I recently came across a few articles that got my wheels turning about the placebo effect in our lives. The placebo effect is the measurable, observable, or felt improvement in health or behavior not attributable to a medication or invasive treatment that has been administered. Although its origins are in medical research, researchers have observed it in other domains as well.<\/p>\n
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The best headphones go for more than $1000, and the best amplifiers and related devices are many times that. But can you really tell the difference in quality between a $50 headset and a $500 one? How much of the difference is explained purely by the price tag?<\/p>\n
Source: Placebo-philes<\/a><\/p>\n If you know what the wine you\u2019re tasting is, if you know where it comes from, if you know who made it, if you\u2019ve met the winemaker, and in general, if you know how expensive it is \u2014 then that knowledge deeply affects \u2014 nearly always to the upside \u2014 the way in which you taste and appreciate the wine in question.<\/p>\n Source: How money can buy happiness, wine edition<\/a><\/p>\n A 2010 House of Commons Science and Technology Committee report on homeopathy said that homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos, and that the principles on which homeopathy is based are ‘scientifically implausible’. However, millions of people suffering from chronic pain swear by their daily intake of diluted sugar tablets.<\/p>\n Source: NHS<\/a><\/p>\n Researchers have found that partial meniscectomy, where surgeons trim and remove torn pieces of the meniscus, is pointless. Researchers in Finland who studied two sets of patients\u2014one that received the surgery, and another that was led to believe that it had\u2014observed no significant differences in improvement between the groups after one year.<\/p>\nDid you know that for wine, price and quality are negatively correlated?<\/h3>\n
Doctors want to ban Homeopathy in the UK<\/h3>\n
Doctors confuse what they believe with what they know<\/h3>\n