pill I take for the study should do the same but doesn't, ergo placebo.

 

Wouldn't that conviction confirm the placebo and anti-placebo simultaneously?

[CharonY]

So they need to develop placebos that produce similar side-effects but without the therapeutic effect. I guess that could be ethically difficult for more serious side effects.

 

The problem is that theoretically all effects are just effects. Side effects classified as such because they are undesired ones. But it still means that they interfere with your metabolism in a meaningful way. Technically, so does sugar but the assumption is that the effects do not rise over the general background in most cases (as you still continue to eat, for example).

However inducing nausea or similar effects requires some specific actions, which may or may not interfere with whatever drug actions you try to elucidate.

 

Oftentimes, the actions of drugs are not entirely clear so it is exceedingly difficult to isolate pathways and interfere in a way that does not affect the target pathways.

[Velocity_Boy]

I must wonder Why have none of you guys picked up on this....where OP said his gf buys Placebos in Holland for her headaches and they work fine? WTF? Why would anybody buy fakes?

 

I am now thinking the OP doesn't know what a placebo is? Perhaps confusing them with GENERIC?

 

This would explain a whole lot of the confusion and communication problems that have plagued this curious thread from it's inception. I can't make sense of hardly anything he had claimed,but if I substitute the word Generic for placebo when he talks it makes more sense. Wow.

 

Just a thought.

Edited March 15, 2017 by Velocity_Boy

[Dave Moore]

I've studied placeboes for many years. My Dutch friend buys placeboes and they cure her headaches.

It is my guess that placeboes are getting better not because they are tested on people who expect they are getting more effective, but because of something no one here seems capable of talking about.

Go ahead and ask any group of people if they ever heard that placeboes are getting better. Unless they have actually been taking them or have been a test subject, you'll have difficulty finding anyone who knows about it.

And that has to be one disqualifier to testing, that a person knows too much about placeboes.

The confusion on this thread has a lot to do with the fact that I don't know how to use the quote feature.

You are welcome to help me to do that.

I also can't drop a link. I see no way to do that. Can I pull an icon off my desk top?

 

It appears the increase in placebo effectiveness is due to researchers desire to see placeboes being as magical as possible. I know that's how I would feel. I would be far happier if such a magical thing were happening in front of me.

It would be kind of like studying dowsing. Most researchers would love to see that stick bend down and a claim of 134 feet, e.g., was found to be spot on.

So, you ask yourself, how would researchers transmit their expectations to a bunch of patients who have no clue as to placeboes being so effective?

I am not going to pursue that here. If no one has the imagination to figure out what other possibilities remain, it would be a complete waste of time.

I got what I came here for. I now have an idea of what you folks think. I don't like assuming anything.

+

Edited March 16, 2017 by Dave Moore

[StringJunky]

I've studied placeboes for many years. My Dutch friend buys placeboes and they cure her headaches.

It is my guess that placeboes are getting better not because they are tested on people who expect they are getting more effective, but because of something no one here seems capable of talking about.

Go ahead and ask any group of people if they ever heard that placeboes are getting better. Unless they have actually been taking them or have been a test subject, you'll have difficulty finding anyone who knows about it.

And that has to be one disqualifier to testing, that a person knows too much about placeboes.

The confusion on this thread has a lot to do with the fact that I don't know how to use the quote feature.

You are welcome to help me to do that.

I also can't drop a link. I see no way to do that. Can I pull an icon off my desk top?

 

It appears the increase in placebo effectiveness is due to researchers desire to see placeboes being as magical as possible. I know that's how I would feel. I would be far happier if such a magical thing were happening in front of me.

It would be kind of like studying dowsing. Most researchers would love to see that stick bend down and a claim of 134 feet, e.g., was found to be spot on.

So, you ask yourself, how would researchers transmit their expectations to a bunch of patients who have no clue as to placeboes being so effective?

I am not going to pursue that here. If no one has the imagination to figure out what other possibilities remain, it would be a complete waste of time.

I got what I came here for. I now have an idea of what you folks think. I don't like assuming anything.

+

A placebo does nothing, nada, zilch. Why buy them from Holland when you can just go to a shop and buy a pill-like sweet and then call it a placebo. The intended function of a placebo is that it has no chemically-active ingredients; they are used to try and discriminate psychsomatic effects from any actual physical effects caused by the substance under study.

