It seems counterintuitive that a patient who is aware that they are being given a placebo pill would think that it actually would relief them of pain. 80 volunteers were split into two groups. One group would receive regular treatment to treat their I.B.S symptoms while the other group would only receive a sugar pill aka the placebo pill. Weeks go by and the group that knowingly took the marked placebo pill saw greater pain relief than the group who received regular treatment.

It’s quite shocking that this group of people who knew they took a pill that technically doesn’t do them any good or harm could experience greater relief than those who had treatment done to them. The mind is very powerful and self-healing is very much real. When patients are told by doctors that the pills work, the patients believe them and in a way self-heal themselves from pain. It does not take the pain away it merely reduces it.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/28/health/research/28perceptions.html

It seems counterintuitive that Americans would believe multivitamins are actually not effective and a waste of money. Nearly a third of Americans take multivitamin pills regularly with the idea that they are being conscious about their health. After careful studies though, it seems that multivitamins might actually be a scam. Are we saying that all multivitamins are not effective? No, we are saying that some multivitamins are not necessary because the food that you intake contains the necessary vitamins needed to survive and flourish. Why pay for a bottle of iron vitamin pills when you can get your iron intake from eating brown rice for dinner.

It seems counterintuitive that students who come from not so wealthy families would score roughly the same on the PISA than students who come from a wealthy family. This however is exactly the case for certain students across the world. To help put into perspective, Vietnam’s top decile families aka the wealthy families of Vietnam has students scoring an average of about 575 on the math portion of the PISA. While that is quite impressive, you have students from Shanghai-China from the second decile aka the second most poor families in Shanghai-China scoring about roughly the same score.

One would believe that the more money you have you could use it to help your child by getting them a tutor. What good does this do though if you have children from another country who are far less wealthier than you scoring the same as your child without the aid of a tutor. What does this say about a country’s schooling system or more importantly what does this say about your child’s education? How is it possible that being born into a wealthy family doesn’t give you the advantage to do better than those who do not have extra money to spend on luxuries like tutors.

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/pisa-wealth_n_4641669