I’m still not convinced by the studies that say placebos work even when people know they’re placebos and understand what that means. For example, in the study described by the paper linked from the article, patients were told that "placebo pills, something like sugar pills, have been shown in rigorous clinical testing to produce significant mind-body self-healing processes.” But I think a lot of people would hear that sentence as just more medical-speak. This study is stronger than most because they asked afterward what patients thought was in the pills, and while the patients didn’t know, they did guess things like “sugar” and “flour”. But given how little trouble homeopaths have in convincing people that some particular water has special healing properties, I’m not convinced these subjects understood that the placebos were designed, and believed by the people administering them, to have no special properties at all.