Edited March 16, 2017 by StringJunky

[Phi for All]

It appears the increase in placebo effectiveness is due to researchers desire to see placeboes being as magical as possible. I know that's how I would feel.

I think you're wrong about that, and that's why you're not a researcher. It requires a rational viewpoint.

 

I am not going to pursue that here. If no one has the imagination to figure out what other possibilities remain, it would be a complete waste of time.

This sounds suspiciously like, "If you're going to question me and not just accept my suspicions as fact, I won't bother".

[Dave Moore]

String Junkie. She lives in Holland. They cost less, and she says they work as well as the real thing. But I'll make sure to tell her what you said. Maybe she will smarten up and feel some pain.

You really feel safe here, don't you? Team player? Lapdog.

Phi for all, sit on the lap dog's lap. Where's Strange?

[StringJunky]

String Junkie. She lives in Holland. They cost less, and she says they work as well as the real thing. But I'll make sure to tell her what you said. Maybe she will smarten up and feel some pain.

You really feel safe here, don't you? Team player? Lapdog.

Phi for all, sit on the lap dog's lap. Where's Strange?

We are all independent thinkers and will disagree and agree with equal commitment, according to our personal convictions and knowledge. i don't know why you find it so difficult to understand the function of a placebo.

Edited March 16, 2017 by StringJunky

[Dave Moore]

String Junkie, You might note I have politely asked anyone at all to help me to be more clear by showing me how to drop a link here, or how to quote in a post.

Not one person has come to my aid. everyone, and you too if you look back a couple of posts, has helped me at all.

I've asked three times.

If anyone is making things difficult, it s you. Go back two posts of mine. see how I keep asking for help.

You find me unclear and I have twice asked you for help.

I find the lot of you the most unfriendly group I've ever encountered.

Not at all open-minded. Not scientific, but dogmatic and exclusionary of anyone or anything that you haven't been taught about or read somewhere.

You are certainly not independent thinkers. Every one I've talked to has acted as if they lean against each other for support.

If the others were more respectful, there you would be, treating me like them, afraid to be independent.

You have read, if you are awake, that I need help with a couple of technical details that would be absolutely simple for any of you to do but instead, you prefer, and I mean every last one of you, to play burn the witch, and then blame me for being unclear?

As far as understanding the placebo, if I don't it certainly wouldn't be you that coyld tell.

A placebo is hypnosis. Structured water is hypnosis. Faith healing is hypnosis.

But here's the part that you won't ever get until the day that you have decided to risk everything you possess, everyone you love, and all of the comforts you take for granted, here where you get shot up a few times a day.

That is, that everything is hypnosis.

For three thousand years, Buddhists have known this. But I'm not a Buddhist. I never knew about Buddhist knowledge until recently. I came in through the back door, independently.

It isn't belief. Science is belief. You may snicker, but that's all you can do. You can't learn. Maybe, if you got cancer and you finally began to ask yourself, "Is this piece of meat going to rot away soon?". Because you know nothing. Not believe nothing, but Know with a capital K.

And there won't be any more. You will fear death in the same way you fear disease or bankruptcy, or losing your place here if you say the wrong thing.

You will discount the very idea that subjective knowledge has any value. You all seem to lack borders, a demarcation line that tells you where you subjectively end and the world begins. So while you think you know so much, you can't tell where that line is.

Then you're just a object in an objective universe. Your idea of independent thinking is to agree about all the basic rules and never question them.

This is evident in how you come up with such nonsensical theories to explain dead simple truths. Your common sense is corrupted because it excludes experience.

Existence itself is a lot bigger than mere science. Yet, it must be fitted into your tiny materialist box.

Placeboes are the result of beliefs, but not all the patient's beliefs. Everyone's beliefs. That is a scientific fact that can be proven but not to a person so steeped in dogma that he can't get up enough energy to listen and learn.

It's nobody's fault. I don't blame any of you. I am glad I'm not like that, but at one time, I was exactly like you. It works better when you're young and confident you'll live forever. You don't fear death because it's a long ways away.

It's not about death, though, but living. And I know some of you live to write on this forum. I'll be gone soon, but that's because soon I will have gotten what I wanted in the first place.

