Weekly Updated BIONews + Video – Something Weird Is Going On With Placebos

About this event

Join B2DG members and guests at our November evening meeting on November 10. We will cover: Weekly Updated BIONews + Video – Something Weird Is Going On With Placebos Michael Stevens & Hannah Fry For the past few decades, something strange has been happening in clinical trials. Painkillers aren't getting worse, but the placebos they're tested against appear to be getting better. In one landmark study, the advantage of pain medication over placebo shrank from 27.3% in 1996 to just 8.9% in 2013. Even stranger? This trend was found almost entirely in American trials. Professor Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens investigate the extraordinary science of the placebo effect: how our expectations influence pain, why belief can change the way our bodies respond, and what this means for the future of medicine. Why does the way a treatment is presented matter so much? And how can simply expecting something to hurt actually make it hurt? But the placebo effect doesn't stop at medicine. From pedestrian crossing buttons that do nothing to the surprising psychology of road safety, Hannah and Michael explore just how easily our expectations can shape our experience of the world. Date/Time: November 10, 2026 6:15 pm - 8:15 pm Zoom talk: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83593256859 Hannah Fry and Michael Stevens Hannah Fry is an English mathematician, author and broadcaster. She is the first Professor of the Public Understanding of Mathematics at the University of Cambridge, and a fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge. She was previously the president of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and was a professor of the mathematics of cities at University College London. Michael David Stevens is an American educator, public speaker, entertainer, and editor best known for creating and hosting the educational YouTube channel Vsauce.