"it doesn't suggest at all that placebos themselves are doing anything beneficial for patients."
Fair enough. But those patients who don't take their medicine as prescribed are ~25% of all U.S. patients. So in fact adherence studies are a much better measure of the efficacy of medicine than clinical trials, which means that just because a drug has been shown to have clinical efficacy doesn't mean that it actually at all effective in the real world.
Fair enough. But those patients who don't take their medicine as prescribed are ~25% of all U.S. patients. So in fact adherence studies are a much better measure of the efficacy of medicine than clinical trials, which means that just because a drug has been shown to have clinical efficacy doesn't mean that it actually at all effective in the real world.