Seems odd that you can cream out those placebo people who might...

Seems odd that you can cream out those placebo people who might do well.

I can't find the trial that they are comparing against. The thing about the placebo effect is that people think they are on a great drug and some how they improve (the power of the mind).

So it could be that the placebo third on the trial show improved improvement over the benchmark. Hence it's not a given that we will get that 10% improvement target.

Alchemia did a large trial for their cancer drug (over 200 subjects). The drug did well, but the placebo did the same. So they failed the trial and collapsed! There were questions asked as to how the placebo group did so well.

But here the benchmark is not as shabby as Alchemia's placebo group should have been.