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."
nocebo placebo science medicine ben-goldacre 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."
science meme research health medicine ben-goldacre network graph 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.
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