Full agreement—human health is extremely noisy, and people are irrational and inconsistent in their measurement of outcomes. Under-discussed is the variability across persons as well—there could be orders of magnitude difference in effect for the same treatment in different individuals.
I think that only reinforces my speculation that placebo effect (or similar belief->experience causality) is sometimes powerful, but almost always hard to measure.
Full agreement—human health is extremely noisy, and people are irrational and inconsistent in their measurement of outcomes. Under-discussed is the variability across persons as well—there could be orders of magnitude difference in effect for the same treatment in different individuals.
I think that only reinforces my speculation that placebo effect (or similar belief->experience causality) is sometimes powerful, but almost always hard to measure.