If Placebos Work, Why Placebo-Controlled Trials? Placebos have
been a hot-button issue in human-subjects research ethics for
years. Many regard placebo-controlled trials as the “gold
standard” for clinical research. Others see the use of placebos
in clinical research as typically-unjustified (at least in cases
where a decent treatment exists). (To get a sense of this
debate, check out this article by Charles Weijer: “Placebo
trials and tribulations”.) So it has been interesting to see
placebos popping up as a topic of discussion lately. Placebos
are supposed not to work. That’s the whole point of a placebo-
controlled trial — to compare an experimental drug against
something “known” not to work, in order to make sure that any
positive effects observed aren’t merely the result of the
“placebo effect,” i.e., roughly the psychological result of
patients feeling cared-for. But if placebos are (by whatever
mechanism) more effective than previously thought, that kind of
throws a monkey wrench into the equation. As a