Well, this summary held sway until this past year, when Hrobjartsson and Gotzche of Denmark published in the New England Journal their version of the same analysis involving 116 trials with 8500 subjects. Their conclusion, unlike Beecher’s, is the placebo is not powerful, it’s powerless. In the aggregate, they concluded that placebos have no beneficial effect, but were willing to admit that it was somewhat beneficial for subjective things, and particularly pain.