“An ineffective drug can be better than a placebo in a standard trial” according to a paper by Paul Enck, Fabrizio Benedetti, Manfred Schedlowski – and “Often, an active drug is not better than placebo in a standard trial, even when we can be confident that the active drug does work,”
Double blind tests are supposed to show whether a drug really works, or whether it is just down to the placebo effect because neither the researcher nor the test subject knows they are taking the drug.
This paper totally discounts this methodology because it shows that the very fact of BEING TOLD you are taking a drug has an effect on whether it works or not. The researchers tested a painkiller called a CCK-antagonist, first in a standard double-blind randomised controlled trial. The CCK-antagonist performed better than the placebo. So the CCK-antagonist must be an effective painkiller, right? But when the same drug was given to volunteers without telling them, it had no effect. If it was a real painkiller, there should be no difference compared to the test where subjects are told what they are taking. But if you don’t tell people, the CCK-antagonist is ineffective in relieving pain.
So it seems some drugs only have an effect IN CONJUNCTION with expectation. Interesting stuff…