At 6:10 PM -0400 5/23/01, David wrote:
>Um... er... discuss.
>
>The investigators, Dr. Asbjorn Hrobjartsson and Dr. Peter C. Gotzsche
>analyzed 114 published studies involving about 7,500 patients with 40
>different conditions. They found no support for the common notion that
>about a third of patients will improve if they are given a dummy pill
>and told it is real. Their paper appears today in the New England
>Journal of Medicine.
I'll have to read the original article to discuss its methodology properly.
As an initial reaction:
Assuming that:
1) Placebo effects are real (note the plural).
2) They are behavioral (psychological) in nature (this does not contradict
#1).
One would expect that these effects are very situation specific.
The conditions under which the placebo is given are what matters, since it
is these conditions which determine the effect, not the inert pill or dummy
treatment.
I'd suspect that they've lumped together a lot of treatments that, while
they may be _medically_ equivalent, are psychologically very different.
The kind of problem that physicians tend to get into when they get out of
their field ;-).
* PAUL K. BRANDON [EMAIL PROTECTED] *
* Psychology Dept Minnesota State University, Mankato *
* 23 Armstrong Hall, Mankato, MN 56001 ph 507-389-6217 *
* http://www.mankato.msus.edu/dept/psych/welcome.html *
