Now why did I know that Ted Kaptchuk[1] would be the quoted "expert" (he is not a medical doctor) in this 14 August 2014 story even before I read it? Because he is always the guy pushing this line[2] in press releases[3] that get picked up by the popular media.

Meanwhile, the medical researchers who look at the issue with proper study designs and statistical controls know that placebos are essentially useless, as they at most have influence just on self-reported subjective symptoms, not on any sign that affects the progression of a disease or maintenance of good health.[4] Ladies and gentlemen, you know you aren't going to seek "placebo medicine" if you have cancer or congestive heart failure, and you know that no compassionate parent would seek "placebo medicine" for minor children who have a childhood disease. So why does this topic keep coming up over and over and over here on Hacker News? I wonder if it's because programmers (the plurality participants here) make their livings by the power of their minds, and Hacker News participants skew younger than the general population. Please take the time and effort to learn a bit more about the actual research base before assuming that this story is anything other than the outcome of carefully crafted press campaign. As you grow older, and your body is no longer young, you may develop warranted doubt about the power of placebo treatments and begin seeking more actually effective treatments. My hope for all of us is that ongoing medical research will keep finding more safe and effective treatments that actually do more than what placebos do (which is nothing, really) so that we can all be part of a continuing trend toward longer and healthier lifespans.[7]

Findings on placebo effects by researchers who have considered the issue carefully include

"Despite the spin of the authors – these results put placebo medicine into crystal clear perspective, and I think they are generalizable and consistent with other placebo studies. For objective physiological outcomes, there is no significant placebo effect. Placebos are no better than no treatment at all."[5]

"We did not find that placebo interventions have important clinical effects in general. However, in certain settings placebo interventions can influence patient-reported outcomes, especially pain and nausea, though it is difficult to distinguish patient-reported effects of placebo from biased reporting. The effect on pain varied, even among trials with low risk of bias, from negligible to clinically important. Variations in the effect of placebo were partly explained by variations in how trials were conducted and how patients were informed."[6]

[1] http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/01/the-placebo-phenomenon

[2] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doc...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doc...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/dummy-medicine-dummy-doc...

[3] http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=1174

[4] http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/michael-specter-on-the-p...

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/ted-kaptchuk-versus-plac...

[5] http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/the-rise-and-fa...

[6] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20091554

[7] http://www.nature.com/scientificamerican/journal/v307/n3/box...