Placebo
From SkepticWiki
[edit] Discussion
In theory, there should be no difference between a group treated with a placebo and a group that receives no treatment whatsoever, but in practice, it is often observed that merely getting medical treatment seems to cause marked improvement in the patients' observed well-being. In a 1955 JAMA article, Beecher reported that about 30 percent of patients appear to improve upon being given "fake" treatment. It has been suggested that this is related to the patient's belief that medical care will make them get better, and the related stimulation of the patient's own capacity for self-healing. On the other hand, it has also been suggested that the placebo effect is largely an artifact of the way medical research is conducted, and recently even the 30% figure has come into question.
Because of the (apparent) placebo effect, many ineffective medical procedures (including alternative medicine favorites such as homeopathy and reflexology) can still produce apparent improvement in patient well-being. This is well-understood by the medical community, and one of the main reasons behind double blind placebo-controlled studies. In such a study, the improvement of patients treated with a treatment is compared directly with the patients treated with a placebo. If there is no difference in recovery rate, the studied treatment can be assumed to be no more effective than the placebo (e.g. ineffective) even if some patients showed recovery.
