That isn't what you claimed earlier. You claimed that the University's media team (or journalists) misrepresented what the researchers concluded and nobody noticed. That is verging on CT status.
I claimed both, because both are true. But I was speaking on a general basis, and not referring to any specific paper or university.
Let me be clear:
In some cases, the science was good, but it was misunderstood by media teams or journalists and misleading claims were made in the press.
In other cases, the science was poorly controlled and did not account for certain variables, leading to shaky conclusions, and misleading claims were made in the press.
In other cases, other things happened which cast doubt on the conclusion that placebos can have a powerful and measurable effect. There are many factors involved in this myth.
Mike has gone in-depth into most of these issues over the course of many episodes of his podcast, examining many examples, and shown how they contribute to the "powerful placebo" myth that placebos have an actual organic healing effect that was comparable to genuine interventions ("over and above placebo", as we would otherwise say).
For example (one single example out of many), Mike showed in one episode that Ben Goldacre cited sources in his book that he claimed demonstrate certain things (such as "a blue placebo pill is more effective than a red placebo pill"), but that the sources in question actually did not demonstrate. Mike showed this by actually going to the cited papers and reading from them directly.
This is one of his methods. He takes something someone has claimed is demonstrated by science, goes to the actual published science, and shows that it does not demonstrate that at all. Or if it does, he shows how it did not account for certain variables. Or that it was based on a tiny sample size. Or something else. All this, taken together, convincingly argues (to me, at least) that the "powerful placebo" effect is not real.
Have I gone into enough detail yet? He's been doing this for six years now so dredging up more examples from memory is going to be tricky. As I have said, I anticipate more articles on the UK Skeptic website in the future, at which point it will be easier to back up what I'm saying.
