MY MUM swears that reiki, a technique claimed to channel healing energy through touch, cured her painful frozen shoulder. And my sister promises me a homeopathic remedy will relieve my frequent stomach aches.
Such claims raise eyebrows among those who champion rational thinking. There is often no physiological mechanism by which these and other alternative therapies could work, and they regularly fail to pass the standard tests for efficacy in medicine. But if someone feels better after their chosen remedy, who are we to say it didn’t work for them?
At the heart of such questions lies the placebo effect – the way that we tend to feel better just because we believe a medical treatment is going to work, even if the treatment itself is a sham. The power of placebos has been shown in many settings. In one study from 2002, 60 people were even given fake surgery to treat arthritic knees. An elaborate ruse involving doctored footage on a video screen convinced them that they had full surgery, whereas in reality they had only had the skin on their knees cut. Even so, their symptoms improved, and they recovered as well as those who had real surgery. The improvement lasted at least a year.
“We feel better if we believe a treatment will work – even if the treatment is a sham”
“It’s hard to believe that sham surgery can produce a long-lasting effect,” says Luana Colloca, who studies the placebo effect at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. But it can.
Pain seems particularly susceptible to placebos, but they can also improve the symptoms of other conditions, …
