Why do so many medical practices that begin with such promise and confidence turn out to be either ineffective at best or harmful at worst? Adam Cifu of the University of Chicago’s School of Medicine...

The idea that the brain can convince the body a fake treatment is the real thing—the so-called placebo effect—and thus stimulate healing has been around for millennia. But research has shown that...

The placebo effect is a beneficial health outcome resulting from a person's anticipation that an intervention—pill, procedure, or injection, for example—will help them. A clinician's style in...

Medical reversal occurs when a new clinical trial — superior to predecessors by virtue of better controls, design, size, or endpoints — contradicts current clinical practice. In recent years, we have...