Orac looks into the placebo effect of expensive therapies, and suggests it plays a role into CAM’s supposed “effectiveness”:
This study also suggests to me why some CAM therapies works so well. Not only do patients tend to invest a lot of effort and time into them (think acupuncture, for example, which frequently requires multiple sessions a week lasting 30 minutes or more), but these therapies can be fairly expensive. It is as though CAM practitioners instinctively understand how best to maximize the placebo effect.
Sid Schwab also comments.
