"Acupuncture" is effective

[awong]

http://uk.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUKN2428726920070925
In fact, it seems to possibly work better than a non-personalized exercise regiment for back pain. This isn't earth shattering news. In 97, the NIH did a consensus report on efficacy of acupuncture

Comments

[awong]

...erp...just responded to mark about a similar point. It's not that acupuncture works as a whole. It's that, experimentally, for whatever reason, this is effective as a treatment. The study doesn't actually claim acupuncture is effective over placebo, it claims that treatment is effective over regimented workout for reasons unknown. As such, placebo is irrelevant for the discussion of efficacy of acupuncture over regimented workouts.

As for conclusions, I think they can bring firm conclusions, but they'll be very narrow (eg., a course of needles in the back on regular intervals over X months manage to make people perceive a large reduction in pain than Y type of exercise done over a similar period of time...but we don't know why.). Given that the biophysical mechanisms for why pain is reduced via physical therapy (when direct cause is unknown) isn't well understood anyways (they talk about endorphins and some other endocrine responses due to stimulus) the studies that result in prescription of physical therapy as treatment are just as non-causal.