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Article: Dylan Evans Placebo. The Belief Effect.(Book review)
- Article from:
- Bandolier
- Article date:
- February 1, 2004
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 Bandolier Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Dylan Evans Placebo. The Belief Effect. Harper Collins London. ISBN 0 00 712612 3 16.99 [pounds sterling] pp204
This book is about the placebo effect, the intriguing phenomenon itself and about the underlying mechanism. The structure is first to look at placebos in the context of medical trials, as (negative) controls to help scientists establish the difference between therapeutic effect and a control intervention. The control intervention is there to provide a comparison, and while one might think that a placebo pill or injection should do very little, in fact it can have effect. Evans then proposes a mechanism by which placebo has its effect, and follows with a ...