Placebo-Effekte

The following article presents a discussion of the widely used terms placebo and placebo effect. Traditional definitions are demonstrated to be insufficient, and a new definition is proposed. The widely cited size of placebo effects is discussed and shown to be questionable, especially due to serious methodological flaws in the underlying studies. We suggest that instead of using the global term placebo effect the concept of specific context-dependent effects should be considered both in practice and research.