Date: October 20   Time: 20:00 - 22:00

Skeptics in the Castle is a free monthly event brought to you by the Cork Skeptics

Join Keir Liddle from the Edinburgh Skeptics for….

The Nocebo Effect

NOTE: We will be chatting to Keir through Skype

Most skeptics are familiar with the placebo effect. Where an inert substance appears to cause an improvement in a patients symptoms (or at least makes them believe things are getting better). But we may be less aware of its collary the nocebo effect.

In medicine, a nocebo reaction or response refers to harmful, unpleasant, or undesirable effects a subject manifests after receiving an inert dummy drug or placebo. Nocebo responses are not chemically generated and are due only to the subject’s pessimistic belief and expectation that the inert drug will produce negative consequences. In these cases, there is no “real” drug involved, but the actual negative consequences of the administration of the inert drug, which may be physiological, behavioural, emotional, and/or cognitive, are nonetheless real.

In this talk placebo and nocebo are explained and pitted against each other. Are they both real? How can we study nocebo effects? and what implications do nocebos have for modern clinical practice?

An insight in to the speaker…

Keir Liddle is a PhD student at the University of Stirling and on the Edinburgh Skeptics committee. He founded the longest free skeptical festival in the world (skeptics on the fringe) and has a longstanding interest in placebos, nocebos and their implications. In this talk he draws on recent and past research into nocebo effects to argue that they are really a lot more important than anyone seems to give them credit for

This is a free event, open to all