 

I will look up somewhere how to quote or drop a link because I have zero confidence that anyone here has the decency to help me.

It's so alluring to attack that you miss what I'm saying. You can't wait to get past what you want me to be saying that you forget or miss the intent of my posts.

Three times I asked for help. All of you should be ashamed of your behavior. I will attribute it to youth, and God help you if you are past forty.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Dave Moore

[Strange]

I must wonder Why have none of you guys picked up on this....where OP said his gf buys Placebos in Holland for her headaches and they work fine?

 

 

I saw that. I assume there is a market for pills that look exactly like aspirin (or whatever) but are just made of sugar.

 

I can't imagine why except that the placebo effect may be stronger if it looks like the real thing than if you just suck a mint.

The confusion on this thread has a lot to do with the fact that I don't know how to use the quote feature.

You are welcome to help me to do that.

 

 

http://www.scienceforums.net/topic/82164-the-quote-function-a-tutorial-in-several-parts/

 

 

 

I also can't drop a link. I see no way to do that. Can I pull an icon off my desk top?

 

Put your cursor in the address bar of the browser, select the text (Ctrl-A), copy the text (Ctrl-C), put the cursor in your post and paste the link (Ctrl-V).

[Dave Moore]

Incidentally, this YouTube video is fantastic. East meets West. The Dali Lama and quantum physicists.

Buddhism isn't a religion. It is a self-evident knowledge. They are only beginning to figure out how to explain it to the West. "The Nature of Reality-Theory of Relativity, Quantum Science and Buddhist Thought"

Until recently, they have kept their knowledge secret. Now, having been devastated by the Chinese, driven from their homes and temples, they have after thousands of years, decided to go out into the world and offer that knowledge to the Western culture.

They will be no more after that. It was their keeping of secrets for so long that kept them safe.

They see how science has become a corrupt force, only to be used by rich and powerful people to take advantage of the weak and the poor. Nuclear weapons, pollution, fear of the end of the world with Soviet rockets that can wipe out France with a single bomb.

The scientific community has no sense of right and wrong. Oppenheimer knew this.

The world has to change. Science has to be controlled by people who know better. It is a fantastic tool for making airplanes and computers but you can see how, when challenged to fix the results of it's "achievements", it has no compass.

Yet, all of you here enlarge it's supposed value far beyond its technical virtues. You claim all day long that nothing that is unproven in a double blind study has any merit, even if that thing cold make science more humanistic or useful to mankind.

I know how to make placebo study far more effective through an understanding of what corrupts test procedures.

Even quantum physics could progress faster if only people like you had a capacity for listening to something outside of your comfortable paradigm.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Dave Moore

[DrP]

WHAT you-tube vid? Copy and past the link or type it out like several people have explained to you how to do. Honestly, your whining in post 60 about not getting any help is pathetic - several people have explained how to use the copy and paste button. Are you trolling for fun?

 

I'm out - I can't talk to this dick. Too many chips on his shoulder and hardly a brain cell to use a computer properly or explain what he means or be civil to people trying to help. So rude and just fdumb. Now with the science bashing - what a prick. lol.

[Dave Moore]

Thank you, strange. I appreciate it.

And DrP, I am fdumb. But I write fbetter than fyou.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Dave Moore

[Strange]

It appears the increase in placebo effectiveness is due to researchers desire to see placeboes being as magical as possible.

 

 

Wouldn't the researchers prefer that placebos did nothing at all - so they could compare their drug against "nothing". (Which is why placebos were used originally.)

[Dave Moore]

Yes and no. The researchers are human beings. They are impressed with what placeboes can do. Ninety percent are probably working from grants, maybe government grants. They have little incentive personally to make placeboes more useful, I suppose.

I have a hard time, by the way, quickly working out problems on the internet/computer due to blindness.

I appreciate it when I am not called a dick (not you) and so forth. I will practice tomorrow on another thread.

I would guess, speculating, that it was researcher bias that began the increase in placeboes getting better, or even a mistake such as sloppy test protocols.

Later, it became exponential as the effect snowballed. Now, increasing effectiveness is the expectation.

Placeboes are marketed as placeboes in Europe, or at least Holland. They look official. I personally doubt I would be cured of a headache as well as ibuprofen. I doubt I could be hypnotized easily without a d5rug to make me more suggestable. But my friend is not like me. She is much more suggestable. Amazing, because she shares my knowledge of placeboes and other forms of hypnosis.

