Replication crisis and placebo studies: rebooting the bioethical debate

Abstract

A growing body of cross-cultural survey research shows high percentages of clinicians report using placebos in clinical settings. One motivation for clinicians using placebos is to help patients by capitalising on the placebo effect’s reported health benefits. This is not surprising, given that placebo studies are burgeoning, with increasing calls by researchers to ethically harness placebo effects among patients. These calls propose placebos/placebo effects offer clinically significant benefits to patients. In this paper, we argue many findings in this highly cited and ‘hot’ field have not been independently replicated. Evaluating the ethicality of placebo use in clinical practice involves first understanding whether placebos are efficacious clinically. Therefore, it is crucial to consider placebo research in the context of the replication crisis and what can be learnt to advance evidence-based knowledge of placebos/placebo effects and their clinical relevance (or lack thereof). In doing so, our goal in this paper is to motivate both increased awareness of replication issues and to help pave the way for advances in scientific research in the field of placebo studies to better inform ethical evidence-based practice. We argue that, only by developing a rigorous evidence base can we better understand how, if at all, placebos/placebo effects can be harnessed ethically in clinical settings.