When you take a pill, you and your doctor hope it will work—and that helps it work. That’s not a new idea. But now researchers say they know just how much of a drug’s effect comes from the patient’s expectation: at least half. 

When patients in the midst of a headache attack took a dummy (假的) pill which they thought of as a widely used headache drug, it reduced their pain. It worked almost as much as when they took the real drug thinking it was a placebo (安慰剂). 

“There was no difference between the real drug and the placebo dressed up with a nice word in reducing pain,” researcher Ted Kaptchuk says. “Basically we show that words can actually double the effect of a drug. That’s pretty impressive.”   

And if it works when treating headaches, it also might work for a wide variety of other illnesses. The findings have interesting implications for doctors and patients, because what doctors say about a medicine appears to have a lot to do with its benefits. Beyond that, it raises a question of whether drug companies should take subjects’expectations into account when they test a new drug. 

The study is the latest in a series that’s helping to work out the mysteries of the placebo effect. Before the study, the group has already shown that placebos can have the effect of active medicine in patients with asthma (哮喘), and that even when patients know they’re taking a placebo, they can get relief from the pain. 

According to the first two paragraphs, what’s new of the research is that ________. 

Placebos can have the effect of active medicine in reducing pains when doctors ________. 

According to the passage, the findings have interesting implications in that ________. 

It has been proved that placebos have the effect of active medicine in treating asthma ________.