I think the reason they use placebos that produce similar side effects is so the doctors examining the patients do not immediately know which ones are on placebo. Also, I would not have expected placebo ingredients to be published in the journal article. Those articles are meant to be concise and to the point, and not include such extraneous data. I would be very surprised to learn that the ingredients did not even need to be disclosed upon submission for approval by the FDA, however.
Is there some way other researchers can discover the ingredients of placebos other than whatever may or may not be described in a journal article? The problems with the placebos described in the post were found only because the articles describing those studies did list the ingredients in the placebos.
Yeah, this is a good point, that previously used placebos may be found to have noticeable effects later. Maybe I read the original article wrong or too quickly, but I got the impression that the author believed the ingredients were purposefully excluded with intent to deceive.
The author does believe this. He's attributing motives to people who didn't tell him their motives. This isn't a very clever practice. But, whatever the intent, omitting information like this will have undesirable consequences.I got the impression that the author believed the ingredients were purposefully excluded with intent to deceive.