What bothers me is the incessant pushing of this agenda:
> anyone ending up in a psychedelic research study is doing so because they think psychedelics are promising for mental health and they want to try it out
> maybe the real reason psychedelics show efficacy in depression is that they are a sort of super-placebo
This amounts to uninformed armchair dismissal that is inconsistent with a growing body of scientific evidence, and easily refuted by a cursory survey of recent literature and clinical trial results.
Surely you’re familiar with double blind randomized placebo controlled studies? I’ve linked you to recent ones in other comments.
These methods aren’t perfect and your concerns certainly have merit in general - I just don’t understand why you continue to make these broad and suggestive claims without any supporting evidence.