I'm not totally familiar with the placebo process. Are there anyways you could throw off the process like having the placebo doctors be really mean and the drug doctors be really nice?
Is everything completely randomized in terms of people that are taking the drugs? IE if there was a magic formula for determining that an individual is more likely to respond positively to placebos could they pick those people?
Double blinding is supposed to prevent this. Nobody who sees the patient should know which patients are taking the placebo (person A puts either placebos or treatments in bottle X, person B gives patient X the bottle).
Yes, it seems that other people are more susceptible to placebo than others.
It is likely there are portions of the population, who have a better response to a placebo than to the actual drug - but! - the reverse is also a likely scenario. I.e. there are people who don't respond to a placebo and show a strong therapeutic response to an actual drug.
Hence, if one is capable, one should always have an active attitude to ones treatment - what works for someone else, may not work for you, and vice versa.
I hope someone can dig out the reference to this... I read this from a reputable source, but damn if I can remember from where anymore.
