People I know still insist on buying brand-name painkillers. As you can imagine, I’ve spent half my life trying to explain to them why this is a waste of money, but in fact, the paradox of Branthwaite and Cooper’s experimental data is that they were right all along. Whatever pharmacology theory tells you, that brand-named version is better, and there’s just no getting away from it. Part of that might be the cost; a recent study looking at pain caused by electric shocks showed that a pain relief treatment was stronger when subjects were told it cost $2.50 than when they were told it cost 10
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