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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
 Posted - 09/24/2007 : 14:44:33
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Source
Fake acupuncture works nearly as well as the real thing for low back pain, and either kind performs much better than usual care, German researchers have found.
Almost half the patients treated with acupuncture needles felt relief that lasted months. In contrast, only about a quarter of the patients receiving medications and other Western medical treatments felt better.
Even fake acupuncture worked better than conventional care, leading researchers to wonder whether pain relief came from the body's reactions to any thin needle pricks or, possibly, the placebo effect. |
Interesting how either real or fake worked better than "conventional" care...
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by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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Edited by - pleco on 09/24/2007 14:45:05
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
 Posted - 09/24/2007 : 15:16:21 [Permalink]
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Perhaps he was refering to chiropractic. Not a hell of a lot of difference in my book.
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist! 
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
 Posted - 09/25/2007 : 00:28:13 [Permalink]
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This is not the first study that indicated that "sham" acupuncture worked as well as "real" acupuncture. - In other words, it doesn't matter where you put the needles and any effect comes from simply sticking needles into the skin or perhaps just a placebo effect. It is more proof that the Traditional Chinese Medicine explaniation of chi etc is bullshit on stilts. However, I am sure that the woos will spin this as proof that TCM is valid. For me, I would rather have a nurse or doctor who knew where to safely stick needles in me giving me sham acupunture than a TCM practioner sticking needles into locations chosen on the basis of a medieavel superstition.
It would have been interesting if they had a "nocebo" group - what proportion of cases resoved themselves withou any treatment whatsoever.
Furthermore, we have to be aware of the file drawer effect - how many studies showing acupuncture was worse than conventional treatment never were published.
See Steven Novella and Orac's comments on why most published medical research is wrong. Here is another good satistical expanation of why we should be wary of these studies until they are well replicated. |
"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 09/26/2007 : 23:37:53 [Permalink]
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The skepitical science bloggers have taken this one apart thuroughly
Steven Novella (President of the New England Skeptical Society) and a neurology professor at Yale) said among other things
| The second big problem with this study is that back pain is a complex and hard to treat entity. It may be caused by arthritic pain, inflammation, muscle tightness, soft tissue pain, and nerve pain, or any combination of these factors. So it is very heterogenous, and that is a bad thing for clinical trials. But more importantly, I am not convinced that the standard therapy group was adequate, primarily because 27% improvement seems low. Other studies have shown that as many as 65% of patients with chronic low back pain will improve within 12 weeks. This low response rate to the standard therapy opens the door to a placebo effect in the sham and traditional acupuncture groups, and that may be enough to explain the effect size we are seeing in this study. |
Ben Goldacred disusses the placebo effect
Orac (a surgeon) at Respecful Insolence describes how the selection of the trial participants biased the study against conventional treatment.
Finally Steven Novella concluded with
| I could not help noticing that the response of the mainstream media to this study was largely credulous - they completely missed the real points of this study and did not place it into a reasonable scientific context. Meanwhile, science bloggers have collectively provided insightful critical analysis with appropriate background for context. It is increasingly apparent to me that on issues such as this science bloggers are consistently serving the public far better than traditional media. |
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"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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pleco
SFN Addict
USA
2998 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2007 : 01:39:26 [Permalink]
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| Thanks for the info Ghost! |
by Filthy
The neo-con methane machine will soon be running at full fart. |
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filthy
SFN Die Hard
USA
14408 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2007 : 02:47:16 [Permalink]
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From the Skeptic's Dictionary:
Acupuncture
....I bet when they go in for a root canal the only needle they want to see is a shot of Novocain. |
--Cecil Adams
| Here's the picture: a few thousand years before it was known that blood circulates or germs cause disease, doctors who had never dissected a frog, claimed that yin and yang could be balanced by inserting needles into the right points, among the hundreds of points strung along 12 meridians....Scientists suggest the needles stimulate release of endorphins. Jalapeno peppers do the same thing. So it wouldn't matter where you stick the needles would it? Then who needs an acupuncturist? |
--Bob Park
Acupuncture is a traditional Chinese medical technique for unblocking chi (ch'i or qi) by inserting needles at particular points on the body to balance the opposing forces of yin and yang. Chi is an energy that allegedly permeates all things. It is believed to flow through the body along 14 main pathways called meridians. When yin and yang are in harmony, chi flows freely within the body and a person is healthy. When a person is sick, diseased, or injured, there is an obstruction of chi along one of the meridians. Traditional Chinese medicine has identified some 500 specific points where needles are to be inserted for specific effects.
Acupuncture has been practiced in China for more than 2,000 years (though some think it has been around for 4,000 years). Today, the needles are twirled, heated, or even stimulated with weak electrical current, ultrasound, or certain wavelengths of light. But no matter how it is done, scientific research can never demonstrate that unblocking chi by acupuncture or any other means is effective against any disease. Chi is defined as being undetectable by the methods of empirical science.
