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Placebos Are Getting More Effective
Wired is reporting that the well-known "placebo effect" seems to be increasing as time goes on. Fewer and fewer medications are actually making it past drug trials since they are unable to show benefits above and beyond a placebo. "It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests. In many cases, these are the compounds that, in the late '90s, made Big Pharma more profitable than Big Oil. But if these same drugs were vetted now, the FDA might not approve some of them. Two comprehensive analyses of antidepressant trials have uncovered a dramatic increase in placebo response since the 1980s. One estimated that the so-called effect size (a measure of statistical significance) in placebo groups had nearly doubled over that time."
It seems to me that placebos aren't getting better at fixing people, just that statisticians are becoming more efficient at modifying the numbers. Soon they will rule the universe.
Oblig. article from The Onion
Soon, the only drug we will need in Placebo(tm). This is to be expected since it has appeared in more clinical trials for more ailments than any other drug in history.
"His name was James Damore."
And frozen pizza manufacturers...
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I would be curious if testing a group of Americans and a group of Europeans will give different strength placebo effects.
What the hell would you test against? A placebo placebo?
The little pill that makes men feel good is blue, not purple.
And there we have it, the seed to the pill-bubble. The next financial crash will be when the patent-bubble bursts, but the one after that will be the bursting of the pill-bubble. By then the whole economy will be driven by governmental bailouts, which will form a bailout-bubble, and god only know what happens when that one bursts.
You haven't read much of the old testament have you?
That wasn't a "side effect".
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
No shit, Sherlock?
Sherlock was actually the sleuth from some fictional stories written long ago. So it's inaccurate to use "Sherlock" here.
If I hear one more person use "Sherlock" in the wrong context, my brain is going to explode because they don't know proper usage.
The term you are looking for is "fucktard".
Learn English.
Just callin' it like I see it.
I believe it. Have you seen antidepressant ads? The morose horn section alone is enough to make you want to pack it in.
Can you be Even More Awesome?!
They usually develop symptoms of depression and paranoia, but we've got a pill for that...
Have you gone outside recently and seen the average American (as opposed to person). Healthy and 'brain using' are not attributes I'd apply to them.
I want to mod you as both flamebait and insightful at the same time.
why would anybody want to buy a 5-digit UID?