On Winning a 2010 AAAS Kavli Science Journalism Award: “I’m delighted and humbled to learn that my story, The Placebo Problem, published in the September 2009 issue of Wired, is the winner of this year’s Kavli Science Journalism award for a magazine feature. I’m grateful to the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) — the biggest professional society for scientists in the world and publishers of the esteemed journal Science — for this distinguished honor…

My story is about the surprising power of the placebo effect — what happens in the brain and body when you think you’re taking medicine or receiving treatment — and the problems in the pharmaceutical industry caused by the increasing number of experimental drugs that are failing in clinical trials to outperform dummy pills used as controls.

It’s always gratifying to see a story you’ve worked hard on be embraced by readers, linked to by other journalists, and recognized by a venerable institution like the AAAS. Even Stephen Colbert ended up riffing on the seemingly absurd notion that sugar pills could perform better in a trial than an expensive experimental drug…”

— Steve Silberman (NeuroTribes)