I found that the most interesting topic in this chapter for me was the section on Placebos. I thought it was fascinating, and slightly scary, that the placebo effect can be just as real as those of actual drugs. One thing that really surprised me however was the fact that placebos, like real medication, is more powerful on higher doses. This presents what I think could be a very interesting opportunity for future medicine. The simple idea that you should be getting better makes you better. Of course this wouldn't work for everything but there are some arguments that it is already useful. For example some researchers maintain that up to 80% of the effectiveness of antidepressants is due to the placebo effect. On another subject though, I thought that the examples of experiments in the Peer Review section were informative as well as being an interesting study tool.
