Your point is very valid. The Wired article seems to suggest that placebos are genuinely effective. We shouldn't consider the medical researchers studying the p

Your point is very valid. The Wired article seems to suggest that placebos are genuinely effective. We shouldn't consider the medical researchers studying the placebo effect to be idiots however. Unfortunately, focusing only on hard clinical endpoints is not a luxury medical research has, and would involve excluding most psychiatric research, most palliative care research, quality of life analyses in cancer patients etc etc, in other words, lots of important stuff. So if you still want to try and make people feel better, the placebo effect has to be dealt with. I do agree with you though this being a poor article. Some additional points: 1. Placebos can have adverse effects. For example, it is quite common for patients to experience nausea and even vomiting when taking a dummy pill in a clinical trial. So they aren't universal panaceas. 2. Sometimes placebos can be the intervention arm, not the control arm: http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61115-4/abstract http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-67... This study compared simply administering air versus oxygen to patients with a terminal illness who were short of breath. Giving air was as effective as oxygen for relieving shortness of breath. This isn't the placebo effect getting stronger, this is just realising that doing less but doing something works perfectly well.