Talk:Placebo

I found this in The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton (1621):

--- And sometimes a strong conceit or apprehension, as [1617]Valesius proves, will take away diseases: in both kinds it will produce real effects. Men, if they see but another man tremble, giddy or sick of some fearful disease, their apprehension and fear is so strong in this kind, that they will have the same disease. Or if by some soothsayer, wiseman, fortune-teller, or physician, they be told they shall have such a disease, they will so seriously apprehend it, that they will instantly labour of it. A thing familiar in China (saith Riccius the Jesuit), [1618]If it be told them they shall be sick on such a day, when that day comes they will surely be sick, and will be so terribly afflicted, that sometimes they die upon it. Dr. Cotta in his discovery of ignorant practitioners of physic, cap. 8, hath two strange stories to this purpose, what fancy is able to do... --- from: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/10800/10800-h/ampart1.html

I have seen objections to the term "placebo effect" for a couple of reasons. Some are technical, basically that it is a fuzzy term that can cover a mixture of several effects that should be considered separately: reporting bias in RCT + social ritual healing (common knowledge is that going to the doctor and following her instructions make people better, and that expectation makes it happen) + various noise in remission statistics (reversal to the mean, spontaneous remission etc.); here is a possible source discussing it. Some are political: the name "placebo effect" allows cranks to say "well, there is an effect" and convince the public in a way "as efficient as sugar" does not (see the start of that though I doubt that is a reliable source by WP's standards).

I would think my first source is enough to justify a redirect from contextual effect to here and a small mention in the lead but I have no idea how well-received in the community those views are (if they are totally fringe, we probably should not). Non-expert me has found Google Scholar hits for "placebo effect" (163k) vs "contextual effect" (15k, most seem to be about medicine) that indicate the term is in use, but that is hardly convincing ("faith healing" scores 24k).

The political objections might be worth a discussion too somewhere but only if it is a sourceable view (not necessarily among practitioners, but also among skeptics, governmental bodies, etc.). For obvious reasons I found mostly opinion pieces to that effect. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 14:26, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

Reading the article feels like a true rollercoaster, which is pretty troublesome when you want to get a sense of the validity of the concept. What i mean is that the article contains several quotes and sources about deeming placebo insignificant, dubious or outright dismissible, while at the exact same time it provides factual data that its a very much existing, functioning and measurable concept, especially with pain, nausea, depression.

In its nature the article is completely self-defeating, because if its taken at face value, one is left with a PhD level demonstration of what gossip among scientists and medical professionals looks like with everyone throwing slanted/partial data in the pool, then at the end you are exactly where you started: It exists, maybe, but we cant really figure how much, but its most certainly insignificant, except when its not. I mean... is this supposed to be some red tape bureaucratic comedy? Whilst writing these articles, you might wish to provide a factual, on ground conclusion. An answer if you will instead of tossing in pro and contra data points left and right, creating an informational mire. 37.191.17.124 (talk) 00:21, 1 November 2021 (UTC)

Yeah, this article does seem weird. It seems to be stating repeatedly that The Powerful Placebo was debunked and implying that there's no such thing as the placebo effect, which seems unlikely given the extent of the measures that usually seem to be taken to allow for the placebo effect in clinical trials. Possibly it just means that the particular data used in The Powerful Placebo were duds, rather than that the placebo effect doesn't exist? If so, it might make sense for it to say so. Wombat140 (talk) 04:16, 16 December 2022 (UTC)

I think the issue here is that while the idea of a Placebo Effect for quantitative health outcomes has been debunked, patients still *self-report* things like decreased pain, reduced depression, etc. I agree the article would benefit with being restructured to first cover the "history and debunking" of a "real placebo effect" (historical misunderstanding of regression to the mean) and then continue with a discussion of the "actual placebo effect" as it related to self-reported conditions. Meekohi (talk) 13:46, 23 August 2023 (UTC)

The placebo effect has not been debunked. It is real. I study placebos. The page needs strong changes. Placebo effect is real. That's a fact. I can give you tons of references.... Placebo18 (talk) 19:34, 19 September 2024 (UTC)

I think he means it can only affect subjective things like pain, depression, but it will never disintegrate a tumour, or something more objective like that. 147.161.167.22 (talk) 12:45, 19 September 2025 (UTC)

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 21 January 2025 and 6 May 2025. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Max.wadhwa (article contribs).

— Assignment last updated by Max.wadhwa (talk) 20:21, 8 February 2025 (UTC)

I cannot understand what is meant to be conveyed here, a lot of the information in it is contradictory with other information on the article. They cite the article DOI:https://doi.org/10.1300/J184v05n01_07 which relies on The Powerful Placebo but later in the article says that there was no evidence for it found. I am not familiar with editing Wikipedia but this section stood out to me as written oddly compared to the rest of the article and seems to be at odds with a lot of what is said elsewhere in the article. 76.208.36.241 (talk) 17:52, 28 October 2025 (UTC)

I was about to make a topic like this myself with Template:AI-generated, but I think it is pretty clear it's an LLM insertion with many obvious WP:AISIGNS, so I have fully deleted both Body and Meaning and Critical Perspectives. Thank you for bringing this to our attention! You have a good eye, it WAS at odds with the rest of the article. Drunk Experiter (she/her) (talk) 18:39, 30 October 2025 (UTC)

This phrase appears only once in the text, in the Effects section, and in two footnotes. It needs explanation: a definition and perhaps also applying the term to an earlier study reference if there is one in this article, as the word "another" implies. Billfalls (talk) 21:50, 12 December 2025 (UTC)