Jayson_Virissimo comments on The nocebo effect [link] - Less Wrong

1 Post author: Kevin 14 November 2011 12:59PM

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Comment author: Jayson_Virissimo 15 November 2011 02:34:21PM 0 points [-]

nosummary?

Comment author: SilasBarta 15 November 2011 03:49:52PM 3 points [-]

No summary is bad summary, opposite from the rule for news.

Comment author: Kevin 16 November 2011 05:07:00PM 0 points [-]

What? One of the entire points of the discussion section as it exists is for posting links.

Comment author: SilasBarta 16 November 2011 05:41:00PM *  2 points [-]

Yes, with a summary, to avoid making people have to read the entire article to know if it's worth their time, and to validate that you understand the content well enough to endorse it.

Maybe you're just more accustomed to the Hacker News standards?

Edit: Didn't mean to imply Hacker News standards are bad, just that standard practice there seems to be just posting the link and article title, while users here have a much different expectation, which you have been informed of several times and continue to violate.

Comment author: [deleted] 15 November 2011 05:29:55PM 1 point [-]

Here's a summary:

the "nocebo effect" - the flip-side to the better-known placebo effect. While an inert sugar pill (placebo) can make you feel better, warnings of fictional side-effects (nocebo) can make you feel those too... This poses an ethical quandary: should doctors warn patients about side-effects if doing so makes them more likely to arise?

Examples given include- A man died shortly after being told he had cancer, even though autopsy showed the cancer hadn't grown, and didn't show any other reason for his death. Another example is mass psychogenic illnesses such as when 62 factory workers got very sick due to an "insect" that was never found. This spreads most rapidly to female individuals who have seen someone else suffering from the condition. Finally, telling someone that a pain-killing drug has worn off (even if it hasn't yet) is enough to return them to pre-drug levels of pain.

when volunteers feel nocebo pain, corresponding brain activity is detectable in an MRI scanner. This shows that, at the neurological level at least, these volunteers really are responding to actual, non-imaginary, pain

one of the neurochemicals responsible for converting the expectation of pain into this genuine pain perception... is called cholecystokinin and carries messages between nerve cells. When drugs are used to block cholecystokinin from functioning, patients feel no nocebo pain, despite being just as anxious...Benedetti's work on blocking cholecystokinin could pave the way for techniques that remove nocebo outcomes from medical procedures, as well as hinting at more general treatments for both pain and anxiety.

Doctors often stress possible side-effects to avoid getting sued, but lowering a patient's confidence in a treatment is counter-productive.