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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine - Unfortunately Supported by Evidence
 
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moebius2778
May 3, 2013

Cheekio posted:

Dancer, you haven't established 'sciencebasedmedicine.org' as a credible source, and as it doesn't cite research in its conclusions, it doesn't seem to establish itself as a credible source either. Here's a meta analysis of multiple double blind clinical trials where acupuncture was tested against control groups to see if it had any medicinal effect:

http://summaries.cochrane.org/CD001351/BACK_acupuncture-and-dry-needling-for-low-back-pain

The conclusion that the Cochrane Collaboration came to was that acupuncture outperformed the control groups by a statistically significant margin across the many studies they examined.

edit: If you don't mind adding '.org' to your quote I'd appreciate it, as quoting 'science based medicine' is an appeal to a school of medicine that exists beyond that one website you're quoting, and looks intellectually dishonest.

Okay, here's the copy of the paper I'm using.

So, I'm not seeing how this paper addresses points 3 and 4 from the SBM link. Looking through the studies they looked at, exactly one (Edelist 1976) uses a proper sham acupuncture technique:

quote:

Interventions:

1) Acupuncture: Manual insertion of 4 sterile needles into traditional acupuncture points (BL 60 and BL 25 bilaterally) until reaching Teh Chi, then electroacupuncture at 3-10Hz. 30minutes, 3 treatments in maximum 2 weeks. Training & experience of acupuncturists unknown.

2) Sham acupuncture, 4 needles placed in areas devoid of classic acupuncture points, no Teh Chi.

However, for that one, the conclusions are:

quote:

There seemed to be no difference in either the subjective or objective changes between the two effects and suggest that much of the improvement in pain syndromes associated with acupuncture may be on the basis of placebo effect.

The other studies are either:

1) Comparing different acupuncture techniques (Carlsson 2001 (sorta - conclusions don't actually compare the different acupuncture techniques), Ding 1998, Kurosu 1979(b), Takeda 2001)
2) Control acupuncture either involves superficial needle insertion, or no needle insertion (Araki 2001, Ceccherelli 2002, Inoue 2000, etc.)
3) Control did not involve any form of acupuncture (sham or otherwise) (lots)
4) ...and then there was one that was actually testing cupping, but seems to have been included in this analysis because both the experimental and control groups received acupuncture.

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The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Acupuncture and Herbal Medicine - Unfortunately Supported by Evidence