The first time the placebo effect really got under my skin was when I read that roughly one-third of people with irritable ...

Stanford University researchers found that depressed people given ketamine before undergoing anesthesia improved just as much as those given saline. Reading time 3 minutes New research might ...

Let's do a thought experiment. Round up 300 harried commuters with headaches—not hard to do on the New York subway any workday at rush hour. Of course, they are probably shouting and whining, which ...

It's been a long time since I've written about the deceptive narratives around placebos promoted by supporters of alternative ...

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Earlier this month, a Food and Drug Administration panel concluded that a common decongestant ingredient used in drugs like Sudafed and NyQuil doesn’t work. The panel agreed that while the ingredient, ...

'Placebo' is a Latin word meaning "I shall please." Today, it refers to the phenomenon where a patient's condition improves after taking a fake drug, believing it to be real—a case of positive belief ...