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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Apr 6, 2026

How to Study Placebo Responses in Motion Sickness with a Rotation Chair Paradigm in Healthy Participants

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Published on: December 14, 2014

Impure placebo is a useless concept.

Pekka Louhiala¹, Harri Hemilä, Raimo Puustinen

¹Department of Public Health, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 41, 00014, Helsinki, Finland, pekka.louhiala@helsinki.fi.

Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics

|July 29, 2015

Summary

The concept of "impure placebos" is misleading and should be removed from medical literature. While pure placebos are ineffective, impure placebos are a diverse group of treatments not always lacking clinical effect.

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Area of Science:

Medical Ethics
Clinical Practice Research
Pharmacology

Background:

Surveys indicate widespread placebo use in general practice.
High reported usage often conflates 'pure' and 'impure' placebo categories.
The prevalence of pure placebo use is low, unlike impure placebos.

Purpose of the Study:

To critically examine the concept of the impure placebo.
To demonstrate the clinical and scientific limitations of the impure placebo concept.
To advocate for the removal of the impure placebo term from scientific discourse.

Main Methods:

Literature review and conceptual analysis of placebo definitions.
Examination of common examples of impure placebos.
Critique of the clinical relevance and scientific validity of the impure placebo concept.

Main Results:

The wide reported use of placebos is primarily due to the inclusion of impure placebos.
Impure placebos represent an ambiguous category of treatments, not consistently ineffective.
Common examples of impure placebos lack meaningful clinical application or scientific basis.

Conclusions:

The impure placebo is a scientifically misleading and problematic concept.
The term 'impure placebo' should be discontinued in scientific and medical literature.
The underlying issues associated with impure placebos warrant further research attention.