The concept of evidence, the demand for evidence-based practice and decision-making has for years dominated educational research. Concomitantly, the randomized controlled trials (RCT) that originally gained ground within the field of medicine have become the gold standard for empirical research and political reform within educational sciences, at least in Scandinavia. Nevertheless, proponents of such an approach have not fully explored the consequences of evidence-based methods, in particular the double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. What is the equivalent to the placebo-effect in education and how does research in educational sciences deal with this effect? The concept of placebo is arguably as close as medicine gets to acknowledging the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious and unconscious knowledge. With the concept of transference, psychoanalysis offers a useful exploration of the processes and mechanisms leading to the placebo effects.