Does anyone know of a study that finds an actual placebo effect? As far as I can tell, there are two distinct effects, and both are meaningless. The first "pl

Does anyone know of a study that finds an actual placebo effect? As far as I can tell, there are two distinct effects, and both are meaningless. The first "placebo effect" is observed everywhere, and is simply reversion to the mean. Nobody studies a treatment on healthy people, because treating people for a condition they don't have makes for a very expensive study. But some of those people get better spontaneously, and some weren't even sick, but had the right symptoms. Their improvement without actually being treated was originally called the placebo effect. The other "placebo effect" is the one where treatment with a placebo (preferable an expensive placebo labelled "forte" and administered by the chief of medicine) is more effective than no treatment. But that effect only happens where the only way to measure the outcome is by asking the patient. A human is a very unreliable instrument. A human may report that the irritable bowel is gone because he doesn't take the symptoms as seriously anymore after the treatment, or maybe because he just wanted attention and there had never been an irritable bowel. So, does anyone know of a study that finds a placebo effect that isn't explained by "bad instrument" aka. self reporting?