Peg, Thank you for the invitation to jump in here, As you know when we published the paper in "neurotherapeutics" last year, we were concerned about how the so called "gold" standard has blinded researchers from using their brain to comprehend what the data are really saying. Large, unmistakable placebo effects are generated in surgery studies. Our concern then was about the dismissal of the placebo effect as bias was contrary to the history of medicine, and denies the human element, where hopes and expectations play an important role in healing, would undermine the treatment. Then after 2 additional failures of sham controlled studies, where we know from 1st hand experience that the therapies have lasting effects for some people , we began to look more specifically at the research literature on placebo effects, DBS, and sham surgery (I want to give special acknowledgment to Stan Planton, from Ohio for his amazing research skills to sift through the abundant noise to zero in on relevant published data). This was not just a difference of opinion about patients taking risks, but it may be affecting the results of trials, by creating bias in unintended ways Our arguments are summarized in a comment on the Alzheimers Research Forum. I will add more comments later.

Perry