What does "placebo" and controlled experiments mean Exactly ?

Question

in this statment;

"You will need to try it on a placebo of different things"

what does it mean? ?

it is about controlled groups

Answer 1

That statement doesn't seem to make sense... a placebo is a dummy drug, with no pharmacological effect. I think it would make sense if the word placebo was replaced with plethora - meaning overabundance; a lot.

A controlled experiment, for example is a group which receives a real drug; and the control group to compare results against, would be the group receiving the placebo drug.

Answer 2

Vivian L. gave you a pretty good explanation. Those people who were given the Placebo (fake drug) may or may not react to it. If they react to the Placebo then we know that it's not a real reaction because they never took the real drug...just sugar pills. Those people who take the real drug also don't know if they took a placebo or a real drug, so any reaction will be as the result of the real drug they took. The fact that neither group knows whether they took a placebo or the real drug is what makes it a "Controlled Experiment".

Answer 3

I can't make sense of it in the statement you quote.

It is, as the first person said a dummy, such as a sugar pill. The idea is to compare which is more effective - the sugar pill or the real drug - the person being treated must not know or guess which they were given.

Answer 4

A placebo is a pretend prescribed drug, often you are not told it is not a true drug because your mind can play tricks, if you think a drug works then quite often a non-drug placebo can be taken by the patient with exactly the same effects as the real thing.

Controlled experiments simply means the medical people select a total of say ten patients in all but give five the real drug and the other five the placebo, i believe i have been subject to such placebo treatment my self and quite frankly i'm very glad.

Answer 5

That statement makes no sense.

Answer 6

a placebo in medical terms is i think like a dummy drug, so say if you are depressed they might give you a dummy drug to make you think you are happier.

Answer 7

Let me give you an example, I'm not really good at explaining things, but I'll give it a go.

If scientists have made a new drug that will cure insomnia or the symptoms. They will get people to test it out on. They may get three people and they will give two people the fake drug and one person the real drug which will actually cure insomnia. But none of them know who has the real and wo has the fake. The placebo effect is designed to make sure that the drug actually works and people are not just sayin they feel better because they have a drug in them.

Hope I explained this good. =]