Pursuing the Placebo Effect

This talk will emphasize clinical research into placebo effects and discuss several experiments that Ted Kaptchuk has led. The talk will present studies that suggest that the ritual of therapy can be administered in a manner analogous to dose dependence (BMJ 2008), that placebo outcomes may not be dependent on deception or concealment (PloS One 2010), that placebo responses may be primarily limited to self-reported symptoms (New England Journal of Medicine 2011) and that switching meaningful words on labels of pills can significantly modulate pharmaceutical and placebo treatment outcomes (Science Translational Medicine 2014).