Edited March 16, 2017 by Dave Moore

[DrP]

I'll apologise for calling you a dick if you apologise for your ignorant, moronic rant in post 60. Although it seems you feel justified in yourself for thinking in that way. It's quite sad how someone can go so far off the rails with reason and basic communication skills. Do you make many friends on line?

[Strange]

 

I saw that. I assume there is a market for pills that look exactly like aspirin (or whatever) but are just made of sugar.

 

 

Yep. Just googled for buying placebos online and there are a number of suppliers. They explicitly say that they rely on the placebo effect.

I would guess, speculating, that it was researcher bias that began the increase in placeboes getting better, or even a mistake such as sloppy test protocols.

Later, it became exponential as the effect snowballed. Now, increasing effectiveness is the expectation.

 

That is a hypothesis. The next step would be to find a way of testing that hypothesis against the others suggested so we could work out which is right.

[DrP]

"buying placebos online"....

 

Yea - some people are so gullible and will believe anything.. funny, that it the case of a placebo it is this blind ignorant faith that actually makes them work (or rather what makes your own mind heal your body quicker by believing it will get better). The power of positive thinking!

[Strange]

"buying placebos online"....

 

Yea - some people are so gullible and will believe anything.. funny, that it the case of a placebo it is this blind ignorant faith that actually makes them work (or rather what makes your own mind heal your body quicker by believing it will get better). The power of positive thinking!

 

 

I don't think it is gullibility. The placebo effect is a real thing.

[Dave Moore]

Okay, DrP. I'm sorry.

 

 

Anyway, I absolutely agree with how mainstream science tests theories. It couldn't be any other way.

The problem is that in spite of their best efforts, science has a problem dealing with the observer effect.

This is also called researchers disease. In ufology, I learned a long time ago about he strange effect of researchers into UFOs who suddenly began to see UFOs for the first time only after becoming somewhat convinced by witnesses that UFOs were real.

They would seem to be "followed" by UFOs no matter where they went.

An interesting example of this is a recent movie (now on Netflix, but use search box). Movie is called, "Curse of the man who sees UFOs".

Funny as hell, and a great example of researcher disease. Monterey, California---- spontaneous human combustion, a crop formation, very strange and quite instructional.

Science has it's own observer effect. I studied these things for many years. I discovered eventually what was going on. To explain it is difficult because the root of it lies beyond the obvious idea of simple hypnosis.

You have to step out on a limb, so to speak, and let go of some very powerful beliefs, and most everyone almost without exception, can't do this.

For me, it took some very strange events I witnessed that 'loosened" my beliefs up enough. Call it neuroplasticity or whatever, but soon thereafter, I experienced a kind of mental shift. it was instantaneous, and I guess it parallels with the Buddhist awakening although I knew nothing of awakenings at that time.

In any case, after that, I was able to imagine beyond my former limitations. I realized I could easily see what things like the observer effect were. It was real interesting to discover that the knowledge was very much like I had integrated my left and right brain hemispheres as if my mind were now supercharged (I know).

I saw flaws in how science worked. I knew why the delayed choice experiments worked from observation alone.

I also found out why most everyone never had the same experience. it was a Catch-22. Because it had to do with belief manifesting through force, expectation, fear and desire, no person of science would ever accept it even as a possibility.

This would, for example, cause problems on a forum such as this. things would happen, believable things that would conspireto prevent in any prosaic way, my getting through to people. The energetic rejection would be overwhelming.

I would come off as whatever you needed me to be---- anything to block my strange ideas from coming through.

That is my purpose here, to prove that point to myself.

I could easily prove that the observer effect is not just something that happens in a lab. It is how we perceive.

That part is my territory, but see how it can weave into science without corrupting science.

Actually, because the observer effect is now understood by me at least, I could potentially increase the means of testing things like placeboes and make them useful in testing drugs again.

But what happens is that, well, look at this terrible thread. Animosity, mistakes, misunderstandings and about a paragraph dealing with actual useful conversation.

