"The evidence for pill colour impacting placebo effects gets flimsier the more you examine it"

Looking at the evidence for one of the things that tends to get quoted as a proven fact in discussions of placebo effect:

"The BMJ tries to walk a middle ground. The review acknowledges that the evidence is inconsistent while still suggesting that colour might influence the effectiveness of a drug. It ends with a call for more research. And while it’s plausible that colour could change how patients perceive a treatment, the data don’t show a reliable and meaningful clinical effect. The studies that seem to support the idea are small, weak, and flawed. The more robust trials find little of interest."

https://www.skeptic.org.uk/2024/11/...ffects-gets-flimsier-the-more-you-examine-it/

 

… until the bigger ones want a certain outcome and you start getting big and weak ? Or big and what term do they use for could be bias.

I guess it’s harder to build that [bias] in if you’ve got a test where because all you are changing is the colour of the pill you’ve no excuse not to be able to double-blind like the licensing norms for drugs/most other areas that aren’t therapist-delivered

And it’s better probably than the placebo tests because the other option is a drug likely to do something so you’ve got the trial effect of the staff watching out ‘for that’

I wonder what the size of the placebo is when it’s just placebos being given out and at best everyone play-acting to different degrees of convincing ness but don’t really as far as I’m aware have an ‘interest’ in the outcome, unless one of them is planning a career in yellow pill therapy

 

Perhaps we should focus on what we can be sure actually works: proper treatment, solid evidence, and good science?

 

Don't give 'em ideas!

 

I wish they would change the color of B12 tablets so they don't look like trazodone pills. I've mistaken them twice and got a very different effect after it was too late.