Could we use a range of placebos in order to better control for the effect of statistical outliers? I feel like the uniformity implied by “placebo=sugar pill” might not be rich enough to account for the range of effects that might be at work ... I actually agree that the belief that something effective is being done could play a real role in actual healing — but I don’t think it’s been shown by any of these studies that this manner of belief can be meaningfully packaged into a one size fits all sugar pill...