[DrP]

QUOTE STRANGE: "The placebo effect is a real thing"

 

Of course it is, we all know that - but it works based on the belief by the person taking it that they could be getting a real drug. If you KNOW you are getting the placebo it should not work. It DOES work though, even when people know they are getting a placebo because they have been told that it might work. It is the belief that may work that gives the effect, not the sugar pill itself. I am suggesting that for people that don't fully grasp how or why the effect works will actually have a better chance of having it work for them because they have a strong belief that they are getting something that might work. Thus - the more gullible the patient, the more likely they are to respond to a placebo. This is only opinion of mine - I cannot back that up with any reading for you. What do you think?

[Strange]

Anyway, I absolutely agree with how mainstream science tests theories. It couldn't be any other way.

The problem is that in spite of their best efforts, science has a problem dealing with the observer effect.

That is why science uses things like double-blind trials (and placebos).

 

This is also called researchers disease.

Not a term that either I or Google have heard of.

QUOTE STRANGE: "The placebo effect is a real thing"

 

Of course it is, we all know that - but it works based on the belief by the person taking it that they could be getting a real drug. If you KNOW you are getting the placebo it should not work.

 

There is at least one study that shows that might not be true (I have read some of the article criticising that but am not entirely convinced by all of their arguments).

 

If people are buying placebos because they think they make them feel better, then presumably they make them feel better! This may be something other than the real placebo effect, closer to self-hypnosis, perhaps.

[Dave Moore]

Strange, the placebo effect is the same as the real drug effect. Gullibility isn't exactly the reason, but it can be. My friend is not gullible in the normally understood sense. She knows as much as I do about the power of belief. I envy her because she can shift between gullibility and hard-nosed skepticism. That is a rare gift. It is the art of character acting in real life. It lies within the realm of shamanism. One day I hope to be able to achieve the same thing.

When a hypnotist on a stage has a volunteer get down on his hands and knees, barking like a dog, we all think he is only acting like a dog for a few minutes.

We never could imagine that if everyone were hypnotized, all seven billions of us, we would never go back to whatever we used to be.

We would be like babies, who are the most gullible creatures on the planet, having little instinctual ability compared to turtle hatchlings, for example, who know just what to do when they hatch.

We would believe 100% in what we had been hypnotized to believe, just like the volunteer who thinks he is a barking dog.

The obvious question is, where did the old objective universe go? We don't walk into things that used to be there before we were hypnotized. Everything makes sense. Science works. One could consider that we are not just perceiving wrong, but the exterior world is matched to our perceptions.

Knowing this, one could experiment. Much of this experimentation could be subjective--- until a test could be devised.

The next problem is huge. Getting anyone to even listen t me.

I devised a simple and very effective experiment. It took six months of emailing my Dutch friend. I needed to show her I had some very esoteric knowledge. I used deception, a kind of hypnosis by wire.

I told her, go out. There's a park nearby. you will see a very special, large tree. Go to it. Under the tree, you'll find an object. then you will know.

I added that, no matter what, she must never as long as she lives tell me what she found.

Two weeks later, she had the same mind shift that I had. She packed her bags, this timid woman of 55, left her husband of 35 years, and took a plane to the United States. To this day, she lives alone and is very happy. She has been abandoned by her two boys and even her grandchildren never see her. Our relationship was never romantic but for her, it did provide an initial "hook".

Of course, placeboes are hypnosis. They probably work better because the belief is insinuated into their psyche rather than openly suggested into it by a hypnotist who could also make people bark.

If reality were subjective, then it's very plausible that we are hypnotized into this world from the very beginning by suggestion alone.

It would be unscientific to say this couldn't be true.

[Prometheus]

Yes and no. The researchers are human beings. They are impressed with what placeboes can do. Ninety percent are probably working from grants, maybe government grants. They have little incentive personally to make placeboes more useful, I suppose.

 

The researchers are from Harvard’s Osher Research Center, also known as the Osher Centre for Integrative Medicine. Integrative medicine is also known as alternative or complementary medicine. Some alternative practitioners are happy to admit that alternative therapies work purely by placebo: they may have an incentive in showing that placebo works whether the patient realises this or not.

 

 

Buddhism isn't a religion. It is a self-evident knowledge. They are only beginning to figure out how to explain it to the West. "The Nature of Reality-Theory of Relativity, Quantum Science and Buddhist Thought"

Until recently, they have kept their knowledge secret...

 

You do a grave disservice to both science and buddhism. But that's another topic...