How often can one pinpoint this? Is it really helpful to insist that the shorthand be expanded on to even more speculative criticisms, or are we just letting the perfect be the enemy of the better here?

Some of these criticisms are speculative because there are no standards for placebo disclosure. There is some argument that it would be useful even to researchers themselves to taboo the term "placebo effect" and instead actually think about their experimental design down to apparently minor details such as what exactly they put in the "placebo" pill.