A student brought this to my attention on Monday — as heard on NPR, the placebo effect is apparently getting stronger.
Well if you think about it, there’s a pill for everything these days, right? The article suggests that people, when sick, go to the doctor, get a prescription, take a pill and get better (in general). So maybe people are programmed to think they will get better?
But what does this mean to medical research? What if a new medication significantly decreases, say, blood pressure — when tested against the placebo, will it fail?
Check out the article.
The Stats Ninja 