Reconceptualising placebo

doi:10.1136/bmj.39577.518009.3A

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G Lorimer Moseley, Nuffield medical research fellow

¹University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3QX

lorimer.moseley{at}medsci.ox.ac.uk

The notion that placebo responses are responses that are evoked by nothing is nonsense. The study by Kaptchuk et al and the study by Waber et al in JAMA illustrate clearly that the “placebo”’ responses observed are in fact responses to things other than the thing to which we hypothesise a response.1 2 Therefore, placebo responses reflect the limitations …