By Gregory M. Lamb
The Christian Science Monitor
Most people think of placebos as harmless "sugar pills" given in clinic trials to some participants so that medical researchers can gauge the effects of the real drug on others. But in some trials, the "placebo effect" proves to be as strong as that of the drug. Consistently 30 percent or more of the subjects given placebos will show some improvement by taking the dummy pills.
So over the decades a small band of researchers has taken a hard look at those pills. Are they really effective? Should they play a role in medical therapy?
A landmark study in 2001 concluded that they weren't useful. It "found little evidence in general that placebos had powerful clinical effects," the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) reported.
But that hardly put the matter to rest as new studies emerged. A March article in The New Scientist summed up the problem: It listed the placebo effect as one of "13 things that do not make sense" to science.
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