What substance is supposed to have no effect but can make people feel better, has no chance for a big monetary payoff but is worth billions, and is used in virtually every rigorous clinical trial but has no single, universal formulation?
The answer is the placebo. Hallmarks of good biomedical research, placebos are used throughout the world in double-blind, randomized controlled trials. And recently, they’ve come under intense scrutiny.
Beatrice Golomb, an associate professor of family and preventive medicine at UC San Diego, has spent years thinking about the use of placebos in modern medicine. In a paper published in the Annals of Internal Medicine last October, she raises concerns that placebos are not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration, yet can have a direct impact on whether a drug is considered effective or not.
In one classic case Golomb considers, researchers in the 1970s used olive oil ...
