Daniel Jacobs believes in the placebo effect, the well-documented but not well-understood phenomenon in which sick patients sometimes feel the same healing effects from swallowing a sugar pill that they would from taking a real one. He believes in it so strongly that he doesn’t believe people even need to take a pill in order to produce a positive placebo effect; an app with a picture of a pill will do.
That’s the basis of his startup, Placebo Effect, which is raising $50,000 through the crowdfunding site Indiegogo to build his prototype into an iPhone app that he says can harness the placebo effect in order to help people make positive changes in their lives, such as feeling happier or quitting smoking.
via The Verge
May 14, 2013
