13 Things That Don't Make Sense: The Most Baffling Scientific Mysteries of Our Time

by Michael Brooks

It all kicks off with the pain-racked patients receiving something like a morphine drip. Later, after the patients have begun to associate the morphine with pain relief, you can subtly substitute saline solution for the morphine. The patients don't know their"morphine" is nothing but salt water and, thanks to the placebo effect, they report that their pain medication is still working fine. That is strange in itself, but not as strange as the next twist makes things. Without saying anything to the patients, you put another drug into the drip: naloxone, which blocks the action of morphine. Even though there is no morphine going into the patients' bodies, naloxone still stops the pain relief in its tracks; the patients, oblivious to all that has gone on, now report that they are in discomfort again. The only plausible explanation is that the drug that blocks morphine's pain-relieving power also blocks the saline's (placebo-based) pain-relieving power. Which means the saline really was doing something—it wasn't all in the patient's imagination. Or at least it means that imagination can have a physiological effect.