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agree that it's crap study, but even worse than that it's an attempt to discredit symptom reporting in general

while talking extensively about the nocebo effect, it ignores the fact that without media coverage a patient may experience side effects but not connect that effect with the switch from one drug to another, or may think they're imagining the effect, etc

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Absolutely. My long-term partner was in this exact situation: She did experience some fairly mild side-effects, complained about them to me, but didn't consider that the medication switch might be the cause until she saw others complaining, checked, and realised the symptoms had begun at the time she'd changed meds. She had simply assumed that she wouldn't have been switched to the generic if it wasn't identical, and thus initially assumed that any symptoms she was experiencing must be caused by something else; the exact opposite of what the study claimed, despite the fact that she will have been counted in that study as evidence of a nocebo effect.

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