In 2005, New Scientist listed the placebo effect as Number 1 among 13 things that do not make sense.
Now they are trying to figure out how to harness it over there:
From New Scientist:
How you can harness the placebo effect
…
“It’s hard to believe that sham surgery can produce a long-lasting effect,” says Luana Colloca, who studies the placebo effect at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. But it can. More.
We don’t make this stuff up, you know. If we had that kind of imagination, we’d be getting rich writing screenplays.
See also: Royal Society meet on paradigm shift in evolution? Many of the 50 or so scientists associated with The Third Way of Evolution will attend.