ShmoopTube

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And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by sugarpills, the

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prescription of choice for lazy MD's all over the world here's our question [Doctor gives patient a sugarpill]

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subjects in a drug trial receive sugar pills and a blind control group reported

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experiencing effects of the drug they're said to be demonstrating which of the

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following and here your potential answers ...[mumbling]

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...All right a lot of these answers don't seem half bad if

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you're experiencing positive medicinal effects from the sugar pills one could [Person riding a unicorn over a rainbow]

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call you delusional but delusions are actually a pretty serious byproduct of

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psychosis in which a person is unable to tell what's real from what's imagined [Patient holding a bottle of pills next to doctor]

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and that's not exactly what we're describing here possible correlation

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also sounds right a correlation after all is a mutual relationship or

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connection between two or more things someone can think that a sugar pill [Man stood beside a blue car]

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cleverly disguised as medicine is making them stronger, that doesn't make it a

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correlation though it might mean they have some kryptonian DNA there... Alright and [Man stood wearing a superman t-shirt]

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counterbalancing with an experimental design ensures that all possible orders

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of variables are presented to different groups of participants in order to

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ensure that order doesn't affect outcomes like imagine if you ask one

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group that they like sugar pills or dirt pills more then ask the second group if [Man asking members of the public if they like sugar or dirt pills]

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they like dirt pills or sugar pills more, in case you know the first group

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but only chose sugar pills because you said it first... Oh and the actual

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phenomenon of how the order of something may affect an outcome yeah that's called

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the order effect - Which means it isn't our answer either. That leaves us with A the

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placebo effect well the placebo effect is a psychological phenomenon that

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occurs when participants think they're taking an active drug because they

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believe the drug is working they react to the placebo in the same way that they [Man racing around a athletics track]

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would react to real medication, so if you give someone a sugar pill and say it's a

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sleeping pill maybe they'll report feeling sleepy but if you tell them it's [Girl falls asleep on a stack of books]

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a super strength pill and they lift a car or something well you may want to

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look into buying tights and a cape...[Man lifts a car and turns into Superman]

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