Placebo documentary

Karin Jensen discussed the BBC documentary “The Placebo Experiment” in Swedish television. Jensen explained that placebo experiments are not conducted the same way as in the back-pain trial in the TV-experiment. In particular, the experiment had no control group that could compare the results in the placebo group with untreated patients. This is important because most medical conditions can get better with time (“the tincture of time”), or fluctuate, and this should be taken into account when analyzing the outcome. Also, patients were informed about their treatment by the doctor in a large theatre, together with all other patients in the trial, which is not in line with good clinical practice.