I think what it’s saying is not that the placebo works, but that this therapy is literally worse than doing nothing, at least in this category of patient.
The point of this study was to be used as propaganda by the fake news outlets to scare the public away from a medicine that many, many doctors are giving to their patients with excellent results.
The public is naive, they aren’t in the mindset of realizing how many “experts” there are out there whose motive it is to deceive. The public needs to get in that mindset, of assuming that everything the “experts” tell us might actually be a lie. All the time.