Evidence map›Paper›PMID 41997697›Full record

ReviewThe lancet. Psychiatry2026

Measuring and appraising placebo effects in clinical trials: contemporary challenges and approaches in psychiatry.

Joseph J Taylor, Balázs Szigeti, Noah D Silverberg, Masoud Ahmadzad-Asl, Marina Kare, Ryan Webler, Diana K Orsini, Joshua D Rosenblat, Tom Bschor, Christopher Baethge and 4 more

Abstract readReview
PubMed Full text at PMC Publisher
In one paragraph

Review in The lancet. Psychiatry, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.

0numbers the graph read from it
0cells of the map it votes in
1citing papers in PubMed
–field-weighted citation impact
1 · What the graph read from it

What it found

Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.

The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.

2 · The registry

The trial behind it

Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.

Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.

3 · Its place in the literature

Who cites it

1 citing paper in PubMed.

  1. Article
4 · The record

Corrections and comments

PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.

5 · Who and what money

Authors and funding

14 authors.

Joseph J TaylorDepartment of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Mass General Brigham, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Mass General Brigham, Boston, MA, USA.
Balázs SzigetiDepartment of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Weill Institute for Neurosciences, University of California, San Francisco, CA, USA; Centre for Psychedelic Research, Imperial College London, London, UK.
Noah D SilverbergDepartment of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Centre for Aging SMART, Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, Vancouver, BC, Canada; Djavad Mowafaghian Centre for Brain Health, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Masoud Ahmadzad-AslDepartment of Psychiatry, Vancouver General Hospital, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada.
Marina KareDepartment of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Mass General Brigham, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Mass General Brigham, Boston, MA, USA.
Ryan WeblerDepartment of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, Mass General Brigham, Boston, MA, USA; Department of Psychiatry, Mass General Brigham, Boston, MA, USA.
Diana K OrsiniDepartment of Psychiatry, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Joshua D RosenblatDepartment of Psychiatry, University Health Network, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Tom BschorDepartment of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, Technical University of Dresden, Dresden, Germany.
Christopher BaethgeDepartment of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Cologne Medical School, Cologne, Germany.
Mark SinyorDepartment of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Timothy R NicholsonKing's College London, London, England.
Tor D WagerDepartment of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA.
Matthew J BurkeDepartment of Psychiatry, Temerty Faculty Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; Department of Psychiatry, Sunnybrook Health Science Centre, Toronto, ON, Canada; Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, Sunnybrook Health Sciences Center, University of Toronto, Toronto. Electronic address: matt.burke@utoronto.ca.

Funding

Deriving TMS Targets for Mood Valence and Mood Stabilization in Bipolar DisorderK23MH129829 · NIMH · BRIGHAM AND WOMEN'S HOSPITAL · PI Joseph Jeffrey Taylor · 2022 to 2026
$978k
NIMH NIH HHS K23 MH129829
6 · The paper itself

Abstract

Placebo effects are among the greatest paradoxes in medical research. Although more data on placebos are available from placebo-controlled trials than on any treatment in medicine, there has been comparatively little deep interrogation of issues related to their measurement, appraisal, and interpretation. Most of the work that has been done, including that in psychiatry, is narrowly focused on strategies for mitigating placebo effects and the challenges they might pose. In this Review, paper 2 of 2 on reconceptualising placebo and nocebo effects, we shift our focus from clinical practice to clinical trials. First, we review established and emerging approaches for navigating placebo effects in randomised controlled trials. Second, we examine three major challenges in contemporary psychiatric research that have recently highlighted the topic of placebo effects: (1) blinding and expectancy in psychedelic trials, (2) large placebo responses in interventional psychiatry trials (ie, device or procedure-based therapeutics), and (3) implications of overlapping neurobiological mechanisms between placebo effects and psychiatric treatments.

Indexed as

Clinical Trials as TopicMental DisordersPlacebo EffectPsychiatryRandomized Controlled Trials as TopicHumansNocebo EffectResearch Design

Identifiers

PMID41997697
PMCPMC13326907

What Socratic holds

Textmetadata
LicenceTDM
Read underepoch 390

Registered trials

None linked

Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.