Antidepressants Are Placebos
Claim: Antidepressants provide no genuine therapeutic benefit beyond the psychological effect of a placebo.
Bullshit Meter
Pure ontological fiction, excluding real psychological effects.
Physics vs. mind loop
Does it work in the physical world, or only through belief and behaviour?
Physically false, but a real psychological effect (nocebo / self-fulfilling prophecy).
Bio & cult hazard
80.4%Risk of abandoning medicine and of getting trapped in a closed group.
Topological fingerprint
The structural profile of the claim on five axes.
- Empirical rigor
- 33.8%
- Magic & dogma
- 7.1%
- Rhetorical fog
- 18.5%
- Conspiracy
- 57.5%
- Psychosocial
- 36.4%
Ockham's guillotine
What remains after cutting away the unfalsifiable superstructure.
Scam & grift
0.3%How much it works as a money-extraction funnel.
Fog & Barnum
27.6%Protection from refutation through vagueness and stolen jargon.
Energy, frequency, vibration, quantum alignment, natural harmony, ancient wisdom, holistic balance…
- Barnum effect8.1%
- Motte-and-bailey22.9%
- Stolen jargon4.3%
Guru roulette
14.1%Does the result depend on who performs it?
Repeatability between operators: 85.9%
- Special gift needed3.5%
- Contradicting experts7.3%
- "Skeptics block it"3.3%
Fossil & dogma clock
85.2%Does the field correct its errors, or is it frozen?
- 🚀Active science21.2%
- 🩹Degenerative patching51.6%
- 🎭Marketing chameleon13.6%
- 🦴Fossil in amber13.6%
Tin-foil hat reactor
52.1%How big a global conspiracy the claim needs.
Paranoia level 3/5 · Industry collusion