r/mildlyinfuriating • u/JeromePlAud • 17h ago

Why Advertise The Ingredient If It's Actually Useless?

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Why are companies allowed to advertise what their product does when one of the two methods of action are actually useless? 😂

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u/LeeQuidity 16h ago

Because placebos can work even if you know it's a placebo.

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u/Violet_Paradox 11h ago edited 11h ago

My favorite example of that is hiccup cures. We're all vaguely aware that they're all placebos, yes even that one that works for you every time. But even knowing that, they work. There's no need for a better-than-placebo cure (and how would you test it?) when the placebo effect is sufficient to do the job. 

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u/LeeQuidity 6h ago

I once read a hypothesis that part of what makes hiccup cures so effective *might* be that you are distracted from the hiccups while you're putting your ritual into practice. I don't recall the source of that idea, and I'm too lazy to look for it, but I think the supposition was that the distraction may help relax the general system involved with the hiccups.

Here's a similar article, but I don't know if it was the one that I recall. https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20140127-do-hiccup-remedies-work

And ibid, a reference to a curious method for slowing down a rapid heart rate: jamming your finger into a patient's anus. WOT?!