http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-03/du-cpw022908.php
Costly placebo works better than cheap one
DURHAM, N.C. -- A 10-cent pill doesn't kill pain as well as a $2.50
pill, even when they are identical placebos, according to a
provocative study by Dan Ariely, a behavioral economist at Duke
University.
"Physicians want to think it's the medicine and not their enthusiasm
about a particular drug that makes a drug more therapeutically
effective, but now we really have to worry about the nuances of
interaction between patients and physicians," said Ariely, whose
findings appear as a letter in the March 5 edition of the Journal of
the American Medical Association.
snip
The results fit with existing data about how people perceive quality
and how they anticipate therapeutic effects, he said. But what's
interesting is the combination of the price-sensitive consumer
expectation with the well-known placebo effect of being told a pill
works. "The placebo effect is one of the most fascinating, least
harnessed forces in the universe," Ariely said.
This reminds me of the tests done where two bits of audio gear were in
clear sight and the tester announced which one was being used in each
part of the test. In fact only one was used at all times but price and
expectation clearly drove the unambiguous subjective narrative about
which was which and the obvious audio reproduction of one over the
other.
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