Meaningful placebos--controlling the uncontrollable.

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

Who cites it

10 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.

1. Is the efficacy of psychopharmacological drugs comparable to the efficacy of general medicine medication?BMC medicine · 2012
   Pooled it
2. Placebo effects improve sickness symptoms and drug efficacy during systemic inflammation: a randomized controlled trial in human experimental endotoxemia.BMC medicine · 2025
   Trial
3. Benveniste's Experiments Explained by a Non-Conventional Experimenter Effect.Medicines (Basel, Switzerland) · 2018
   Article
4. The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes - quo vadis placebo analgesia?Journal of pain research · 2016
   Article
5. Integrative oncology: really the best of both worlds?Nature reviews. Cancer · 2014
   Article
6. The placebo effect in asthma.Current allergy and asthma reports · 2014
   Review
7. Making the improbable probable: communication across models of medical practice.Health care analysis : HCA : journal of health philosophy and policy · 2014
   Article
8. Generics, chemisimilars and biosimilars: is clinical testing fit for purpose?British journal of clinical pharmacology · 2013
   Review
9. Mirroring everyday clinical practice in clinical trial design: a new concept to improve the external validity of randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trials in the pharmacological treatment of major depression.BMC medicine · 2012
   Article
10. Satisfaction levels and asthma control amongst Malaysian asthmatic patients on budesonide/formoterol maintenance and reliever therapy: experience in a real-life setting.Patient related outcome measures · 2012
    Article

Corrections and comments

• Commented on by
  Placebo and other interventions in asthma.2011
• Comment on
  Active albuterol or placebo, sham acupuncture, or no intervention in asthma.2011

Authors and funding

1 author.

Funding

No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.

Abstract

PubMed holds no abstract for this paper.

Indexed as