While I don't claim to have any special knowledge of acupuncture, and thus my opinion carries essentially no value, I believe that it's a perfect example of placebo.
However, I have recently been reading more about placebo and nocebo (which is the opposite of placebo, meaning that a treatment that "should" work doesn't because of a persons beliefs), and it's truly mindblowing stuff.
I mean I knew placebo can be pretty effective, but sheesh, when you look into it, there's just much more interesting stuff going on than most people realize.
Here's a short talk about placebo and nocebo to give some perspective about how truly weird it is. By Dr. Ben Goldacre, who is a pretty respected guy, and has written a pretty interesting book about (some) problems with science, quackery and media coverage of both.
It's pretty cool, but
WARNING: strong language.
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