Acupuncture- Real or B.S.

[troutman]

Will have a look, but Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, is probably not considered a quality source.

Woo-woo (or just plain woo) refers to ideas considered irrational or based on extremely flimsy evidence or that appeal to mysterious occult forces or powers. [Skepdic]

Seems to be a lot of woo in that interview:

I studied acupuncture and found this endorphin story. Then there was this crazy homeopathy phenomenon. I studied it and the cells performed in a really amazing way when treated with high dilutions of chemicals. To me, these are wonderful clues with which to experiment. So I'm not out to discredit TCM or chi. I'm out to take TCM and find out how it works. So far, I've failed. But that doesn't mean that I hold the secrets of nature. Nature is far smarter than most of us.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=4



So how can we decide which studies are credible? We now have published guidelines such as the 22 item Consolidated Standards of Reporting Trials (CONSORT) checklist to assess the quality of randomized controlled trials, but Bausell offers some simpler criteria that can rule out the worst offenders:

• Subjects are randomly assigned to a CAM therapy or a credible placebo
• At least 50 subjects per group
• Less than 25% dropout rate
• Publication in a high-quality, prestigious, peer-reviewed journal

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by JustAnotherGuy

You didn't provide the proof that you have experienced headaches. You just say you did. That is not scientific proof.

Do you notice that my answer to you is how you seem to answer alot of the questions here? Proof, give me proof. Nope, that doesn't prove anything.

But like I said before. I accept that you think like that. That is your right. So, carrry on. Oh, and if you ever have really bad back pain don't be a hipocrite and try accupuncture.

I'm new to the argument, but I just thought I would mention that you've come up with the worst interpretation of the scientific method since folks in Kansas claimed intelligent design was a valid "theory".

[photon]

Originally Posted by simmer2

For all those folks requiring evidence, here's an article citing the main benefit Acupuncture provides...a natural release of endorphins.

An article on a website does not constitute evidence sorry, I have no faith in an author's ability to properly interpret the results of scientific research and write about it, since the # of times when they get it right is almost zero. There's a handful of science writers I trust, otherwise you have to go right to the source.

As for a doctor who set out to disprove something and became convinced, that is basically an appeal to authority... not that that's necessarily wrong to do in the right contexts, but why should I give his conclusions more weight than the conclusions of (say) the paper we've been discussing?

[Knut]

Many things release Endorphins though. Like exercise, sex, masturbation, massage, laughing etc.

There are much safer ways to get that Endorphin release than needles.

Edit: I should open a clinic where you walk in and greeted with nice music and a relaxing atmosphere. You get taken to a change room to change into a bathrobe, get offered a drink and a snack. Then you get to pick from a selection of porn movies and you get a private room to masturbate in. This will work with people with sore muscles and joints... as well as help alleviate migraines and headaches.

[simmer2]

Originally Posted by photon

An article on a website does not constitute evidence sorry, I have no faith in an author's ability to properly interpret the results of scientific research and write about it, since the # of times when they get it right is almost zero. There's a handful of science writers I trust, otherwise you have to go right to the source.

As for a doctor who set out to disprove something and became convinced, that is basically an appeal to authority... not that that's necessarily wrong to do in the right contexts, but why should I give his conclusions more weight than the conclusions of (say) the paper we've been discussing?

Actually read the last article in the post before replying...

You wanted evidence, I post some items up for discussion and you slam it before you actually even read it. So obviously you don't really want to consider a different potential answer from what you believe is right...and that's fine.

[simmer2]

Originally Posted by Hesla

Many things release Endorphins though. Like exercise, sex, masturbation, massage, laughing etc.

There are much safer ways to get that Endorphin release than needles.

Edit: I should open a clinic where you walk in and greeted with nice music and a relaxing atmosphere. You get taken to a change room to change into a bathrobe, get offered a drink and a snack. Then you get to pick from a selection of porn movies and you get a private room to masturbate in. This will work with people with sore muscles and joints... as well as help alleviate migraines and headaches.

Haha...I think you're on to something Hesla.

As for the experience I've had with acupuncture (really it is IMS as this is more active), it is completely safe.

Again, here is the link:

http://www.medicalacupuncture.org/ac...meranzart.html

[Knut]

PLus... i can charge $100 a "session" and try and get it covered under people's health plans.

I have anecdotal evidence that masturbation helps people feel better.

[Bring_Back_Shantz]

Originally Posted by photon

Why would I when it's shown to have some risk associated with it and be no better than taking a sugar pill?

I think you just stumbled upon a million dollar marketing idea.

Acupuncture: The Calorie Free Alternative To Traditional Placebos!

