University of Michigan researchers say they are investigating the "placebo effect," in which pills with no medicinal value work in some people.

Placebos are used in studies to demonstrate whether a specific treatment is of value. Usually some patients in the research are given the medication being studied and others, a placebo.

But little is known about the types of people who tend to respond positively to placebos.

The University of Michigan Health System study involved people suffering from fibromyalgia -- a type of chronic pain typically involving tenderness, stiffness and fatigue.

"There is substantial evidence that the placebo effect has strong biological underpinnings, and that some individuals are more likely than others to demonstrate this effect," said Dr. Daniel Clauw, director of the U-M Chronic Pain and Fatigue Research Center.

"This study suggests individuals with greater hour-to-hour and day-to-day variability in their pain may be more likely to be placebo responders," said Clauw, senior author of the paper.

It is not clear if the findings are only present in fibromyalgia, or may also be seen in other chronic pain conditions, the researchers said.

The study appears in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

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Man these word-slicers are everywhere. Lessee...the placebo effect occurs when it is suggested to someone they are being given an effective treatment (such as a pill) when they are not (such as a sugar-pill instead of an anti-aids pill or soemthing).

So now they are saying not that such suggestions cause biological effects, but that the whole mechanism has biological underpinnings, whatever that means.

Of course it begs the question why the condition which responds to the placebo exists at all if its response to a non-cure in recovering has biological underpinnings.

Maybe the study is not complete; if so, that's good, because the findings are holier than my gramma's nylons...

In other news, BS still rules: "The journal Nature said patent 6,960,975 was granted Nov. 1 to Boris Volfson of Huntington, Ind., for a space vehicle propelled by a superconducting shield that alters the curvature of space-time outside the craft in a way that counteracts gravity.

One of the main theoretical arguments against anti-gravity is that it implies the availability of unlimited energy.

"If you design an anti-gravity machine, you've got a perpetual-motion machine," Robert Park of the American Physical Society told Nature.

Park said the action shows patent examiners are being duped by false science. "

I wanna see the reduction to practice, I do...

A