Placebo effect is under the spell and control of "active" players BECAUSE They experiment with their listening and gear...They TEST the placebos....No need to use James Randi Blind test.... Any simple blind test will do....
Money means way less than people think in audio and placebo is neutralized easily in mechanical, electrical and acoustic experiments and embeddings controls....
Biases are not only negative influences to be eliminated they can be also a positive teacher to be used all along the RIGHT path for the ears and mind.... Call that a self education...
For headphones, i scrap all my 7 headphones ( magneplanar, electrostatic, dynamic and hybrid) for my 500 bucks rightfully embedded system at low cost because they cannot hold a candle to it....Then placebo with headphones? No more....It is more easy to control the room/speakers relation than the ready made shell box and the limitations of any headphones...
People dont learn to trust themselves, they trust money and reviews....