A journey to the underscience - the plots of Zvika Haganan and the placebo effect / Roi Tsezana

The gardener claimed he had a full day's work for two people and finished it in an hour alone

We have a small garden and there are weeds in it. Oh, it has it, it has it, it has it. We didn't want it to be talked about, and so we invited Zvika the gardener to our house, about whom all the neighbors sing hymns and praises, to come and inspect the forest that had inadvertently grown on the outskirts of our house and estimate how much it would cost to mow the entire area. He shook my hand, complimented the lady on the diamond ring and captured both of our hearts. When he finished, he surveyed the garden with skillful eyes, smiled broadly and made it clear to us that it was a full day's hard work, with an assistant and advanced mowing tools. In total, he asked for a thousand shekels, on the table and prepaid. Expensive, but for a full day's work, what can you say?

So we paid.

And indeed, the very next morning, like a used Swiss watch, Zvika the gardener landed in front of our door with shears and without the helper, who had been ill since last night, but armed with contagious cheerfulness and a melodious whistle. I locked myself inside the house in front of the computer and only my wife stayed to watch the play. She likes to watch the gardeners work. Nature and all that. But after a little while I heard a cry of distress.

"Roi! Come quickly!"

I rushed to the garden, and found it mowed to my satisfaction, when Zvika was already getting ready to put on his shirt.

"What happened?" I pulled the upset woman aside.

"He promised us a full day's work," to the apprehension in my ears with fury, "and finally finished in less than an hour! I want you to enter it!”

I examined Zvika the gardener carefully. He had cubes in his stomach.

"I'll take care of him." I promised my partner that she would live. "I want you to wait for me at home, it might get ugly."

She took one last angry look at Zvika, caressed the diamond ring - she always does that when she's nervous - left the garden and slammed the house door behind her. I turned to the guy again, but he got ahead of me.

"Do you know Professor Dan Arieli?" he asked, leaning lightly on the garden bench.

"I heard about him." I said, "But—"

"He did a very interesting study a few years ago," Zvika interrupted me. "On the placebo effect. You know, when people are healthy just by being Think who received medicine, even though they actually only received a dummy pill that has nothing but sugar in it. It has been known for a long time that the strength of this effect is also affected by other factors. If the person giving the fake drug wears a white coat and calls himself a doctor, for example, the placebo is more likely to work. Dan Arieli discovered that there is another factor that determines the strength of the placebo's action."

"Listen, you took too much money - " I tried to intervene.

"He gave 82 subjects pills for pain relief, which were of course a complete placebo. They only contained sugar." Tzvika snapped at me with ease. "He told half of the people that the pills cost $2.5 each. He told the other half that their price was only a tenth of a dollar. His subjects took the pill, and then underwent a standard pain test, in which they received electric currents of varying strengths, and had to rate how much pain they felt. And do you know what their age was?"

"I don't care," I said stiffly. "I want to talk to you about—"

"They found that the people who believed they had received the expensive painkiller felt significantly less pain than those who received the supposedly cheap drug. So now it turns out that people's feelings are also influenced by their belief in the price they paid for the pill." He was silent for a moment, then casually added, "Either mowing a garden, or— ."

Wait a minute," I objected, "a placebo doesn't work if the recipients know it's a placebo. Why are you telling me all this? Now I know you demanded too much, and I want some of the money back.”

"You didn't let me finish." said casually. "I was going to say that the same effect also applies to, for example, engagement rings. Especially glass ones." He surveyed my wide eyes, and added, "I really hope you don't force me to get into a discussion about the whole placebo effect with your wife at the next visit as well."

"Are we inviting you again?" I mumbled awkwardly.

"Sure, my silence is worth a lot," he smiled, "and I can assure you - it will be expensive too."

Roi Cezana is finishing a doctorate in nanotechnology at the Technion, writes on popular science topics and is the owner of the blog "Other Science"