Super Placebos: A Feasibility Study Combining Contextual Factors to Promote Placebo Effects
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Ample evidence demonstrates that placebo effects are modulated by contextual factors. Few interventions, however, attempt to combine a broad range of these factors. Here, we explore the therapeutic power of placebos by leveraging factors including social proof, positive suggestion, and social learning. This study aimed to test the feasibility of an elaborate “super placebo” intervention to reduce symptoms of various disorders in a pediatric population. Methods: In a single-arm qualitative study, participants entered an inactive MRI scanner which they were told could help their brain heal itself through the power of suggestion. The sample included 11 children (6–13 years old) diagnosed with disorders known to be receptive to placebos and suggestion (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Tourette Syndrome, chronic skin picking, and migraines). The children were given positive suggestions during 2–4 placebo machine sessions over the span of approximately 1 month. We assessed open-ended treatment outcomes via recorded interviews and home visits. Results: The procedure was feasible and no adverse events occurred. Ten of the 11 parents reported improvements in their children after the intervention, ranging from minor transient changes to long-term reductions in subjective and objective symptoms (e.g., migraines and skin lesions). Discussion: These preliminary findings demonstrate the feasibility and promise of combining a broad range of contextual factors in placebo studies. Future research is needed to assess the causal effects of such interventions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".