Yeah, it’s probably bad form to start a thread on my own Mailbag item, but Ed threw a question in there I wanted to answer:
I have, indeed, tried them a couple times. A good skeptic tries things out, after all. Besides, I had a sore throat and my mother forced them on me when I was visiting (that’s also how I was able to note what the directions on the bag say). If we’d had hard candy, I’d have sucked on that instead (and gotten the same result, but without the metal flavoring). http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mnocebo.html#update
Let me just ad that David deserves a kudo/kudos (let’s NOT get into THAT thread again! ) for that very thorough and enjoyable answer.
I wonder if anyone ever does double-blind nocebo studies? That is, take an unproven remedy and see if it works better than the results of a sugar pill described as a harmful medication.
I think I read the Michael Fumento article which mentioned “nocebo”, because as soon as I read the Mailbag question I immediately came up with this word and thought of Mr. Fumento’s article.
As I recall, it was about a case that’s even more interesting than the ones David cites in his answer - Olestra. It seems that people who are given regular full-fat chips to eat, but believe that they might be Olestra instead, have a much greater chance of suffering stomach upset. This is because of negative press that the Olestra opponents have diseminated.
Jill, if you knew my mother, you’d know that sometimes it’s just easier to go along with her. It’s not like it hurt anything (other than the tinny taste in my mouth). And now I can continually point out to her that it didn’t do anything. (She was really mad when my father brought up the FCC action against them.)
“I thought the opposite of the placebo effect was called the tomato effect. Has anyone else heard of this expression?”
No, but my WAG is that it has to do with the fact that tomatoes were considered to be poisonous until the 1800s. They are related to the nightshade (also called the deadly nightshade), which IS poisonous, and so people presumed they too were poisonous.
Therefore, I would guess that the “tomato effect” came from the pyschosomatic response someone would have had if you surreptitiously fed them a tomato and then pointed out to them that there had been a tomato in their food. Tomatoes aren’t poisonous, but the person believing that they were would have started gagging and having other physical reactions upon discovering they ate one.
) for that very thorough and enjoyable answer.