Question

The 2008 JAMA article “Commercial Features of Placebo and Therapeutic Efficacy” studied the effect of the price of medicine on pain relief. The researchers gave 41 subjects a fake pill (placebo) that cost $2.50 per pill, and 41 subjects a placebo that cost $0.10 per pill. They tested the subject response to pain from electrical shocks.

The researchers found that the group taking the expensive pill had less pain than the group taking the cheap pill (P < 0.001).

State the null hypothesis for this study. Were the results significant?

Answer 1

Null Hypothesis: response to pain from electrical shocks is equal for both type of patients.

P-value is given to be less than 0.001, so at 5% level of significance, p-value < Level of significance. So we reject the Null Hypothesis.

Therefore the result is significant at 5% level of significance.