Very interesting. Thanks for posting it.
The placebo effect is well established and needs to be controlled for if you wish to seperate it from other effects. It can be useful though. I think some witch doctors may be more successful than modern medicine practitioners at curing certain people.
The placebo effect is a shorthand way of saying there is an effect but we don't know what causes it. The article speculates "How does it work? Scientists do not always know, but there are many possible ways. Brain imaging shows that beliefs ("I know these pills will help") can cause biological changes and affect levels of chemical messengers and stress hormones that signal pain or pleasure."
A shaman may find the manipulation of psychological states and the "placebo effect" to be one of the most powerful tools available to him/her. This does not mean that we should a priori attribute every tool the shaman uses to placebo effect.
Quote:Do any herbal remedies work for insomnia? "Not that I know of," Perlis said. "But all of them have potential to be useful with time. It has nothing to do with them - it has everything to do with conditioning."
The quoted text seems quite foolish. For instance valerian root has been known and used since the time of Galen, and quite probably before, to treat insomnia. Contemporary scientists have shown its constituents interact with GABA and benzodiazepine receptors. Just because granny used it is no reason to discount possible non-placebo effects. And in fact the pharmeceutical companies spend considerable resources researching traditional remedies that have no placebo-controlled studies backing them up, just for the possabilities of isolating new drugs that can be synthesized and patented.
The placebo effect can come into play with pheromone testing, especially when we are trying to identify changes in frequencies of behaviors. This is often evident on the AD forum, when a talented writer will describe marvelous effects of a new MX. After that there will often be a host of supporting replies, and then over the course of a few weeks the supporting replies will fade away and no one will talk any more about the marvelous MX, although it still may be available. I attribute the initial response in these cases to placebo effect. I think the reason they fade away is that the placebo effect is not sufficient to sustain the reputation of the MX over time.
Anecdotal reports have their place, to suggest things for more formal testing. It is counterproductive to attempt placebo controls too early, before clear testing objectives have been established.
The power of suggestion (Placebo effect)
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