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12 March 2010

The magic of the placebo: Eric Mead on TED.com

Sugar pills, injections of nothing — studies show that, more often than you’d expect, placebos really work. At TEDMED, magician Eric Mead does a trick to prove that, even when you know something’s not real, you can still react as powerfully as if it is. (Warning: This talk is not suitable for viewers who are disturbed by needles or blood.) (Recorded at TEDMED, October 2009 in San Diego, CA. Duration: 9:06)

Watch Eric Mead’s talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks.

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  • Xiaoling Li

    Mar 12 2010

    THE sun slipped below a jagged horizon of red pines, and another long winter’s night began in the north woods. I sat on a cot in my long johns, a few feet from a wood stove blasting heat like a furnace, inside a canvas tent pitched here about 15 miles from the nearest road in southern Ontario.

    On the blue tin plate in my lap lay a lake-trout filet that was all I had to show from six hours of fishing through a hole cut in two feet of ice. The temperature outside was zero, our warmest night yet by a good 10 degrees.

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