Comment by sanderjd

4 hours ago

What is "noceboeffect"?

In drug trials if a person knows about the side effects of a drug (e.g. nausea, headaches) they may get them even if they were in the control group.

I'm not sure how it applies here though because alternative therapies rarely state expected negative effects.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo

Sometimes called non-cebo/none-cebo though I avoid that as starting with “nonce” can be a trigger for the easily befuddled and offended (“Could you be experiencing a noncebo type effect?”, “WHAT DID YOU CALL ME?!”).

As the wikipedia page points out, this is not to be confused with knowcebo, which sounds the same. This is where information leaks break blinding measures and render test results less (or completely not) meaningful.

Just like something that has no direct physical/chemical/biological mechanism to improve your condition can still do so if you believe it will (the placebo effect), it can also worsen your condition if you believe it will - that's the nocebo effect.