Results for: placebo

Placebo, Are You There?

By Jean Brissonnet, translation by Harriet Hall Note: This was originally published as “Placebo, es-tu là?” in Science et pseudo-sciences 294, p. 38-48. January 2011. It came to my attention in the course of an e-mail correspondence with the editors of that magazine, where one of my own articles was published in French translation in January 2015. I thought this was the...

/ February 24, 2015

Using the fear of Ebola to promote the placebo legislation that is “right to try”

Libertarians and free market fundamentalists generally detest the FDA and want to dramatically decrease its power in the belief that the free market can guarantee the safety of drugs better than a government agency that requires strong scientific evidence of efficacy and safety before approval. Not surprisingly, they're at it again, this time in the service of promoting "right-to-try" laws and using...

/ November 2, 2014

Placebo Speculations

I have a new term to add to the English language, ebolasmacked, a derivative of the British term gobsmacked. Ebolasmacked defines my life the last few weeks since Ebola, or at last preparations for Ebola, have taken a huge bite out of my time with many interesting twists and turns. I think this is maybe the 9th outbreak (HIV, MERS, SARS, Legionella,...

/ October 17, 2014

Placebo effects are not the “power of positive thinking”

Here we go again. I once said that, in the wake of study after study that fails to find activity of various “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) beyond that of placebo, CAM advocates are now in the midst of a “rebranding” campaign in which CAM is said to work through the “power of placebo.” Personally, I’ve argued that in reality this new...

/ January 13, 2014

A Different Perspective: Placebo, SCAM, and Advertising

Summertime, time, time Child, the living’s easy. Fish are jumping out And the handicap, Lord Handicaps high, Lord so high ~ Janis Joplin It is summer. Time for the kids and the outside, not the computer. What follows is a summertime blog entry, for which I admit to feeling guilty for the comparatively little time I have spent on it, but as...

/ August 9, 2013

Placebo Effects

Coming Soon This page is under construction. We’re reviving this project over the summer of 2013. Please check back later this year. Meanwhile, see the index for reference page index that are more developed.     Topic Editor: Sections: Topic Overview Index of SBM Posts Outside Resources Summary of Key Research Topic Overview Index of SBM Posts Do Physicians Really Believe in...

/ June 13, 2013

Behold the spin! What a new survey of placebo prescribing really tells us

One of the recurring topics here at SBM is the idea of the placebo: What it is, what it isn’t, and how it complicates our evaluation of the scientific evidence. One my earliest lessons after I started following this blog (I was a reader long before I was a writer) was that I didn’t understand placebos well enough to even describe them...

/ March 28, 2013

The Placebo Narrative

Science journalist Sharon Begley wrote a recent piece in The Saturday Evening Post about Placebo Power. The piece, while generally better than the typical popular writing on placebos, still falls into the standard placebo narrative that is ubiquitous in the mainstream media. The article is virtually identical to a dozen other articles I have read on placebo effects in the popular press,...

/ January 16, 2013

The Placebo Gene?

A study recently published in PLOS one (Catechol-O-Methyltransferase val158met Polymorphism Predicts Placebo Effect in Irritable Bowel Syndrome) purports to have found a gene variant that correlates strongly with a placebo response in irritable bowel syndrome (IBS). The study is small and preliminary, but the results are interesting and do raise important questions about placebo responses. Researchers are increasingly trying to tease apart...

/ October 24, 2012

Can we finally just say that acupuncture is nothing more than an elaborate placebo?

I realize that Steve blogged about this study earlier in the week, but since I also commented on this particular study as my not-so-super-secret alter ego, I figured it rated a place on SBM as well. I emphasized different aspects of the study and tried to quantify exactly why, under even the most charitable interpretation of the study possible, the effects are...

/ September 16, 2012