Acupuncture vs Sham Acupuncture.

[politas]

So, as far as I can tell from my reading about acupuncture studies, the higher the quality of the study, the less benefit "real" acupuncture has over sham acupuncture. Traditional acupuncture points are no better than randomly chosen acupuncture points, and twirled toothpicks are just as effective as needles sticking into your body

Comments

[etfb]

Ha! I'll see your twirled toothpicks and raise you the high tech version! Acupuncture by email! Just send me your email address, and I'll send you back a link to some nice new-agey music to listen to on YouTube, plus a bunch of acupuncturish sound-effects, like "Jab! Twirl twirl twist twirl! Jabbajabbaplink! Plunk!" Likely to have exactly the same benefit as the real thing, and you don't even need to take your shirt off!

[politas]

You might think it will have the same effect, and it's possible that it will. But the randomly twirled toothpicks are scientifically proven to have the same effect.

[politas]

No. It's on my 'to buy' list, once I get through The Code Book.

[bemused_leftist]

'Quality of the study'? Does this mean how impressive the toothpick twirling is?

If so, wouldn't that apply to any placebo study: the more impressive the placebo, the better results it will give?

Looking at drugs as an easier example, what would really make the point would be the real drug packaged like a dodgy supplement and given causally -- vs the placebo packaged like a real drug and given with great seriousness. If the real drug still gets better results, then you've got something.

[politas]

Quality of the study as in: the number of participants, the screening for prior experience with the modality, the ways in which it is blinded, including the data analysis, etc, etc. Higher quality studies remove expectations from the results.

Acupuncture is all placebo. But it does have a very strong placebo response. The only stronger type of placebo is placebo surgery. Pills are a weaker placebo, but size and colour of pill will vary the strength of the placebo response. (Which leaves me thinking that homeopaths have it all wrong with their tiny white sugar pills. They should give people huge red sugar pills.) And with subjective conditions that are purely a pain sensation, there is often little benefit over placebo for any medical intervention. Hopefully that will improve in time.