A quote: "What Kaptchuk demonstrated is what some medical thinkers have begun to call the “care effect” — the idea that the opportunity for patients to feel heard and cared for can improve their health."<p>Old wine in new bottles. This effect is well-known, much studied, and has a name: the "Hawthorne Effect":<p><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hawthorne_effect</a><p>A quote: "The central idea behind the Hawthorne effect is that changes in participants' behavior during the course of a study may be 'related only to the special social situation and social treatment they received.'"<p>Studies of the Hawthorne effect date back to the 1950s.<p>It seems that people in social psychology can't be bothered to read their own literature, and end up rediscovering what's already been discovered.