The use of placebo interventions in clinical practice

Although a considerable number of mostly quantitative surveys have investigated the frequency and circumstances of the use of placebo interventions in clinical practice, it remains rather unclear what role placebo interventions really have outside clinical and laboratory research and why they are used. In this article I discuss two aspects which have to be taken into account when future research aims to provide further insights: (1) the different perspectives of patients, providers and scientists when it comes to decide whether a treatment is a placebo or not and (2) the fact that applying placebos intentionally is not only an ethical but also a professional problem.