Placebo Studies & the Replication Crisis
A growing body of cross-cultural survey research shows high percentages of clinicians’ report using placebos in clinical settings. One motivation for clinicians using placebos is to help patients by capitalising on the placebo effect’s reported health benefits. This is not surprising, given that placebo studies are burgeoning, with increasing calls by researchers to ethically harness placebo effects among patients, and with widespread media attention on the purported potency of these effects. These calls, and media reportage, propose placebos/placebo effects that offer clinically significant benefits to patients. In this talk, I argue many findings in this highly cited and ‘hot’ field have not been independently replicated. My goal is to motivate both increased awareness of replication issues and to help pave the way for advances in scientific research in the field of placebo studies to better inform ethical evidence-based practice. I argue that only by developing a rigorous evidence base can we better understand how it at all, placebos/placebo effects can be harnessed in clinical settings.

zoom.us/j/95199401096?pwd=ancrZ0U1b0RNVmlKL0tQdTQ5SzhLUT09
Meeting ID: 951 9940 1096
Passcode: 937384
Date: 4 June 2024, 9:30 (Tuesday, 7th week, Trinity 2024)
Venue: Department of Psychiatry, Headington OX3 7JX
Venue Details: Seminar Room
Speaker: Dr Charlotte Blease (Uppsala University)
Organising department: Department of Psychiatry
Organiser contact email address: rania.elgarf@psych.ox.ac.uk
Host: Dr Edward Harcourt (Fellow & Tutor in Philosophy, Radcliffe Humanities, University of Oxford)
Part of: Psychiatry Seminar Series
Booking required?: Not required
Audience: Public
Editor: Rania Elgarf