I was alerted by a Groklaw to an MSNBC article on the Ig Nobel awards. I really appreciate the folks who do these as it really is an award that truely extends the bounds of human knowledge.
The award for Medicine made me think that it would be interesting to do a 4-way double-blind study with a non-generic drug, its generic equivalent, and the non-generic in a different form. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the effect of marketing and price. High and low price the real thing and the imitaion. What if it turns out that price improves the performace of the drug, regardless of composition. Would this make the ethical drug companies more ethical if they raised prices?