If we give half the patients a placebo, then what do you give the control group?
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Start with a known product that 100% of the time causes a certain effect for every single person who uses it always. That would be the anti-placebo. Don’t tell either group what the expected results are and it will be extremely apparent if the placebo has any effect at all.
The control gets nothing.
Drug, sugar pill, nothing.
Drug has effect, sugar pill has effect, nothing has no effect.
If the drug’s effect is less than placebo, it’s worse than sugar. We test drugs against sugar pills precisely because they do something that giving them nothing does not (though there are no-ceboes but that’s not your question.)
We know placebos have an effect because they’re part of every double blind study.
Nothing.
So, you tell your subjects that you are testing a new allergy med. You seperate them into three groups.
Group 1 gets a proven allergy med
Group 2 gets a sugar pill
Group 3 is the control and gets nothing
If the placebo affect is real, group 2’s results should fall somewhere between 1 and 3.
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