A classmate of mine, Rachel Sherman, recently authored a paper about the prevalence of prescribed placebos that’s making fairly big news all over the world, having been written up in the Chicago Sun-Times, Time, Reuters, Scientific American, US News, Fox News, and NPR, not to mention news sources in Canada, the UK, India, and Australia. The article [ pdf link] appears in the January edition of the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Results of a survey distributed to internists at Northwestern, the University of Illinois at Chicago, and the University of Chicago showed that 45% of those responding have at some point prescribed a placebo in their clinical practice and that nearly as many believe that placebos can have important physiological effects in the treatment of various ailments. Very interesting data on a very interesting question.

Read the whole thing here.

Source: Sherman R, Hickner J. Academic physicians use placebos in clinical practice and believe in the mind-body connection. J Gen Int Med. 2007;23(1):7-10.
DOI: 10.1007/s11606-007-0332-z