The percentage of new pharmaceutical products that fail their effectiveness trials is growing. The culprit is the placebo effect, which appears to be stronger than in years past. If a drug cannot provide relief significantly better than a sugar pill, it won’t go on the market.

The upshot is fewer new medicines available to ailing patients and more financial woes for the beleaguered pharmaceutical industry. Last November, a new type of gene therapy for Parkinson's disease, championed by the Michael J. Fox Foundation, was abruptly withdrawn from Phase II trials after unexpectedly tanking against placebo. A stem-cell startup called Osiris Therapeutics got a drubbing on Wall Street in March, when it suspended trials of its pill for Crohn's disease, an intestinal ailment, citing an "unusually high" response to placebo. Two days later, Eli Lilly broke off testing of a much-touted new drug for schizophrenia when volunteers showed double the expected level of placebo response.

It's not only trials of new drugs that are crossing the futility boundary. Some products that have been on the market for decades, like Prozac, are faltering in more recent follow-up tests.

Wired takes a look at how the placebo effect works, and the various reasons newer drugs don’t compete as well with the mind’s ability to affect our bodies. Link -via Boing Boing

Previously at Neatorama: Prozac: No Better Than Placebo?

Kaitlin at Whisk Kid made this cake as a treat for the eye as well as the palate! The recipe is posted with the warning that you will need more frosting than you think. Link -via Digg

Attaining the status of Eagle Scout is a noteworthy achievement, and is often an early sign that a man is going places with his life. Do you recall which high-achievers were Eagle Scouts when they were young? That’s the subject of today’s Lunchtime Quiz at mental_floss. I scored seven out of twelve. Surely you can do better! http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/32508

Super Tremendous has a collection of ten videos that will make you giggle. There are people who sound like machinery, cartoon characters, or just plain weird when they let their hair down and laugh. Of course, "Dad at Comedy Barn" (previously at Neatorama) is included, but he is only ranked at number two. Link

Many folks built small bomb shelters to survive a nuclear attack during the Cold War, but others took the idea to great lengths. Good Magazine has a pictorial taken from the book Waiting for the End of the World by Richard Ross, in which you’ll see the interiors of shelters meant to house people waiting out the apocalypse. From Switzerland to Texas, you’ll see how people prepare for the end of the world as we know it. The underground dining room shown is in Sanpete Country, Utah. Link -via Dark Roasted Blend

You can probably guess the number one, and maybe number two daredevils of the past and present, but have you heard about the 63-year-old woman who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel?

63-year-old Annie Edson Taylor became the first person to successfully go over Niagara Falls in 1901, when she took the plunge inside a wooden barrel. A schoolteacher by trade, Taylor had found herself in financial trouble, and conceived the stunt in the hope that it would gain her fame and fortune. She had a specially designed barrel filled with padding, and after testing it with an ordinary house cat, went over the Horseshoe Falls section of Niagara herself on October 24, 1901. Amazingly, she survived the 173-foot plunge with little more than a small gash on her head.

You can see videos of some of the more recent daredevils in this list. Link

Lucky is a turtle living in Petaluma, California. On July 31st, Lucky was attacked by what his owner Sally Pyne believes was a raccoon. A veterinarian amputated what was left of Lucky’s front legs. But Lucky can walk again, since the vet put stacked plastic chair sliders under the front of his shell, allowing his back legs to push him along without catching his shell against the ground. Link (with video) -via Buzzfeed

Scientists found the fossil of an ancient squid of the species Belemnotheutis antiquus at a dig near Trowbridge, England, when they reopened an archaeological site that had been abandoned for 170 years. Inside there was a one-inch black ink sac that still contained ink granules. As an experiment, researchers ground up a small portion of the ink and dissolved it in an ammonia solution. Then they used the sample to draw a picture of what the squid may have once looked like! Excavation leader Dr. Phil Wilby said,

"It is difficult to imagine how you can have something as soft and sloppy as an ink sac fossilised in three dimension, still black, and inside a rock that is 150 million years old.

"The structure is similar to ink from a modern squid so we can write with it. I suppose we could theoretically use it for food colouring, too, but I don't think I will try tasting it."

A sample of the ink has been sent to Yale University for further analysis. Link -via the Presurfer

(image credit: BMPS)

When you see a town like Tightwad, Missouri, you have to wonder how that ever came about.

This small town got its name from an incident in which a store owner cheated a postal worker by charging him an extra fifty cents for a better watermelon. Certainly they are much more hospitable these days, though it appears they all are still pretty tight with their money: none of the families counted in the 2006 census were living below the poverty line. And most of them keep their money in the Tightwad Bank.

Read about twenty other strangely-named places and the stories behind them. Link -via J-Walk Blog

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Helen Keller and her instructor Annie Sullivan explain how Keller learned to speak in this 1930 Vitaphone newsreel. -via the Presurfer

David Thorne, who once paid a bill with a picture of a spider and crashed a party now gives the office manager an idea about washing coffee cups. The email trail will no doubt remind you of situations you’ve encountered in your workplace.

Due to there being an unprecedented twelve coffee cups needing to be cleaned in the sink at work, it is understandable that Shannon would be outraged by this intrusion on her facebook and looking out the window time.

Though kitchen duties may be an expected part of her job role, there is no reason why everyone should not reschedule work/client commitments and help out to ensure Shannon's social networking and looking out the window time is not interrupted.

Check out Shannon’s time sheet in the sidebar as well. Link -via reddit

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A school trip to the zoo! What fun for the kids! You can make one of these automatons yourself with a kit for £8, plus £2 for postage. Link -via b3ta

Arjan Verweij collects dice of all kinds, including this Egyptian pair made of bone which is around 2,000 years old. See other ancient dice made from ivory, lead, horn, wood, bronze, and stone. Dice are also categorized by geography and by configuration. Link -via J-Walk Blog

RTOOT stands for Really Terrible Orchestra Of the Triangle. Membership is open to anyone in the Raleigh/Durham area who is not competent enough to play with other orchestras.

Who are we? The Really Terrible Orchestra Of the Triangle exists to encourage those who have been prevented from playing music together with others, either through lack of talent or some other factor, to rehearse and perform in an ensemble of similarly afflicted players. From a humble beginning in May 2008, we have grown into a 75-piece symphony orchestra worthy of its role as one of the premiere cultural gems of the Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill NC (USA) region known as the Research Triangle. Except that we’re pretty terrible. Terrible, in the French sense of Des Enfants Terribles ... in that while we haven’t made fun of Bach or Mozart yet, we certainly have had a naughty excursion or two with Strauss and Tchaikovsky.

Some snippets of RTOOT’s performances are available on YouTube. Link -via Everlasting Blort

Angelo Cammarata is finally retiring. The 95-year-old bartender has been serving customers at Cammarata's in Pittsburgh for 77 years. That puts him in the Guinness Book of World Records as the longest-serving bartender ever. The family bar has been sold and will be under new management in a few weeks. The new owners asked Cammarata to stay on, but he is looking forward to taking it easy.

"Camm," as people call him, started serving beer at his father's North Side grocery the moment Prohibition ended at midnight on April 7, 1933. The memory is as clear to him as the strike of the library clock that signaled it was time to start opening bottles of Fort Pitt. His immigrant father built a bar on that site in 1935 and Angelo kept working there, taking a break to serve in the Navy in World War II.

Cammarata says the work kept him young. Link -via Fark

(image credit: Bob Batz Jr./Post-Gazette)