Advancing Placebo Research: Methodological Innovation, Expectation Measurement, and Bias Reduction

SIG Name: Pain and Placebo

Description of Symposium: This symposium addresses a critical challenge in placebo research: the need for rigorous, reproducible, and translational methodologies that accurately capture the mechanisms and impacts of placebo effects across diverse contexts. Despite growing recognition of the clinical relevance of placebo responses, significant variability in study designs, measurement approaches (particularly regarding expectations), and susceptibility to biases has hindered progress in the field. This symposium brings together international leaders to advance the methodological foundations of placebo research through three interconnected sessions. These include: (1) innovative strategies for designing both experimental and clinical studies to investigate placebo mechanisms and mitigate placebo responses in RCTs; (2) a nuanced exploration of expectations—what they are, how they are measured, and their contribution to placebo effects —with an emphasis on implicit and explicit assessments; and (3) a critical discussion of systemic and researcher driven biases that compromise the validity and reproducibility of findings. By integrating presentations with interactive discussions and expert panel input, this symposium fosters interdisciplinary dialogue, promotes methodological clarity, and encourages the adoption of best practices in study design and reporting. The advancement lies in building consensus and developing tools to enhance the interpretability and clinical relevance.

This meeting will address key methodological, conceptual, and ethical challenges in placebo research through three focused sessions. The first session, How to Design Studies on Placebo Effects and Placebo Responses? led by Luana Colloca (University of Maryland, USA), will examine experimental and clinical study designs, highlighting frameworks for investigating placebo mechanisms and translational strategies bridging laboratory models and randomized controlled trials. Roi Treister (Israel) will contribute additional perspectives on real-world applications.

The second session, Expectations: What is it, how do we measure it, and to which extent does it contribute to placebo effects? led by Lene Vase (Aarhus University, Denmark), will explore the conceptualization and measurement of expectations, incorporating evidence from meta-analyses and studies using explicit and implicit assessments. Patrick Finan will present examples of using expectations to estimate pain occurrence. Przemysław Bąbel (Jagiellonian U, Poland) will discuss expectancy mechanisms, including social learning and conditioning paradigms.

The third session, How to Minimize Bias in Placebo Experimental Studies? led by Ben Colagiuri (University of Sydney, Australia), with contributions from Charlotte Blease, will address systemic and researcher-related biases.

The meeting will conclude with a panel discussion featuring academic experts and invited stakeholders, including industry representatives, to foster interdisciplinary dialogue and translational impact.

Intended Audience: Clinical Practice, Cross-disciplinary, Translational Research, Education

Educational Objectives:

• Design methodologically rigorous studies that investigate placebo effects and responses in both experimental and clinical settings, integrating translational frameworks that bridge laboratory findings with real-world applications in randomized clinical trials.
• Differentiate and apply various methods for assessing expectations, including implicit and explicit measures, and critically evaluate how these approaches influence the interpretation of placebo effects across different study designs.
• Identify and mitigate systemic and researcher-related biases in placebo and nocebo studies, applying strategies that improve transparency, reproducibility, and ethical integrity in placebo research across academic, clinical, and industry contexts.

Speakers

Przemysław Bąbel Jagiellonian University
Poland

Prof. Przemysław Bąbel, PhD, is a full professor of psychology at the Institute of Psychology, Jagiellonian University, where he heads the Pain Research Group. He is among the world’s most influential scientists, having been included twice (2023 and 2025) in the Stanford–Elsevier ranking of the top 2% most-cited researchers worldwide.

His research focuses on the learning mechanisms of placebo effects, memory of pain, and psychological factors influencing pain perception. He is also interested in the applications of behaviour analysis and memory research in education and psychotherapy, including the treatment of chronic pain and autism spectrum disorders.

Prof. Bąbel is the author of over 160 scientific publications, including ten books, and numerous articles published in leading international journals in pain research, such as Pain, The Journal of Pain, European Journal of Pain, Clinical Journal of Pain, and Pain Medicine. His research has been featured in major international media outlets, including The New York Times, New York Magazine, CBS News, Daily Mail, Mirror, and The Sunday Times. He has also authored more than 100 popular science publications and delivered numerous public lectures promoting psychology.

Prof. Bąbel currently serves as Vice-Dean for Research at the Faculty of Philosophy, Jagiellonian University. He is President of the Polish Society of Behavioral Psychology, a member of the Steering Committee of the Society for Interdisciplinary Placebo Studies, and a member of the Committee on Psychological Sciences of the Polish Academy of Sciences.

In 2008, he received the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences’ Golden Mind – Master in Knowledge Promotion Award for his contribution to science communication. In 2018, he received the Prime Minister’s Award for outstanding scientific achievements. In 2019, he was elected Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science in recognition of his sustained and outstanding contributions to psychological science. In 2023 and 2024, he was honored with the Journal of Pain Top Reviewer Award.

Luana Colloca University of Maryland, Baltimore
USA

Dr. Colloca is an MPower Distinguished Professor at the University of Maryland and serves as the Director of the Placebo Beyond Opinions (PBO) Center at the University of Maryland School of Nursing. She holds an MD, a master’s degree in Bioethics, and a PhD in Neuroscience reflecting the interdisciplinary lens that defines her work. She completed postdoctoral training at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and later held a senior research fellowship at the National Institutes of Health. Her research investigates the brain’s endogenous systems for pain modulation, with a focus on both healthy individuals and those living with acute and chronic pain. More recently, her work has expanded into digital medicine, including the use of virtual reality to understand and modulate pain mechanisms and translate them into real-world clinical applications.
Dr. Colloca has authored over 227 peer-reviewed publications, with more than 23,230 citations (H-index: 72), appearing in leading journals such as Pain, JAMA, The New England Journal of Medicine, The Lancet Neurology, and Nature Digital Medicine. Her work has also reached broad public audiences through outlets like National Geographic, The New Yorker, Time, The Guardian, and The Wall Street Journal. Many of you may also recognize her from her TED Talk, where she brings complex neuroscience to life with clarity and impact.

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