Concept
Placebo
Overview
A placebo ( pluh-SEE-boh) is a medicine or treatment intended to appear genuine to its recipient, but which has no pharmaceutical effect. Common placebos include inert tablets (like sugar pills), inert injections (like saline), sham surgery, and other procedures.
Placebos are used in randomized clinical trials to test the efficacy of medical treatments. In a placebo-controlled trial, any change in the control group is known as the placebo response, and the difference between this and the result of no treatment is the placebo effect. Placebos in clinical trials should ideally be indistinguishable from so-called verum treatments under investigation, except for the latter's particular hypothesized medicinal effect. This is to shield test participants (with their consent) from knowing who is getting the placebo and who is getting the treatment under test, as patients' and clinicians' expectations of efficacy can influence results.
The idea of a "placebo effect" was discussed in 18th century psychology, but became more prominent in the 20th century. Modern studies find that placebos can affect some outcomes such as pain and nausea, but otherwise do not generally have important clinical effects. Improvements that patients experience after being treated with a placebo can also be due to unrelated factors, such as regression to the mean (a statistical effect where an unusually high or low measurement is likely to be followed by a less extreme one). The use of placebos in clinical medicine raises ethical concerns, especially if they are disguised as an active treatment, as this introduces dishonesty into the doctor–patient relationship and bypasses informed consent.
Placebos are also popular because they can sometimes produce relief through psychological mechanisms (a phenomenon known as the "placebo effect"). They can affect how patients perceive their condition and encourage the body's chemical processes for relieving pain and a few other symptoms, but have no impact on the disease itself.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
The method now under consideration is called the Empirical Method; and in order to estimate it fairly, we must suppose it to be completely, not incompletely, empirical. We must exclude from it every thing which partakes of the nature not of an experimental but of a deductive operation.
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive
States what Placebo is.
The new fact which we recognize unwillingly is termed _transference_. We mean a transference of emotions to the person of the physician, because we do not believe that the situation of the cure justifies the genesis of such feelings. We rather surmise that this readiness toward emotion originated elsewhere, that it was prepared within the patient, and that the opportunity given by analytic treatment caused it to be…
Sigmund Freud, A General Introduction to Psychoanalysis
States what Placebo is.
In chemical experiments on metals, however, there are some others worthy of notice, but the greatest abundance (where the whole are so few in numbers) is discovered in certain medicines, which, from their occult and specific qualities (as they are termed), affect particular limbs, humors, diseases, or constitutions. Nor should we omit the harmony between the motion and phenomena of the moon, and their effects on…
Francis Bacon, Novum organum
States what Placebo is.
Related ideas
- Latin
- Medicine
- Autonomy
- Prefrontal cortex
- Motivation
- Pain
- Orbitofrontal cortex
- Depression (mood)
- Observer bias
Place in the tradition
Part of Philosophy of science.