Claims about placebos

…the placebo effect in the United States has actually become quite a lot stronger over time, meaning that drugs that once would have been approved may not be now – because their performance relative to that of placebo is less convincing. This study makes the point clearly – by 2013, drugs produced 8.9% more pain relief than placebos, compared to 27.3% in 1996. In the charts above, it can be seen that the effect of placebo drugs has increased a lot, whereas the effectiveness of pain relief drugs has barely changed, meaning that the treatment advantage (the effectiveness of active drugs as opposed to placebos) has fallen dramatically. Weirdly, it seems like this is only happening in the United States, whereas other countries haven’t seen particularly large increases in the effect size of placebos.

That is from the Substack of Sam.  Hail Bruno M.!

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