You’re talking about the ethics of giving patients placebo medicine. That’s not what I mean. I mean that I don’t understand why there isn’t more research into

You’re talking about the ethics of giving patients placebo medicine. That’s not what I mean. I mean that I don’t understand why there isn’t more research into how the placebo effect works and whether there’s ways to make it work better. Reading other sections of the wikipedia article you linked, it seems to me that researchers have been stuck at “is the placebo effect even real?” for decades and few try to figure out how it works and why, and whether it can somehow be amplified. The answers to such questions might well influence the ethics discussion but “we really don’t get how it works so better not prescribe placebos” is a very unsatisfying stance to me.