The Placebo Effect

For a long time here I've been telling people that the placebo effect is largely a sham - I've said in the past that "placebo effect" is merely shorthand for uncontrolled variables. When asked to back this statement up, I've had to say well, you kind of have to have listened to the last six years of the Skeptics With A K podcast, because Mike Hall on that podcast has talked about it a lot and presented evidence that the papers purporting to show a powerful placebo effect don't actually say that. But the problem is that this particular podcast is fairly badly indexed, which is quite deliberate - the hosts don't claim to be experts in anything outside their field of knowledge, and while they try to back up what they say with real evidence, they don't want anybody to be citing their show as an authority. So I can't point to specific episodes, and who wants to listen to a 45-minute podcast just for one point anyway? You should go subscribe to it, though. It's really good.

So I've never really been able to justify my statement that the placebo effect doesn't really exist. Until now. Mike has started to write up what he has learned in the British Skeptic magazine. So here you go, the first instalment of what he says should be an ongoing series:

Much ado about nothing: evidence of the ‘powerful placebo’ is far from convincing

via International Skeptics Forum https://ift.tt/3xuoCVp