Lots of things can influence the placebo effect, branding is one of them: > and we know that two placebo sugar pills have a bigger effect than one, and that an

Lots of things can influence the placebo effect, branding is one of them: > and we know that two placebo sugar pills have a bigger effect than one, and that an intramuscular placebo injection is more effective than a placebo sugar tablet[...] > And a four-way comparison, with either sugar pills or aspirin, in either unbranded aspirin boxes or mock-up packaging of the Dispirin brand, showed that brand-name packaging, and the wealth of advertising and cultural background material that packaging plays on, had almost as big an impact on pain as whether the pills had any drug in them. So in some ways, it's not irrational to believe that costly Nurofen is more effective than cheap unbranded ibuprofen, even if they've both got the same active ingredient. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/apr/15/badscience.science https://www.theguardian.com/science/2004/apr/15/badscience.s...