SIO510: Digging Into the Science of the Placebo Effect
Serious Inquiries Only
Thomas Smith
4.6 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 12 April 2026
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Popular media will tell you that placebos, inert inactive substances taken as if they're medication, can work miracles. …Placebos don't "work". But what does that even mean? And if that's true, why would we include a placebo group in a study? Is there anything remotely like a "true"'placebo effect, where belief in a medication could influence the body? Jenessa walks us through scientific study design, statistical artifacts, and one study that shows maybe just maybe there's a little something like an actual placebo "effect"… but it's still not magic! Tune in to hear how on earth that could be possible.
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Nolan, T.A., Price, D.D., Caudle, R., Murphy, N.P., & Neubert, J.K. (2012). Placebo-induced analgesia in an operant pain model in rats. Pain, 153, 2009-2016.
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Brissonnet, J. (2015). Placebo, are you there? Science Based Medicine.
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Studeman, D. (2007). But I regress… The Hardball Times.
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McCambridge, J., de Bruin, M., & Witton, J. (2012). The effect of demand characteristics on research participant behaviours in non-laboratory settings: A systematic review. PLoS One, 7.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to serious inquiries only. This is episode 5.10. I'm Thomas and I'm joined today by Janessa. How are you doing? |
| 0:23.0 | I'm doing pretty good. |
| 0:26.7 | Yeah, I don't have anything for you today. Stumped you. Things are good. I stumped you with that question. You did. I'm trying not to complain about the fact that it snowed today. |
| 0:32.3 | It snowed? That's crazy. It snowed. This winter is ruining my life, but I'm trying not to complain about the weather for the |
| 0:39.2 | hundredth time. |
| 0:40.0 | It's supposed to warm up tomorrow, and then I will be out of my cranky winter blues. |
| 0:44.4 | I'm going to insist on wearing a dress and flip-flops, even if it freezes again. |
| 0:48.6 | I don't care. |
| 0:50.2 | Well, anyway, over here, I can experience no snow, but if I think it's snowing, will it have the same effect? |
| 1:00.6 | Probably not. |
| 1:01.9 | Probably not. |
| 1:02.5 | Probably not. |
| 1:02.6 | Probably not. |
| 1:02.6 | Okay, what if I take these sugar pills and do that? |
| 1:07.6 | Well, then we'll be better? |
| 1:10.1 | Still probably no. Yeah, we're going to talk about |
| 1:14.5 | the placebo effect. I'm sure a lot of people listening have probably heard a bit on this. Recently, |
| 1:19.3 | there was a citation needed on it, but we're going to go a little more, I think, |
| 1:23.1 | in depth into the science of it. What's your plan for today? Yeah, I wanted to build off of that. I think that |
| 1:29.3 | episode they did a great job talking about. Some of it can be debunked very simply as this is just |
| 1:37.1 | made up. You know, some of the things you've heard about like, oh, if it's a red pill versus a blue pill, |
| 1:43.0 | you might get this or like take two. |
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