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All bow before the mighty power of the nocebo effect – Bad Science

2009 Nov 28, 3:50The downside of the placebo the nocebo: "This is the amazing world of the nocebo effect, where negative expectations can induce unpleasant symptoms, in the absence of a physical cause.", "In two of them, the consent form contained a statement outling various gastrointestinal side effects, and in these centres there was a sixfold increase in the number of people reporting such symptoms and dropping out of the trial, compared with the one centre that did not list such side effects in the form."PermalinkCommentsnocebo placebo science medicine ben-goldacre

How myths are made – Bad Science

2009 Aug 12, 8:08"In a formal academic paper, every claim is referenced to another academic paper... This convention gives us an opportunity to study how ideas spread, and myths grow, because in theory you could trace who references what, and how, to see an entire belief system evolve from the original data."PermalinkCommentsscience meme research health medicine ben-goldacre network graph

Christ I need a haircut - Bad Science

2009 Mar 25, 4:51The Bad Science guy has a spot on the news on the topic of the poor reporting of science in the news.PermalinkCommentsscience video ben-goldacre mmr media conspiracy immunization
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