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Lunch Lecture - Anne Harrington

Harrington

Prof. Dr. Anne Harrington
History of Science and Medicine
Harvard University

Ignorance and Inconvenient Truths: How the Placebo Effect Became the Nemesis of Psychopharmacology
Wann 05.07.2018
von 12:15 bis 13:00
Wo University of Freiburg, Kollegiengebäude I, Room 1009
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Ignorance and Inconvenient Truths: How the Placebo Effect Became the Nemesis of Psychopharmacology

The psycho-pharmaceutical industry is in a crisis.  It is haunted by claims that its antidepressant drugs barely perform better than placebos. It has also learned that certain drugs which previously “beat” placebos in clinical trials no longer do.

 This crisis is partly of its own making. The randomized placebo-controlled trial that is used to test drugs has the effect of creating, not just knowledge but ignorance. In such trials, the placebo effect is the “noise” in the system.  The goal is to measure it, in order to dismiss it. The question is always whether a real drug causes more improvement than a fake (placebo) drug. This improvement is imagined to float like precious oil on the surface of the placebo waste water.  No one is supposed to care about “the water.”

 But today they do. In this talk, I will tell the story and tease out some of its implications.