The DOI matches its Crossref record; 110 of the 110 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The Placebo Effect: Illness and Interpersonal Healing
Open accessAbstract
The placebo effect has been a source of fascination, irritation, and confusion within biomedicine over the past 60 years. Although scientific investigation has accelerated in the past decade, with particular attention to neurobiological mechanisms, there has been a dearth of attention to developing a general theory of the placebo effect. In this article, we attempt to address this gap. To set the stage, we review evidence relating to the reality and clinical significance of the placebo effect. Next we investigate the scope and limits of the placebo effect by examining the hypothesis that the placebo effect operates predominantly by modifying the experience and perceptions of illness symptoms, such as pain, anxiety, and fatigue, rather than by modifying the pathophysiology of disease. Based on this background, we characterize the placebo effect as a form of interpersonal healing, as distinct from spontaneous natural healing and from technological healing dependent on physiologically active pharmaceuticals or procedures. Finally, we argue that research on the placebo effect has the potential to revitalize the art of medicine.
Overview
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Integrity signals
Registry
Cites
Statistics
Verification
Claims the paper makes
The claims and statistics of this paper haven’t been checked yet.
Run the check — free, no account needed. It reads the open-access text and checks the sources it cites.
Self-check
Percentages, sums and reported differences re-computed from the paper’s own numbers.
The self-check needs the paper’s full text.
Citations
Cites
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
Kuhn, T. S., & Schlegel, R. (1963) · Physics Today · doi:10.1063/1.3050879 · Cited by 35,538
The illness narratives: suffering, healing, and the human condition
(1988) · Choice Reviews Online · doi:10.5860/choice.26-0340 · Cited by 3,578
Placebo-Induced Changes in fMRI in the Anticipation and Experience of Pain
Wager, T. D., Rilling, J. K., Smith, E. E., Sokolik, A., Casey, K. L., Davidson, R. J., Kosslyn, S. M., Rose, R. M., & Cohen, J. D. (2004) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1093065 · Cited by 1,992
Beecher, H. K. (1955) · Journal of the American Medical Association · doi:10.1001/jama.1955.02960340022006 · Cited by 1,842
Is the Placebo Powerless?: An Analysis of Clinical Trials Comparing Placebo with No Treatment
Hróbjartsson, A., & Gøtzsche, P. C. (2001) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm200105243442106 · Cited by 1,503
Placebo and Opioid Analgesia-- Imaging a Shared Neuronal Network
Petrovic, P., Kalso, E., Petersson, K. M., & Ingvar, M. (2002) · Science · doi:10.1126/science.1067176 · Cited by 1,488
Persuasion and Healing: A Comparative Study of Psychotherapy
Frank, J. D. (1961) · Cited by 1,391
A meta-analysis of the association between adherence to drug therapy and mortality
Simpson, S. H., Eurich, D. T., Majumdar, S. R., Padwal, R. S., Tsuyuki, R. T., Varney, J., & Johnson, J. A. (2006) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.38875.675486.55 · Cited by 1,353 · cited 2×
“N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript N IH -PA Author M anuscript Some randomized trials have detected an association between compliance with placebo interventions in randomized trials and outcomes such as mortality (Simpson et al. 2006).”
BackgroundMaterson, B. J., Reda, D. J., Cushman, W. C., Massie, B. M., Freis, E. D., Kochar, M. S., Hamburger, R. J., Fye, C., Lakshman, R., Gottdiener, J., et al. (1993) · New England Journal of Medicine · doi:10.1056/nejm199304013281303 · Cited by 1,199
Components of placebo effect: randomised controlled trial in patients with irritable bowel syndrome
Kaptchuk, T. J., Kelley, J. M., Conboy, L. A., Davis, R. B., Kerr, C. E., Jacobson, E. E., Kirsch, I., Schyner, R. N., Nam, B. H., Nguyen, L. T., et al. (2008) · BMJ · doi:10.1136/bmj.39524.439618.25 · Cited by 1,196 · cited 1×
“A recent clinical experiment is noteworthy in attempting to identify components of the placebo effect and their impact on therapeutic outcomes (Kaptchuk et al. 2008).”
BackgroundSelf-citation
Cited by
Placebos without Deception: A Randomized Controlled Trial in Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Kaptchuk, T. J., Friedlander, E., Kelley, J. M., Sanchez, M. N., Kokkotou, E., Singer, J. P., Kowalczykowski, M., Miller, F. G., Kirsch, I., & Lembo, A. J. (2010) · PLoS ONE · doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0015591 · Cited by 900
“[1] Furthermore, recent studies have shown measurable”
Self-citationHow placebo responses are formed: a learning perspective
Colloca, L., & Miller, F. G. (2011) · Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences · doi:10.1098/rstb.2010.0398 · Cited by 323
Self-citationEnhance placebo, avoid nocebo: How contextual factors affect physiotherapy outcomes
Testa, M., & Rossettini, G. (2016) · Manual Therapy · doi:10.1016/j.math.2016.04.006 · Cited by 256
Role of expectations in health
Colloca, L., & Miller, F. G. (2011) · Current Opinion in Psychiatry · doi:10.1097/yco.0b013e328343803b · Cited by 161
Self-citationPlacebo effect studies are susceptible to response bias and to other types of biases
Hróbjartsson, A., Kaptchuk, T. J., & Miller, F. G. (2011) · Journal of Clinical Epidemiology · doi:10.1016/j.jclinepi.2011.01.008 · Cited by 150
“[13] Miller FG, Colloca L, Kaptchuk TJ.”
BackgroundSelf-citation
Metadata
- Authors
- Miller, F. G., Colloca, L., & Kaptchuk, T. J.
- Venue
- Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
- Publisher
- Project MUSE
- Published
- 2009-09
- Volume
- 52
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 518-539
- ISSN
- 0031-5982 (ISSN-L)
- 1529-8795
- OpenAlex
- W2072633755
- Cited by
- 254
- References
- 110
- FWCI
- 6.55
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
About these checks
Registry, retraction, Cites and statistics results are computed, not judged, with one exception: a printed reference that no index lists is read once by a model before it counts as a citation error. Claims are extracted by a model and kept only when their quote appears verbatim in the text; each cited source is then checked, with a model’s help, for whether it says what the claim relies on. Those verdicts can be wrong — read the claim’s quote and the cited source before relying on one.
Statistics and arithmetic are recomputed, not judged.
Confidence bands are shown only for fields calibrated on our annotated test set. None is calibrated yet, so no band is shown.
What counts as a claim ›How we measure confidence ›How we check this ›
Are you an author, or do you see a problem with this page? Request a review
How to cite
Cite CoChat for the checks on this page, and the paper for its own findings.
- This page
- CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Placebo Effect: Illness and Interpersonal Healing. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.1353/pbm.0.0115
- The paper
- Miller, F. G., Colloca, L., & Kaptchuk, T. J. (2009). The Placebo Effect: Illness and Interpersonal Healing. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. https://doi.org/10.1353/pbm.0.0115
Data sources
Bibliographic data: Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, Crossref.
Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.