BMJ 2006;332 (18 February), doi:10.1136/bmj.332.7538.0-f
Editor's choice
Disentangling separate effects
| The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below. |
A cartoon by the American cartoonist Sidney Harris has one white-coated researcher saying to another: "Find out who set up this experiment. It seems that half of the patients were given a placebo and the other half were given a different placebo." In this week's BMJ we bring you that experiment.
On p 391 Ted Kaptchuk and colleagues report their randomised trial of two "placebo treatments." They wanted to see whether a sham acupuncture needle had a greater placebo effect than an inert pill in patients with persistent arm pain. The patients were randomised to a two week run-in period with either the sham device or a placebo pill. The patients were then re-randomised (those on sham acupuncture to continue the sham acupuncture or to real acupuncture and those on the placebo pill to continue the placebo or to amitriptyline). During the run-in period pain decreased about equally in both
Jane Smith, deputy editor
(jsmith@bmj.com)
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