Identifying Placebo Effects with Data from Clinical Trials
A medical treatment is said to have placebo effects if patients who are optimistic about the treatment respond better to the treatment. This paper proposes a simple test for placebo effects. Instead of comparing the treatment and control arms of a single trial, one should compare the treatment arms of two trials with different probabilities of assignment to treatment. If there are placebo effects, patients in the higher-probability trial will experience better outcomes simply because they believe that there is a greater chance of receiving treatment. This paper finds evidence of placebo effects in trials of antiulcer and cholesterol-lowering drugs.
Year of publication: |
2006
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Authors: | Malani, Anup |
Published in: |
Journal of Political Economy. - University of Chicago Press. - Vol. 114.2006, 2, p. 236-256
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Publisher: |
University of Chicago Press |
Saved in:
Online Resource
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