Chris Masterjohn, PhD

Placebos are more effective than drugs for depression.

Before you stop me and say "false, drugs outperform placebos," you are correct, they do.

But placebos are 40% effective and drugs 54% effective, which means that 74% of the drug's effect is explained by the placebo effect.

In order to properly understand this you have to realize that every treatment *is* a placebo.

The point of comparing it to the placebo is to subtract the proportion of its impact explained by the placebo effect.

So, 74% of a drug's effect is placebo, and 26% of it is biochemical.

That means that the placebo effect is 2.8 times more powerful than the pharmacological effect of the drug's biochemistry!

2 months ago | [YT] | 50