A variation of traditional acupuncture is called auriculotherapy or ear acupuncture. It is a method of diagnosis and treatment based on the unsubstantiated belief that the ear is the map of the bodily organs. For example, a problem with an organ such as the liver is to be treated by sticking a needle into a certain point on the ear that is supposed to be the corresponding point for that organ. (Similar notions about a part of the body being an organ map are held by those who practice iridology [the iris is the map of the body] and reflexology [the foot is the map of the body].) Staplepuncture, a variation of auriculotherapy, puts staples at key points on the ear hoping to do such things as help people stop smoking.
Traditional Chinese medicine is not based on knowledge of modern physiology, biochemistry, nutrition, anatomy, or any of the known mechanisms of healing. Nor is it based on knowledge of cell chemistry, blood circulation, nerve function, or the existence of hormones or other biochemical substances. There is no correlation between the meridians used in traditional Chinese medicine and the actual layout of the organs and nerves in the human body. The National Council Against Health Fraud (NCAHF) claims that of the 46 medical journals published by the Chinese Medical Association, not one is devoted to acupuncture or other traditional Chinese medical practices. Nevertheless, it is estimated that somewhere between 10 and 15 million Americans spend approximately $500 million a year on acupuncture for treatment of AIDS, allergies, asthma, arthritis, bladder and kidney problems, bronchitis, constipation, depression, diarrhea, dizziness, colds, fatigue, flu, gynecologic disorders, headaches, high blood pressure, migraines, paralysis, PMS, sciatica, sexual dysfunction, smoking, stress, stroke, tendinitis, and vision problems.
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And so forth. In short, it should be catagorized as yet another example of ancient crap adopted by modern people who ought to know better. It didn't work beyond placebo effect when it was invented and it doesn't work now.
Homebrew trephining, anyone?
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"What luck for rulers that men do not think." -- Adolf Hitler (1889 - 1945)
"If only we could impeach on the basis of criminal stupidity, 90% of the Rethuglicans and half of the Democrats would be thrown out of office." ~~ P.Z. Myres
"The default position of human nature is to punch the other guy in the face and take his stuff." ~~ Dude
Brother Boot Knife of Warm Humanitarianism,
and Crypto-Communist!
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| Edited by - filthy on 09/27/2007 02:50:03 |
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Ghost_Skeptic
SFN Regular
Canada
510 Posts |
Posted - 09/27/2007 : 22:22:24 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by filthy
In short, it should be catagorized as yet another example of ancient crap adopted by modern people who ought to know better. It didn't work beyond placebo effect when it was invented and it doesn't work now. |
Steve Novella addresses the Argument from Antiquity fallacy which is used by modern supporteers of "ancient crap", especially supporters of Traditional Chinese medicine.
Two thousand years of anecdotal experience was not enough for Western society to realize that bloodletting, purging, and cathartics were not only worthless treatments but were actually harmful. Yet the humoral philosophy was the occidental equivalent of the traditional Chinese medicine philosophy of chi on which acupuncture is based.
What bloodletting and acupuncture have in common is that they are philosophies of illness, they are not scientific theories of disease. They were developed in a prescientific era steeped in superstition.
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The claim that accupunture etc are "time tested" treatments is refuted thus:
Philosophy-based modalities are not tested by time, because they are not tested. ... Within the paradigm of philosophy-based medicine, there is no test of time, there is only tradition and authority. This enabled bloodletting to survive for two thousand years, and acupuncture is no different.
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After presenting other examples of fraudulent treatments that people swore wre effecitve until they were proven to be uesless, he concludes:
The promoters of medical acupuncture and similar CAM methods would have us abandon the hard-won knowledge of scientific medicine and science in general for the false comforts of ancient fairy tales.
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"You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink. / You can send a kid to college but you can't make him think." - B.B. King
History is made by stupid people - The Arrogant Worms
"The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism." - William Osler
"Religion is the natural home of the psychopath" - Pat Condell
"The day will come when the mystical generation of Jesus, by the supreme being as his father in the womb of a virgin, will be classed with the fable of the generation of Minerva in the brain of Jupiter" - Thomas Jefferson |
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Dave W.
Info Junkie
USA
26022 Posts |
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HalfMooner
Dingaling
Philippines
15831 Posts |
Posted - 10/06/2007 : 18:53:55 [Permalink]
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Originally posted by Dave W.
Hey, bngbuck! I see that James Randi is dropping your name.
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Cool! I'm jealous. I've even spoofed Randi, but he still doesn't know me.
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“Biology is just physics that has begun to smell bad.” —HalfMooner
Here's a link to Moonscape News, and one to its Archive. |
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Fake acupuncture works as well as real
