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Comment by lukan | Hacker News Reader

No one ever said homeophaty has no effect. But there is no evidence it works beyond being a placebo.. which is what I suspect happened also in your case, whether your consciouss mind believes in homeopathy or not. You gave it a chance, so some parts of your mind decided it will magically work, so it did.

Oh and unlike homeopathy, leeches have a real effect besides placebo.

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placebo is not that effective

Do you assume that, or did you read about it in studies?

I read about it in studies!

see, for example:

Hohenschurz-Schmidt D, Phalip J, Chan J, et al. 2024 Placebo analgesia in physical and psychological interventions: Systematic review and meta-analysis of three-armed trials.

“The average short-term placebo effect was small,”

Strijkers RHW, Schreijenberg M, Gerger H, Koes BW, Chiarotto A. 2021 Effectiveness of placebo interventions for patients with nonspecific low back pain: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“probably not clinically relevant.”

Placebo is by definition highly subjective, and not even in the sense of one's opinion, but rather that it works or not at a subject level.

Yes, it is. People have gotten better after having been told by someone in a labcoat that what they're taking is a placebo.

if you referring to Kaptchuk TJ, Friedlander E, Kelley JM, et al. 2010, that study still involved some deception[1]. See also Locher C, Frey Nascimento A, Kirsch I, et al. 2017

[1]: https://sciencebasedmedicine.org/placebo-effects-without-dec...

That wouldn't explain the difference in effect between the antibiotics and the homeopathy

Why not?

Assuming the placebo makes the mind activate the immune system in a proper way, eliminating the root cause of the inflammation, while the antibiotics only kill the bacteria while it is active, so no lasting effect. Bacterias that makes a sour throat are very common and will just come back if not kept in place by body defense mechanisms.

Key is a healthy and active immune system. The way placebos work, is apparently they support that.

Because the antibiotics would also elicit the placebo response

Not necessarily, as placebo is working on the mind. And it works differently depending on the context, what the person knows, experience and expects. It is apparently quite complicated. So in this case it is even possible, that the original cause was not bacteria, but a virus, so the antibiotics only helping as placebo, while actually disturbing the body, preventing the immune system from developing immunity.

Or it was a specific bacteria, where the body finally developed immunity from and it was just coincidence that he took homeopathy before. Impossible to tell with the given information.

Yes, that's what I mean: you need a further explanation beyond the placebo effect for why there's a different effect of the antibiotics and homeopathy, e.g. the antibiotics having their own negative effects, as you suggest, or some other confounding variable.

I'm just saying that the placebo effect, by itself, doesn't explain why homeopathy would be more effective than antibiotics

Oh and I am saying placebo effect is a psychological effect. Really, really hard to quantify by definition. So placebo and a placebo ain't the same thing. It depends what the person connects with it deep down in their minds. So for whatever complicated reasons the homeopathic placebo alone might have been more effective than the placebo effect of the antibiotics plus the antibiotic effect. (Maybe because their mother recommended it, and mother is connected to deep sense of trust and care)

Still, all speculation of course. I also don't rule out the possibility that (some) homeopathics do have a real efffct because of undiscovered quantum fields (whatever) and hard to quantify. But current studies do imply strongly otherwise. And I consider them sugar. But I do occasionally take some if people I like give them to me with a genuine feeling of care. That effects my mind.

Yes, I see, fair enough. It's an interesting thought about different placebos being more or less effective. I've often wondered whether traditional faith healing methods might have evolved to be more effective at eliciting a placebo response, at least within that cultural context, but never looked into it

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