I was talking to a psychiatrist friend of mine about placebo effect and he told me that it definitely can make a big difference. But I asked him if he ever just gave placebo pills to patients and he said no because he felt that would be unethical. I didn't really think to ask whether it would really be unethical if it might help.

If you could know ahead of time that it would work, I think it would be different. But you can't know that, right?