My blog appears on its own web page, courtesy of Google's Blogger service. https://fearfunandfiloz.blogspot.com/
There are well over 3000 posts, going back more than 10 years. But things I have written about can change. One of the subjects of interest to me is placebos, pills or other things that are supposedly to no power but do. The best book I have read on the subject is "Cure" by Jo Marchant, PhD. Just recently the British Psychological Association posted an article by Christian Jarrett, their main blog writer on recent research results in involving placebos (from Latin for "I shall please") and nocebos, the opposite situation. With a nocebo, I give you a sugar pill but tell you it makes people vomit and you get an upset stomach or worse.
From Jarrett's article, I learned that placebo research has developed the idea of an "open placebo", where the administrator tells the recipient that the pill is useless but that it may help anyway. Back in Dr. Marchant's book, I learned of cases where athletes were told they were getting an empty pill but after they did well, they asked the coach for another one of those pills.
Jarrett's article is here:
https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/03/11/the-placebo-effect-digested-10-amazing-findings/
As you can imagine, physicians, pharmacists, drug companies and their researchers, psychologists and charlatans are all interested in the effects of "snake oil". I have heard Americans refer to "snake oil" and selling it as a way of indicating the sale of something ineffective and useless or worse. But like a good modern Googler, I checked the term:
https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=snake+oil
I think it is fun to check Amazon's site for "placebo". I did buy some empty capsules from them a couple of years ago. I have given them to grandkids for various purposes. They seem to help sometimes.
