[The Hierophant]

If people can be healed by the 'confirmation' of improvement that a placebo may bring, why try and dispel their positive reaction? That's what I don't quite understand. You may say it is to protect them from exploitation by money-grubbing shysters. But if they believe themselves to be cured, and can go on about their lives in increased comfort with a greater sense of security, then surely they havn't been exploited, they've been helped.
Some people need to believe in things like this. To say to them 'just think positively, you'll get the same result' simply doesn't work. They need to have some kind of mechanism to base that positive thinking upon. Be it taking a pill, saying a prayer, consulting a chiropractor, they all allow for a stable basis for that positive thinking to take place. The treatment may or may not be physically doing anything, but if it helps psychologically and makes the sufferer feel better then it is doing it's job.
The easing of pain is what medicine is all about right? An obsession with consulting a supposedly scientific method of inquiry in confirming a treatment's results may provide security of cynicism for some, but for others it merely makes an attempt to unravel the very thing which is capable of bringing them relief; faith.