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by photon

It's not scientific purists, it's just simple reason. If B follows A, you seem to be under the impression that A causes B. This is a logical fallacy and the basic flaw of anecdotal evidence. There are far too many cognitive biases having an impact on a person's experience and beliefs for anecdotal evidence to trustworthy.

Are people being abducted and anally probed by aliens? Anecdotal evidence tells us yes. Demons forcing people to commit evil acts for which they aren't responsible? Anecdotal evidence tells us yes. Has the queen and other world leaders been replaced with a race of lizard-men? Anecdotal evidence tells us yes. Can you declare yourself a free man on the land and not be subject to Canadian law? Anecdotal evidence tells us yes.

Since anecdotal evidence is all that's required, you will admit you accept all the above?

Reductio ad absurdum.

[photon]

Originally Posted by simmer2

Actually read the last article in the post before replying...

I did read it, not exhaustively but I scanned it. However it's an interview, not evidence.

Originally Posted by simmer2

You wanted evidence, I post some items up for discussion

Things written for discussion are not evidence though, do you see the difference?

Originally Posted by simmer2

and you slam it before you actually even read it. So obviously you don't really want to consider a different potential answer from what you believe is right...and that's fine.

I didn't slam it, I simply said it wasn't evidence.

If I ask for some fruit, and you give me a carrot, and I say "that's not fruit", is it rational to complain that I'm slamming the carrot before I even tried it, and I'm not open to considering that carrots are fruits?

I am fully willing to change my stance on things, I have done so in the past with respect to many things (the age of the earth, evolution, global warming, chiropractors, cosmology, do I really need to make a list?), but when I do change my mind it's because of a preponderance of evidence, not a single article or interview.

[photon]

Originally Posted by zuluking

Reductio ad absurdum.

Exactly, so since you don't accept those things, why don't you?

How do you determine what's effective and what isn't?

[Thor]

Originally Posted by simmer2

Actually read the last article in the post before replying...

You wanted evidence, I post some items up for discussion and you slam it before you actually even read it. So obviously you don't really want to consider a different potential answer from what you believe is right...and that's fine.

An interview is a pretty bad source, considering that website is also selling stuff I'd give it a grain of salt.

However if you want to see science actually looking into this, here's an article you might like as it shows a hint of promise, with of course the typical guarded responses and counter arguments of other scientists.

http://www.nature.com/news/2010/1006...l/465538a.html

Acupuncture for Mice.

Long derided by much of the mainstream medical community, acupuncture seems to have just got a little bit less alternative.
Despite anecdotal evidence claiming benefits in treating ailments from allergies to pain, acupuncture faces two big challenges to acceptance in mainstream medicine. Many reviews of clinical trials have concluded that there is no evidence of efficacy for most conditions beyond the placebo effect1, and there is no scientifically accepted mechanism for how the treatment works.
Research in mice has now provided a biochemical explanation that some experts are finding more persuasive2, although it might account for only some of the treatment's supposed benefits. "Our study shows there is a clear biological mechanism behind acupuncture," says Maiken Nedergaard, a neuroscientist at the University of Rochester in New York, who led the research.

[JustAnotherGuy]

Originally Posted by Bring_Back_Shantz

I'm new to the argument, but I just thought I would mention that you've come up with the worst interpretation of the scientific method since folks in Kansas claimed intelligent design was a valid "theory".

I was giving an example of what a lot of people are saying in this thread. No matter what a person says the reply is the equivalent of ... "So, that doesn't prove anything."

[photon]

Unless it's, you know, proof of something.

[Sliver]

Originally Posted by Hesla

Many things release Endorphins though. Like exercise, sex, masturbation, massage, laughing etc.

There are much safer ways to get that Endorphin release than needles.

Edit: I should open a clinic where you walk in and greeted with nice music and a relaxing atmosphere. You get taken to a change room to change into a bathrobe, get offered a drink and a snack. Then you get to pick from a selection of porn movies and you get a private room to masturbate in. This will work with people with sore muscles and joints... as well as help alleviate migraines and headaches.

You're going to open a peep show?

[jammies]

Originally Posted by zuluking

So, if you don't currently have the means to count statistical evidence or measure detectable causes, it does not mean that that which you are attempting to count or measure does not exist or occur.

That you don't understand how this bolded phrase doesn't apply to the study of alternative medicine shows you have only the most superficial understanding of statistics and science.

I don't *need* to detect a cause if doesn't have any effects. Healing is an effect, and medicine that doesn't do any healing isn't actually medicine, in the same way that vehicle that doesn't locomote isn't a vehicle, or a well that holds no water is just a hole.

