The Social Epistemology of Clinical Placebos

J Med Philos. 2024 Mar 26:jhae010. doi: 10.1093/jmp/jhae010. Online ahead of print.ABSTRACTMany extant theories of placebo focus on their causal structure wherein placebo effects are those that originate from select features of the therapy (e.g., client expectations or "incidental" features like size and shape). Although such accounts can distinguish placebos from standard medical treatments, they cannot distinguish placebos from everyday occurrences, for example, when positive feedback improves our performance on a task. Providing a social-epistemological account of a treatment context can rule out such occurrences, and furthermore reveal a new way to distinguish clinical placebos from standard medical treatments.PMID:38531824 | DOI:10.1093/jmp/jhae010
Source: The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy - Category: Medical Ethics Authors: Source Type: research
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