The Myth of the Placebo Effect
Reports of the placebo effect have been greatly exaggerated
Most of us learn the general concept in grade school. A placebo can be pharmacologic (e.g., a tablet), physical (e.g., a manipulation), or psychological (e.g., a conversation). The word placebo comes from the Latin for “I shall please” and appears in the Vulgate of St. Jerome’s version of Psalm 116:9 — “placebo Domino in regione vivorum” (“I will please the Lord in the land of the living”), a phrase used as a funeral rite in the 18th century. The earliest recorded medical use of the term may have been by British physician William Cullen in 1772 when he wrote,
“I prescribed therefore in pure placebo, but I make it a rule even in employing placebos to give what would have a tendency to be of use to the patient.”
The placebo effect describes how an inert substance or intervention can exert a powerful physiological influence by way of attitude, conditioning, and expectation. But the placebo effect is not as clear-cut as one might think, and the evidence on which it is based begins to fall apart under closer scrutiny.
A Seminal Publication and a Scientific Revolution
In 1955, Harvard anesthesiologist Henry Knowles Beecher published his seminal paper entitled ‘‘The…
