ArticleTheoretical medicine and bioethics2015
Impure placebo is a useless concept.
Article in Theoretical medicine and bioethics, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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
6 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Efficacy of acetylleucine in vertigo and dizziness: a systematic review of randomised controlled trials.European journal of clinical pharmacology · 2019Pooled it
- How often do general practitioners use placebos and non-specific interventions? Systematic review and meta-analysis of surveys.PloS one · 2018Pooled it
- Evidencing general acceptability of open-label placebo use for tackling overtreatment in primary care: a mixed methods study.BMC medicine · 2023Trial
- Prescriptions of Essentially Placebo Treatments Among General Practitioners in 21 Countries.JAMA network open · 2025Article
- A dose of doubt: a qualitative study on placebo regulations.Frontiers in medicine · 2025Article
- An Exploration of Knowledge and Attitudes of Medical Students and Rheumatologists to Placebo and Nocebo Effects: Threshold Concepts in Clinical Practice.Journal of medical education and curricular developmentArticle
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Placebos are allegedly used widely in general practice. Surveys reporting high level usage, however, have combined two categories, 'pure' and 'impure' placebos. The wide use of placebos is explained by the high level usage of impure placebos. In contrast, the prevalence of the use of pure placebos has been low. Traditional pure placebos are clinically ineffective treatments, whereas impure placebos form an ambiguous group of diverse treatments that are not always ineffective. In this paper, we focus on the impure placebo concept and demonstrate problems related to it. We also show that the common examples of impure placebos are not meaningful from the point of view of clinical practice. We conclude that the impure placebo is a scientifically misleading concept and should not be used in scientific or medical literature. The issues behind the concept, however, deserve serious attention in future research.
Indexed as
Identifiers
26215744What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.