The Placebo Effect

No.

Just No.

One can’t apply the idea of ’knowing’ to the equation, in the attempt to solve it... if most of one part of the equation is an unknown.

And the unknown is the human hearing mechanism.

We know that this quandary remains unsolved.

So to call ’placebo, they’re all fooling themselves’, is just cr*p. Cr*p at a blind projecting level that is pretty well wholly anti-science.

The equation keeps changing almost every day, if one is paying attention.

This just in, literally today:

Research challenges decades-old understanding of how we hear sound

"The research group, led by Professor Anders Fridberger, previously discovered that the tectorial membrane functions as a reservoir for calcium ions, which are needed for the hair cells to convert the sound-evoked vibrations into nerve signals. The researchers followed the motion of the calcium ions in the ducts, and their results suggest that the calcium ions flow through the ducts to the hair cells. This may explain how the hair cells obtain the large amounts of calcium ions needed for their function. The study has also shown that the stereocilia on the inner and outer hair cells are bent by the tectorial membrane in similar ways. The next step of the research will be to understand in more detail how the calcium ions are transported, and identify the protein or proteins that make up the newly discovered calcium ducts.

"Our results allow us to describe a mechanism for how hearing functions, that is incompatible with the model that has been accepted for more than fifty years. The classic illustrations in the textbooks showing the hearing organ and how it functions must be updated. The mathematical models used in research to study hearing should also be updated to include these new findings," says Pierre Hakizimana.

New information about how hearing functions may eventually contribute to the development of cochlear implants, hearing aids that are inserted into the cochlea and use electrical stimulation to restore hearing for children and adults.

"Cochlear implants are an amazing solution for treating hearing loss, but they can be improved. A deeper understanding of how the inner hair cells are stimulated by sounds is important to optimize how cochlear implants stimulate the auditory nerve," says Pierre Hakizimana."

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Where this sort of revelation goes on and on and on, if one bothers to do the legwork of what science actually requires... if they want to get into the weeds of what we hear, how we hear, what audio reproduction means, how to improve it, what audiophiles say they hear, what the limitations of measurement are, and so on.

It is a MASSIVE subject, with complex unknowns and knowns that have deep complexities and aren’t really capable of being resolved as those ’knowns’ are deeply colored and shifting about due to their connectivity to the unknowns.

Science says one can’t declare it all being placebo... as that would be an emotional decision with limited depth and would be wholly anti science and more political and a personal internal struggle involving limitations of the given individual self... which is then selfishly writ large upon the outer world.

Don't expect nothing but jumping through hoops trying to deny the obvious on this forum J. Chip.

I like the upgrade effect.

Interesting post. Just a quick question for clarification. You write,

"Bottom line, placebos can result in perceived improvement even where no actual improvement exists."

Since perception (and pain, of course) is strongly associated with physical mechanisms, then a placebo must be doing something to those mechanisms, correct?

If that’s right -- and it seems it must be -- then "perceived improvement" is "actual improvement" it’s just not "longterm improvement."

This seems like a trivial point upon which to ask for clarification, but it’s important to recognize that there is nothing "subjective" at work in placebos. They do have effects, and those effects have physiological concomitants, it’s just that their effects do not indicate they’re addressing underlying mechanisms which, if addressed, could have longer term affects which would be perceptible as well.

Sound right?

I would agree that placebo effect is an actual physical reaction.  The problem I have is when it's denied placebo effect happens in audio perception.