Dr. Free-Ride: Do you know what a placebo is?

Elder offspring: A placebo is something that you think works but doesn’t really work.

Dr. Free-Ride: Sometimes when people are not feeling well, like, if you’re sick and bed and want some medicine — you’ve asked me for medicine before when you were sick. Why do you ask for medicine?

Younger offspring: Because I think it will make me better.

Dr. Free-Ride: You think it will make you not sick anymore.

Younger offspring: Mmm-hmm.

Dr. Free-Ride: And sometimes you get the medicine and almost immediately you think maybe you feel better. Although I guess sometimes you say, “This medicine is not working well enough! Give me something else!”

Younger offspring: No I don’t.

Dr. Free-Ride: You don’t? Maybe I’m thinking of some other sick child. Remember that bug you had not too long ago that gave you a couple days when you couldn’t keep any food down?

Younger offspring: Don’t speak of it on the internet.

Elder offspring: Everyone vomits at least once in their life.

Dr. Free-Ride: Is that true?

Elder offspring: I think so.

Younger offspring: But still, don’t talk about me vomiting.

Dr. Free-Ride: OK. Hypothetically, if someone were sick in bed and the felt really bad because they’d been vomiting, and they needed to start feeling better so they could go back to school and soccer and all of that, and their mother offered them some food and said, “This is the food that I was always offered when I was sick as a child, and it helped me feel better,” … let’s say like a baked custard or something. Hypothetically, do you think that sick kid would feel better from eating those special foods?

Younger offspring: Yeah.

Dr. Free-Ride: Do you think they might even associate eating those special foods with feeling healthier?

Younger offspring: Yeah.

Dr. Free-Ride: When I’ve been sick, just thinking about baked custard can make me start to feel better, because it always seemed to help when I was recovering from a bug as a kid. And I’m not sure it’s actually because of the custard.

Elder offspring: Really?

Dr. Free-Ride: I think sometimes what makes people feel better isn’t so much about the particular medicine they’re taking or food they’re eating, but sometimes it’s because of what they expect to feel — maybe because of what someone has told them, or how they remember it from last time they were sick.

Elder offspring: What does this have to do with placebos?

Dr. Free-Ride: A good question! My hunch is that sometimes what makes you feel better is that a parent is taking care of you. They’re bringing you something and hoping that it will help you feel better, and they’re comforting you, and reassuring you that you won’t be sick forever. Sometimes just having that attention, I think, can help you feel better.

Elder offspring: And placebos?

Dr. Free-Ride: Maybe sometimes when people are given a medicine — or something they think is a medicine — what makes them feel better is that someone is taking care of them. Or do you think that’s just silly?

Younger offspring: I don’t know.

Dr. Free-Ride: Do you have any strategies for figuring out whether the thing you get that seems to be making you feel better actually is — whether it’s the food or the medicine that’s making you feel better or just the care and attention you’re getting along with the food or medicine?

Elder offspring: Give it to another sick person and be really mean to them.

Dr. Free-Ride: Be really mean to them?! My goodness! So, the same compound but different treatment from the caretaker bringing you the compound, huh?

Younger offspring: Yeah, to see if it’s mostly the attention that makes you feel better.

Dr. Free-Ride: So next time both of you are sick, I should do a little experiment where I flip a coin and I’m kind to one of you and mean to the other when I deliver the medicine or the special food?

Elder offspring: Oh yes!

Dr. Free-Ride: You have a lot of faith in the coin flip.

Elder offspring: I call tails.

Younger offspring: Do it on [Dr. Free-Ride's better half]!

Dr. Free-Ride: You would have me experiment on your other parent?

Younger offspring: Yeah!

Dr. Free-Ride: That’s so mean!

Elder offspring: Unless [Dr. Free-Ride's better half] gets lucky on the coin toss.

Dr. Free-Ride: How they actually test compounds that they think might be effective as medicines is they’ll have some of the patients get the pill that really has the medicine in it and others of the patients get a pill that looks just like the pill that has the medicine, only without the medicine in it. And actually the care providers that are giving them the pills don’t know which patients are getting the real medicine and which patients are getting the pills that don’t have medicine in them. So they give them all the same care and the same attention, and then they compare to see who felt better.

Elder offspring: Yeah, but we don’t have fake medicine.

Younger offspring: And you’re not a nurse.

Dr. Free-Ride: That’s true, I’m not. I’m not even a medical doctor who can prescribe medicines. I’m a doctor of philosophy. I can help you with your metaphysical problems, but not so much with your physical problems.

Elder offspring: I think detangler could be a placebo.

Younger offspring: Huh?

Elder offspring: Maybe it doesn’t actually help comb tangles out of hair any better than water.

Younger offspring: So we should have one person use detangler and another person use water and compare.

Elder offspring: I think we need to set up a spray bottle of water that smells like detangler so that the people being combed out don’t know whether they’re getting detangler or not and then compare.

Dr. Free-Ride: Awesome! I think we need to test that.

Younger offspring: Do it on [Dr. Free-Ride's better half]!

Dr. Free-Ride: You know what, you’re a little too willing to subject your parents to experiments for the sake of science.