It’s well established that the mind controls the brain which controls the body. (And the other way around, too). A physiological problem in the mind can cause a chemical problem in the brain which can cause a ‘physical’ problem in the body. Or heal a problem in the body.
Quotes around physical because mind and body are both physical. If doctors are surprised by this it must be because they are still clinging to some form Cartesian dualism.
There is some limited evidence that placebos have some actual effect on reducing pain, but it's hard to separate the effects for many conditions.
Edit: Although even here, you often need to trust the answer of a patient about their well-being and can’t necessarily pinpoint the duration of the flu to measurable symptoms only.
This article supports a plausible theory that the mind is a complex system and does not define easily as being purely local to the body:
https://qz.com/866352/scientists-say-your-mind-isnt-confined...
I think when it comes to mind/consciousness the humble position is to say "we don't know enough yet". Humans are certainly not so enlightened that we can define ourselves with precision and we should operate in the world with appropriate humility.
If you decide to think of biting a lemon and your saliva glands react, is that any weirder than throwing a ball? If you just think about throwing a ball without doing it your muscles will still contract in "micro-movements" to act out the act of throwing.
And yes, I do think most doctors in Western medicine cling to a form of Cartesian dualism. It's somewhat tempered, but the mind body connection is vastly underexplored.
>You don’t even have to deceive the patients. You can hand a patient with irritable bowel syndrome a sugar pill, identify it as such and tell her that sugar pills are known to be effective when used as placebos, and she will get better
https://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/placebos-...
Which comes to mind because I know a few people who are quite knowledgeable about medicine, committed to evidence and rigor, and also go to treatments like acupuncture regularly. They all do it with that same sort of winking sense that sure, this probably doesn't work double-blind, but as long as I don't focus too hard on that it'll work for me. One or two have even said that they consciously avoided investigating past "it's not harmful" to preserve ambiguity.
I'd always wondered how well that kind of doublethink could do for placebo, and while this isn't exactly the same I'm excited to find a discussion along those lines.
”Two strangers sat down opposite each other in a railway carriage. One of the men had on his lap a cardboard box with holes in the top. After some time wondering what might be inside it, the second man said, “Excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing your box. Does it contain an animal?”
The first man smiled politely. “Yes, a mongoose.”
“A mongoose? Where are you going with that?"
“Ah,” the first man replied, “My sister has terrible dreams. She sees snakes everywhere. I'm taking her the mongoose so it can scare them off."
“But how can that work,” the second man said, “Those are imaginary snakes?”
“Indeed,” his fellow traveller replied. “Which is why this,” and here he lifted the top and tilted it to show an empty box, "is an imaginary mongoose.”
I think it was also Crowley who commented that of course magic can produce light and fire and all kinds of verifiable signs, but that's all beside the point and so the best magicians are indistinguishable from fakers.
I'm sometimes surprised how many people have hit on some variant of this. It's everywhere from the Black Bible saying that its spells work but have no mechanism of action, to the hacker koan about Tom Knight, to the various "haha only serious" faiths like Discordianism and SubGenius. And it seems like quite a lot of very similarly-minded people arrive at it from different direction - I get the sense that there's a certain mindset that's particularly good for maintaining faith and disbelief simultaneously.
Unless my particular pathways are different and I respond to placebos differently than another population.
You're not wrong that it's well established that there's some effect, but beyond that, it's barely science until we can map these pathways.
So it's still a 'trick'.
In any case after studying some pharmacology, my takeaway really was that "understand" is a pretty relative term - biochemistry is insanely complex and medical chemistry is a pretty fuzzy thing when it boils down to it...
Is it a common misconception that the placebo effect is a 'trick'?
My experience says yes, it's a trick. As in, mind may be over matter but if it's a placebo it's worse than the real thing, or at least that's the connotation I had for the word.
(This post sponsored by MacOS' built-in dictionary)
People pretending to be journalists who need to clickbait to make money.
I wish the nytimes would stop making their headlines a question already.
It's universally established and accepted that placebo is a legitimate medical effect. That's one of the major purposes of control groups and double blind studies: many medicines don't make it to market because they have a positive effect LESS than placebo.
Clickbait more and more out of NYT. What a world.
More importantly, "trick" may also not mean what you think it does.
It's a rather interesting word, actually. Your interpretation seems to focus on the bad aspects, i. e. deception. But a trick can also be a clever shortcut. It might still involve some make-believe, but puts it in service of a good cause.
That's somewhat closer to the intended meaning here. And it's a perfectly valid way to describe the undeniable peculiarity of placebos.