All the holistic verbiage in the world amounts to nothing if the actual practice of the whatever therapy is at issue doesn't DO anything. To say, "Well it does something but you can't detect it" is utterly nonsensical, because the whole point of medicine is to do something you CAN detect, namely: heal the patient. If it doesn't do that, why exactly should it be called medicine, or need to be "explained"?

[Eric Vail]

I have a bad knee that is likely just a few years away from a replacement. I go to physiotherapy once a week to keep the range of motion. Every week I receive accupuncture as part of my treatment and I have no doubt that it helps. It is very quantifiable. Prior to the accupuncture, she measures the maximum flexion I have in my knee. After the accupuncture, she measures again and usually my range improves after the accupuncture.

Now, anyone saying that accupuncture can cure cancer I'd have serious doubts about. However, it is helping my knee. I really can't see how it could be placebo, either.

[zuluking]

Originally Posted by jammies

That you don't understand how this bolded phrase doesn't apply to the study of alternative medicine shows you have only the most superficial understanding of statistics and science.

I don't *need* to detect a cause if doesn't have any effects. Healing is an effect, and medicine that doesn't do any healing isn't actually medicine, in the same way that vehicle that doesn't locomote isn't a vehicle, or a well that holds no water is just a hole.

All the holistic verbiage in the world amounts to nothing if the actual practice of the whatever therapy is at issue doesn't DO anything. To say, "Well it does something but you can't detect it" is utterly nonsensical, because the whole point of medicine is to do something you CAN detect, namely: heal the patient. If it doesn't do that, why exactly should it be called medicine, or need to be "explained"?

That you assume from a blurb on a message board that I would only have a superficial understanding of anything indicates you place a wildly exaggerated amount of credence in the medium. I notice a few of you like to make thinly-veiled ad hominem attacks.

The intention of the statement was in regards to the measurement of why something produces healing effects rather than the fact that it does. Currently, alternative / holistic methods produce healing effects, whether attributed to the placebo effect or to actual results of the method. If I, individually and anecdotally, experience healing effects, I will continue to use these methods. There are millions of people that have experienced healing effects from these therapies. One could consider that this is all coincidence and a mass placebo effect of considerable proportions or that current experiments or studies are not easily constructed to account for all the variables involved in the healing processes in human bodies and that the results of the healing process is not what was initially set out to measure. Scientific studies attempt to control or adjust for variables beyond what they are attempting to measure, but, if that which they're attempting to measure is intended to operate on or among all the variables, the forest could be missed for the trees.

Not to bring up another contentious topic, but look at climate science. There is an astronomic number of variables involved in climate science and controls on all those variables is impossible and the most complex computer algorithms are enormously challenged. Yet we have very definitive statements being made publically about the exact causes of a degree this way or that in global temperature. It's not just about statistical counting of obvious expected results.

This is not a crack against science (like some of you would like to interpret it.) I'm merely pointing out that, like anything, science is not infallible or complete about its understanding about anything.

[photon]

You don't need to have a perfect model in able to make accurate predictions. It's unreasonably difficult to compute accurate orbits in a system with more than 2 bodies (n-body problem), yet we can do it accurately enough to send probes all over the solar system. Climate science can measure the accuracy of models using the past as input, or when events like volcanoes happen, and they do. The models improve over time of course, but to say a previous model is invalid because a better model comes along is silly; the previous model still made accurate predictions with a given set of assumptions and parameters.

You still seem to miss the point; even if you have hidden variables (i.e. variables that are in principle unknowable directly), you can still detect the outcomes and measure them and study them. Even if people are getting better because of undetectable magic, that they're getting better is measurable.

There are millions of people that have experienced healing effects from these therapies. One could consider that this is all coincidence and a mass placebo effect of considerable proportions or that current experiments or studies are not easily constructed to account for all the variables involved in the healing processes in human bodies and that the results of the healing process is not what was initially set out to measure.

How do you know though? I've asked a bunch of times how you determine if something is effective or it isn't, but you refuse to answer for some reason.

You claim millions of people experience healing effects, and you claim they are due to the therapies, but how do you know the healing effects are no different than if the people had done nothing at all? It's not mass coincidence, for you to say there's something that has to be attributed to mass coincidence you have to be evaluating the efficacy of something on a large scale! But you seemed to say previously that you can't evaluate it.

[The Yen Man]

If accupuncture creates such a powerful placebo effect that it wills your mind to not feel pain, why wouldn't you continue using it? I know troutman has posted links to potential ill effects, but I guess I'm just not convinced.

Me personally, I think it works, so I'll continue to use it when I need it. At the end of the day, I look at it the same as religion. If it works for you, go. If it doesn't, then don't.