In the context of modern medicine, the placebo effect is a troublesome and controversial phrase. In this paper, I use investigative ordinary language philosophy to try to get clear on what it means. In so doing, I uncover three points. (i) The placebo effect makes sense in research but not clinical practice. (ii) To make the phrase make sense in clinical practice, we must manufacture a situation in which we can change linguistic habits. (iii) Such action is not necessary because in clinical

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... tice we do better with other, more settled words and phrases.