There are no recent human studies. Rat studies are irrelevant because the solubility of ecdysterone excludes it from distribution to skeletal muscle compartments.
And placebo can do pretty much anything and make you believe pretty much anything. This is why we have placebo-controlled trials. We don't compare drugs to control groups; we compare them to placebo groups. By knowing that you are taking ecdysterone, you are eliminating placebo control, which, coupled with your singular sample size and body of evidence showing ecdy is worthless in humans, leads me to conclude that the placebo effect has taken hold. I can give you two examples of such:
Anabolic steroids: the physiological effects of placebos : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise
The subjects taking the placebo that was supposed to be a steroid had absurd increases in strength in just one month. As I said earlier, there are heavy neurophysiological implications of placebo.
Another trial which we had to dissect in school just last week was set up as follows:
-Patients with chronic neurological pain were administered either narcotics or placebo
-No difference was found in pain relief between narcotics or placebo, but both were vastly improved over control
Here's the kicker though:
-Subsequent administration of anti-narcotics (also placebo-controlled) abolished the pain relief in the PLACEBO group to a significant degree over the placebo anti-narcotics. In other words, one could extrapolate that there are major alterations in neurotransmitter/nervous system signaling, just from believing that you are taking something that works. Placebo can make you believe anything.
To drive home the point, this is why we have clinical trials structured as they are. With a rudimentary understanding of ecdysterone, differences in rat/human Vd and compartmentalization, evidence in human trials showing lack of efficacy, and tracer studies in larger mammals showing no distribution to skeletal muscle, it is indeed safe to conclude, given our present knowledge, that ecdysterone is nothing more than a placebo.