Honestly I don't see anything really wrong here. In the long run, you'll have people that get the treatment and people who don't, and over time you can compare

Honestly I don't see anything really wrong here. In the long run, you'll have people that get the treatment and people who don't, and over time you can compare these groups and outcomes. People will naturally gravitate toward the correct answer. It would be nice if we could have an omniscient oracle to gate-keep us away from ineffective treatments - but we don't live in that universe. Instead we have (in the US) the FDA, which is staffed by smart, well-intentioned, and very fallible human beings, each with their own (well-intentioned) agenda. At the very least these folks are simply weeding out treatments with major negative outcomes, like killing the patient. So some placebos get through and called 'treatments' like LBR - unless there is some better treatment that you're forgoing, there's really not much harm except for the $400. The folks that do a lot of research will make better choices than those that don't - but they will also help all those others make better choices over time as they communicate their ideas and results to the masses.