If that’s what arthwollipot meant, then certainly I agree with him, and with you. But that's a somewhat odd way of putting it, then. …I mean, take the paranormal, that I referred to earlier:
Let’s say, hypothetically, that, crazy as it sounds, one of those nutjobs that used to come up on the earlier JREF threads, claiming they could read your mind, and divine the numbers you’ve thought of continents away from them, is indeed able to convincingly support this claim of theirs of the paranormal. Or maybe they do that in a full-on lab study, not just here, online. Point is, let's assume they do it. ...Well now, first of all, that only demonstrates that some kinds of telepathy sometimes work, not that every kind of telepathy therefore works; and it most certainly does not indicate that every claim of telepathy is therefore true. Second of all, it is a demonstration only of telepathy, and not of other kinds of paranormal claims like, I don’t know, dowsing, and prophesying future events, and speaking with the dead, and recollection of “past life” memories from long ago. But despite that, it wouldn’t really make sense to therefore assert that reports that this experiment demonstrates the paranormal are wrong. It does indeed prove the paranormal, and it would certainly merit the million dollars, had that still been on offer. Right?
Yes. I forgot to reply to this post, but my point is that if a study demonstrates strong placebo, that's extremely interesting. I think I've been pretty clear about that upthread!
However, it shouldn't be reported as "explaining the placebo effect" because we know that it doesn't explain most of the placebo effect. Strong placebo may be the mechanism behind the placebo effect some of the time, but it's certainly not most of the time, and that's an important fact that should be made clear.
I believe both that to the extent that strong placebo exists as a real effect, we should be very interested in that and it should be included in our understanding of the placebo effect and that it shouldn't be reported as though it were the only thing causing the placebo effect.
Like I said, to me the really important thing, that I wanted to be clear about, is that this experiment does seem, so very unexpectedly, to indicate that expectations can drive physiological relief for causes that are not themselves psychosomatic in nature.
Yes, I agree. I still find it weird that both the podcaster and Arth's response to this paper are related to the way it's being reported in the news rather than how it impacts on our understanding of the placebo effect. The latter seems much more interesting to me, and is more related to the subject of this thread.