Placebo has no effect?

Maybe the power of the mind isn’t as strong as some people think:

Hróbjartsson and Gøtzsche published a study in 2001 and a follow-up study in 2004 questioning the nature of the placebo effect. … They performed two meta-analyses involving 156 clinical trials in which an experimental drug or treatment protocol was compared to a placebo group and an untreated group, and … found that in studies with a binary outcome, meaning patients were classified as improved or not improved, the placebo group had no statistically significant improvement over the no-treatment group. Similarly, there was no significant placebo effect in studies in which objective outcomes (such as blood pressure) were measured by an independent observer. The placebo effect could only be documented in studies in which the outcomes (improvement or failure to improve) were reported by the subjects themselves.

Here’s the link. I haven’t found a working link to the 2004 study, however the original 2001 study is available here. Here’s a Danish summary of the 2004 paper.