In a double-blind experiment, neither the individuals nor the researchers know who belongs to the control group and the experimental group. [1]
The placebo effect (Latin placebo, "I shall please"), also known as non-specific effects and the subject-expectancy effect, is the phenomenon that a patient's symptoms can be alleviated by an otherwise ineffective treatment, since the individual expects or believes that it will work. [2]
In the opposite effect, a patient who disbelieves in a treatment may experience a worsening of symptoms. This nocebo effect (nocebo translates from Latin as "I shall harm") can be measured in the same way as the placebo effect, e.g., when members of a control group receiving an inert substance report a worsening of symptoms. [3]
Long-term Space Station Resident Syndrome is the transformation of perception of reality that occurs when being in a spacecraft over a longer period of time. Working on every day's routine of checking instruments, recording data in disorienting, weightless slow-motion and observing an unvarying image outside the spacecraft corresponding to a black field with white dots can cause a distortion of observation. While life is being very monotonous during waking, sleeping on the other hand, and therefore dreaming, becomes the time to have dinner with friends, play with one's children and make love to one's wife. For this reason a long stay in outer space can reverse the experience of consciousness from waking into dreaming, undergoing all that happens during waking as a dream and all that happens during sleeping as the realistic present. [4]
These windows on windows are double blind. They are non-opening windows on non-opening windows. They investigate how we perceive reality and to what extend we are capable of determining truth, misinformation, trained behavior and objectiveness in our current information-driven society.
