ArticleFrontiers in psychiatry2024
Placebo and the law of identification.
Article in Frontiers in psychiatry, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 2 papers.
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
2 citing papers in PubMed.
- Review
- Caffeine as an Active Ingredient in Cosmetic Preparations Against Hair Loss: A Systematic Review of Available Clinical Evidence.Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
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
Thousands of essays and studies have been published on placebo and nocebo. Yet, despite this plethora of information, we are not much closer to a comprehensive understanding of the fundamental mechanism producing placebo and nocebo effects than we were in 1946, when participants in the Cornell Conferences on Therapy speculated on the roles of authority, belief and expectancy. In this paper, we examine the weaknesses in current placebo and nocebo definitions and theories. We also propose a more concise and comprehensive definition and theory of placebo and nocebo by introducing the Law of Identification and the Generic Placebo Instruction (GPI). The latter being the placebo/nocebo information expressed or implied in virtually every clinical encounter and trial; the former (i.e., the Law of Identification), being what drives the GPI to actualization. Further, we demonstrate the explanatory power of this new theory and suggest clinical studies that test predictions arising from it - studies whose results, if positive, would translate universally into clinical practice.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What 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.