Placebo or Not?

Daily deck № 3 · same 10 for everyone today
Round 1 of 10 — your call:

Deck № 3 complete
/10

New deck tomorrow. Every answer links to the full evidence — that's the point.

How Dissected works

What is Dissected?

A free treatment auditor on health.ai. Type any drug, supplement, therapy, or procedure and get an honest verdict: what the evidence shows, what it doesn't, who gets hurt even when it works — and who profits at every stage. Pharmaceutical and natural treatments are held to the same standards: our homeopathy verdict and our stent verdict are equally blunt.

How to use it

  • Search any treatment from the top bar. If we've dissected it, you'll land on its verdict.
  • No verdict yet? Hit “Demand it.” The queue is public and demand decides what we dissect next — leave an email and you'll get the verdict the moment it publishes.
  • Rule first. Verdict pages ask for your call — Works / Overhyped / Doesn't work — before the reveal. It's optional (“Just show me” skips it), but it's the honest way to notice what the marketing has already done to you.
  • Play the daily game. Placebo or Not? — ten treatments, three buttons, one score. Same deck for everyone each day; share your 🟩🟥 grid and challenge someone.

How to read a verdict

  • The badge (Works, with catches Conditional Placebo) — our one-line finding.
  • The evidence meter — how solid the science behind the verdict is (strong / moderate / weak / unknown). A “Placebo” verdict can have strong evidence: we're very sure it doesn't work.
  • Tier chips on each claim — where it comes from: meta-analysis > trial > observational > opinion. Higher tier, harder to argue with.
  • 💰 The Money Map — who profits at every stage, including who funded the studies we cite. The wellness seller's margin gets audited alongside pharma's.
  • The Minority Report — who gets hurt even when the treatment works for most people, and how to tell if you might be in that group. We never let the 5% disappear into the 95%.
  • The other side — the strongest honest case against our own verdict, written to win. If we can't survive our own counterargument, we shouldn't publish.
  • Sources — every claim links to its study, and every study carries a 💰 COI flag telling you who paid for it.

Why trust it?

  • AI-researched, human-checked. Five adversarial research passes, then a person reads every verdict before it publishes.
  • No ads. No affiliates. Ever. We sell nothing on any verdict page, and every page discloses how we make money (optional Pro subscriptions to health.ai's AI tools).
  • Corrections are public. Substantiated errors get fixed within 48 hours and logged permanently on the page. Found one? Use the challenge link on any verdict.
  • Evidence-weighted, never popularity-weighted. Reader votes are compared against verdicts, never used to change them.

What Dissected is not

Not medical advice. Verdicts describe evidence about populations — they can't know your history, your medications, or your situation. Never start or stop a treatment because of this site: bring the “questions for your doctor” from any verdict to a qualified clinician instead.