acephalus comments on Fallacies of reification - the placebo effect - Less Wrong

20 Post author: Morendil 13 September 2012 07:03AM

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Comment author: acephalus 13 September 2012 10:41:11PM *  1 point [-]

Relevant excerpts on colour and vomit.

And here's a relevant study on Pharmaceutical Packaging Color and Drug Expectancy which has some references.

Comment author: gjm 14 September 2012 04:31:14PM 3 points [-]

Note that that study doesn't itself have anything directly to do with the placebo effect. They made fake pictures of boxes of pills, with different colours, and asked people questions like "What do you think this drug would be used to treat?" and "How effective would you expect it to be?". They didn't give any drugs (real or fake) to anyone.

(That isn't intended as a criticism of the study: it's fine that it wasn't studying the placebo effect -- nor of acephalus's citation of it: it does indeed have some relevant references. Just a cautionary note.)