The “Toyota Effect”

While I’m not an expert, all these stories about Toyota get me thinking about prescriptions. Is the rapid acceleration caused by the car or the driver? Is the perception that it could happen contributing to it happening?

From an outside perspective, it seems to be a mix of correlation, causation, and the placebo effect. Here are some definitions from dictionary.com:

Correlation = the degree to which two or more attributes or measurements on the same group of elements show a tendency to vary together.

Placebo Effect = The beneficial effect in a patient following a particular treatment that arises from the patient’s expectations concerning the treatment rather than from the treatment itself.

In the medical world, it’s important to understand the differences between these three. Let’s say you start taking a new medication and feel sick to your stomach. Is it caused by the medication? Does it happen every time you take the medication but not related? Or did you expect to feel sick and therefore do?

People often don’t pause to think about this and test the hypothesis.

[See older post on price and placebo effect.]

Causation = anything that produces an effect.