this post was submitted on 17 Aug 2024
1365 points (98.0% liked)
Science Memes
11440 readers
1517 users here now
Welcome to c/science_memes @ Mander.xyz!
A place for majestic STEMLORD peacocking, as well as memes about the realities of working in a lab.
Rules
- Don't throw mud. Behave like an intellectual and remember the human.
- Keep it rooted (on topic).
- No spam.
- Infographics welcome, get schooled.
This is a science community. We use the Dawkins definition of meme.
Research Committee
Other Mander Communities
Science and Research
Biology and Life Sciences
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !reptiles and [email protected]
Physical Sciences
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Humanities and Social Sciences
Practical and Applied Sciences
- !exercise-and [email protected]
- [email protected]
- !self [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
Memes
Miscellaneous
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
What's even wilder is you don't have to consciously believe it, you can unconsciously believe it and it will still work! Doctors will routinely prescribe placebos and be very open about the fact that it's just a placebo, that there is no chemical compound in the medication.
And yet, the act of taking a pill from a bottle seems to trigger something. Recent research has actually identified part of this mechanism in rat brains. There really is a part of the brain that can be tricked into releasing a set of chemicals that relieve pain, reduce inflammation and create better moods. Someday we might have a placebo pill that actually has medication in it. Wildly convoluted how the brain works.
Placebos is measurement error, not effectiveness. People that believe something works are more likely to report improvements when taking that medication irrespective of its effectiveness. Placebo effect is just misreporting, noise or unaccounted phenomena. It’s literally how we define something doesn’t work.