Fun fact, Samuel Hahnemann was a pioneer in medical research. He was absolutely a quack, but in the absence of actual knowledge and understanding of physiology, his methods were at least rigorous. At the time, the practice of bloodletting was common, and he accurately decried the practice as doing more harm than good.
In his efforts to advance medical knowledge, the guy would ingest known poisons in small quantities and document how it made him feel. “This upsets my stomach, it must be good for indigestion, that one makes me cough, so it must be good for tuberculosis.” He was willing to injure himself to learn medicine. He also poisoned his colleagues, students, and healthy test subjects to further his research without killing himself.
The concept that like treats like was revolutionary. It was completely wrong, but it was not entirely irrational and it led to several important discoveries. The most famous example of a homeopathic success story is nitroglycerin. It causes heart palpitations, and has been one of the most successful heart attack interventions ever discovered.
Of course, we now have the scientific method, medical ethics, informed consent, and a much clearer understanding of human physiology and biology. We now know that homeopathy is crap. Even wt the time, dilution and succussion were entirely irrational, and anyone selling homeopathic remedies today ought to be charged with fraud. But still, it’s an interesting bit of medical and scientific history that most people dismiss entirely.
Placebos only work if the people think they’ll work. Funnily enough, it is possible to be aware something is a placebo and still expect it to work, but generally placebos involve some deception where the person thinks they’re receiving real treatment.
So yes, people selling homeopathic remedies are going to claim they’re real treatments, both to convince people to buy them, and because they’ll be most effective if people think they’re real. And the people buying them will also be the people who believe they’re actually effective, causing them to actually have an effect.
but generally placebos involve some deception where the person thinks they’re receiving real treatment.
That’s literally what a placebo is…
Being aware that the placebo effect exists, and even being aware that someone is about to hand you something that may or may not be a placebo still doesn’t effect the chances of a placebo effect.
Like…
Do you think when placebos are used in studies that the patients aren’t aware that they may get an inactive treatment?
They literally have to sign contracts acknowledging that they’re aware of that fact in every medicinal trial…
Why doors such blatantly wrong information keep getting upvoted on Lemmy?
This is far from the first time I’ve seen this happen.
People know that they can get a placebo treatment, but they don’t know if they actually got a placebo or the real treatment. They’re also generally hoping both that they got the real treatment, and that the real treatment will make things better.
Maybe calling it deception isn’t fully accurate, but the the point is that they’re given something they hope is medicine, but in reality it’s the placebo treatment.
Yeah, not saying it’s not scummy business. It probably can be a decent treatment for non-serious conditions if the placebo effect gives the patient relief, but any serious condition will need real treatment.
We know there’s a nocebo effect. Which is the opposite of placebo, meaning you can have a negative effective from something that’s inactive.
The real crazy part is if before an experiment to measure the effects, explaining the nocebo effect pretty much elimates it. Explaining the placebo effect doesn’t change the results.
Meaning we have a fundamental disposition to being optimists.
My bad, fixed it. I learned it from the Wikipedia article, and when looking for the link I just copied the first link with wiki but that was wiktionary not Wikipedia
en.wiktionary.org
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