[wongarsu]

> But some people can argue that it is the natural outcome of a "placebo effect".

What would a placebo effect even be when talking about lack of sleep, stress, etc.?

In medicine the size of the placebo effect seems to depend on the procedure. A placebo surgery is more effective than a placebo injection, which is more effective than a placebo pill. So if you want to test if an injection is better than a placebo you compare it to a placebo injection like saline water, something where there's no way it can have a medical effect beyond the psychological effect. But that would mean that to evaluate meditation you would have to compare it to some kind of fake meditation, maybe breathing exercises that have no viable way to be effective beyond the placebo effect. But we don't know nearly enough about neuroscience to come up with such a thing.