In the world of med­ical research, placebo is almost always talked about in the neg­a­tive, as the base­line against which all other treat­ments are tested. Ran­dom­ized placebo-controlled clin­i­cal tri­als are often con­sid­ered the gold stan­dard of study design. Accord­ing to Oxford Dic­tio­nar­ies Online, placebo is defined as “a med­i­cine or pro­ce­dure pre­scribed for the psychological […]