Two studies published online this week by Cook et al (Cook et al 2012) and Mannion et al (Mannion et al 2012) appear to highlight the importance of non-mechanical factors in patients’ response to treatment, namely credebo and personal equipoise. Credebo is a term I came across on a Chartered Society of Physiotherapist forum discussion. One physiotherapist wrote that in order to have a placebo effect on a patient the therapist needed to be credible. This physiotherapist contended that clinically we had to earn the placebo effect and as such he termed it credebo. Personal equipoise is an individual’s...