‘Placebo’ at Psychology, Philosophy and Real Life

A company in the USA produces children’s placebo tablets, cure-alls containing absolutely no active substances, selling in effect the illusion that there is a pill for every kind of distress.

Compared with placebo, the new-generation antidepressants do not produce clinically significant improvements in depression in patients who initially have moderate or even very severe depression. That’s according to a new meta-analysis of clinical trials research. A triumph for the placebo effect! How does it work?

A new study shows that the results of around a third of drug trials have not been released. Once these are taken into account, the advantage of antidepressants over placebos shrinks significantly. This amounts to seriously misleading the public about the drugs’ effectiveness.