Is this your source for the claim that the placebo effect has gotten stronger? It merely claims that the gap between a placebo and real drug has gotten smaller, while your theory predicts that they would both grow, the gap unchanged. And the evidence is that lots of new drugs don’t work, which is easy to explain other ways. It does claim that placebo response to antidepressants is larger than it used to be, but depression is difficult to measure and it is easy to believe that this is a different population that wouldn’t have been treated earlier.
I believe that a less specific version of your hypothesis is commonly accepted: being part of a medical trial gets people better health care. I’m pretty sure that it has been repeatedly measured that compliance is higher in studies than in nature, the usual explanation being attention. I don’t know if compliance for medicine outside of the study has been measured.
Is this your source for the claim that the placebo effect has gotten stronger?
It merely claims that the gap between a placebo and real drug has gotten smaller, while your theory predicts that they would both grow, the gap unchanged. And the evidence is that lots of new drugs don’t work, which is easy to explain other ways. It does claim that placebo response to antidepressants is larger than it used to be, but depression is difficult to measure and it is easy to believe that this is a different population that wouldn’t have been treated earlier.
I believe that a less specific version of your hypothesis is commonly accepted: being part of a medical trial gets people better health care. I’m pretty sure that it has been repeatedly measured that compliance is higher in studies than in nature, the usual explanation being attention. I don’t know if compliance for medicine outside of the study has been measured.