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gwern comments on Fallacies of reification - the placebo effect - Less Wrong Discussion
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Er... Teaching people about placebo effect is raising the sanity waterline, or do you think >50% of the population knows it and why it is relevant, and at all discounts studies based on it? (I'm pretty sure they don't, since this is a fine point of randomized studies, while most people read credulously just regular correlative studies and certainly don't appreciate any specifics of the evidence hierarchy!)
So, you are letting the perfect be the enemy of the better: in objecting that a valid criticism can be even more precisely specified. Thanks for finally being clear about it; now I can downvote the post with a clear conscience.
You can teach people about placebos (or about control responses, or about proper controls in general) without needing to perpetuate the errors stemming from a poorly-named "placebo effect" and the hidden inferences that come with the term "effect".