Ted Kaptchuk Placebo Quotations

It's upside down research. We investigated whether a sham acupuncture device has a greater placebo effect than an inert pill.

These findings suggest the medical ritual of a device can deliver an enhanced placebo effect beyond that of a placebo pill. There are many conditions in which ritual is irrelevant when compared with drugs, such as in treatment of a bacterial infection, but the other extreme may also be true: In some cases, the ritual may be the critical component.