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204 Comments
- andytronic, on 03/25/2009, -5/+50But the article didn't really say the acupuncture wasn't effective (other than just a placebo), it just said that subjects experienced relief from their symptoms during the treatment even if the needles were "in the wrong place." From the information in the article, it could also be concluded that the acupuncture needle therapy is effective, but needle-placement isn't as important as traditional acupuncture suggests.
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It sounds like the author, in the headline, over-emphasized part of a statement quoted from one researcher, suggesting that only a placebo effect is at play, when more rigorous research could have been done (or, if it was, mentioned in the article). Needles administered out of sight of the subjects, and with no needles used at all in some subjects as a control, for example. - Sonan, on 01/21/2009, -4/+37Placebos are great... until everyone knows that's all they're getting. Way to ruin it, livescience.com!
- AnotherEdd, on 01/21/2009, -3/+22This is a poorly written article.
Title: Acupuncture Works ... As Placebo
Text: Acupuncture is better than drugs and placebo acupuncture is the same as drugs
Finding (1) 8 weeks of acupuncture reduced headaches compared to drugs.
Finding (2) Acupuncture did better than migraine drugs, but fake acupuncture did the same as drugs (when you untwist the words)
Finding (3) Acupuncture did better than faked acupuncture in tension headaches - StigNordas, on 01/21/2009, -11/+27Placebo or not, I'll take the benefits.
- slvrbullet87, on 01/21/2009, -2/+16"you are not going to feel your arthritis when some guy is jaming a discection needle in your neck for the same reason your nose never itches when your leg is caught in a bear trap."
-Dennis Miller - DrewPeacock, on 01/21/2009, -15/+28Correlation != causation.
- puter, on 01/21/2009, -15/+28My families golden retrieve was injured when she was 2. Due to several different things she could not walk because of extreme stiffness and pain. We were told by a vet we had to put her down, we ended up bringing her to an animal accupuncturist (yes, they exist).
After the first treatment she was able to walk, but a bit stiff. We did a treatment a week for the first month, she was like a puppy again, running and jumping. Then it was a treatment once a month for six months. Then once every other month, then once every six months.
She has not had a treatment in years. She's 14, and she walks just fine.
You guys go ahead and say it doesn't work because you don't understand it, I believe it works....Unless of course you think our golden retriever understood so well what was happening that everything was just a placebo affect. - jikmo, on 01/21/2009, -10/+22So... you're saying that even though nothing else had worked and suddenly after having acupuncture, the dog felt a lot better, that this doesn't mean that something else didn't mysteriously happen?
This constant harping of "Correlation != causation!" is really annoying when even a little bit of thought will reveal that causation has in fact been demonstrated here. What hasn't been demonstrated is that it's something special about acupuncture. Now if you had any idea of what you were talking about, then you'd probably say something like "this doesn't prove that it's not a placebo" instead of just being a dick. - madeingermany, on 01/21/2009, -5/+16It still makes me angry, when 'violent followers' insist how much it helps, when every serious double-blind study has shown that it doesn't help over just pretending.
- vicsvenge, on 01/21/2009, -6/+17Sounds more like a ploy to get people to embrace common sense to me.
- doctechnical, on 01/21/2009, -2/+10The point is that "traditional acupuncture" is simply *****. The fact is that sticking needles in people, reguardless of placement, seems to relieve pain. So paying some quack to balance your "chi" or some crap is just a waste of money.
- Harabeck, on 01/21/2009, -1/+9Wouldn't being aware that the effect is merely a placebo ruin it?
- doctechnical, on 01/21/2009, -2/+9I'll stick needles in you for half what you're paying now. And I guarantee it will be just as effective.
P T Barnum vastly underestimated the situation. - ausfahrt, on 01/21/2009, -1/+8Acupuncture or the results of this study??
- redcolumbine, on 01/21/2009, -2/+8At least with acupuncture you don't get the secondary headache of being prescribed Neurontin and having to sell your firstborn child to pay for it.
- jbmcb, on 01/21/2009, -0/+6> I noticed one day that my allergies seemed to disappear after a treatment
So after a bunch of treatments, one day they cleared up? Not exactly proof of effectiveness. - Spacejack, on 01/21/2009, -0/+6Wait. Who gets to be the monkey man, the patient or the doctor?
- ironhide, on 01/21/2009, -5/+11There have been other cases of animals being helped by acupuncture. Don't be so quick to dismiss this.
- Otto, on 01/21/2009, -4/+10Causation was not demonstrated here. If you gave beans to the dog, and the dog felt better, does that mean beans caused it?
Just because two things happen at the same time does not mean one caused the other. - dvpower, on 01/21/2009, -0/+6I'm always skeptical when reading news articles about medical research. Who did the research? Who funded it? What methodology was used? Was it published (in a reputable medical / science journal)? Does the reporting of the research accurately reflect the research itself? ...
There is so much nonsense research published these days or selectively reported that I discount most of it.
In this case it is a review of the data carried out in 33 separate trials; the review carried out by the Cochrane Collaboration, a very well respected organisation whose purpose is to carry out systematic reviews of scientific data and openly publish their results.
But I would have liked to see a link to the original Cochrane results in this article. - PrintScrn12, on 01/21/2009, -0/+6No drugs have to go through the same controlled trials, though for drugs such tests might be enforced by law depending on your country. On the other had "alternative" treatments often get a free pass in to medical treatment without having to through rigorous controlled tests.
- wkenri, on 01/21/2009, -1/+6Another article concerning alternative medical treatment written by the AMA.
- freezerburn666, on 01/21/2009, -0/+5LOOK! look what you did!!!
- FreezerB, on 01/21/2009, -0/+5Wikipedia is more reliable than this slapped together article.
- enosp, on 01/21/2009, -2/+7while your heartwarming anecdote is told with obvious passion, it does not provide evidence of efficacy
plural of anecdote≠ evidence - tartraz1ne, on 01/21/2009, -7/+12I'm an acupuncturist, and this ***** is hilarious to me.
Acupuncture and Chinese medicine work by evaluating each patient individually and catering a treatment specifically to each presentation, not the main symptom the patient complains of. But that's not how western research works. Everyone is lumped together by symptom (e.g. headache), and get the same treatment. So they just pick common points for headaches and use those on everyone. That's not a acupuncture treatment, it's just randomly needling someone, which is the same thing they do in the control "placebo" group. They do like 15 of these studies a year. Yes they actually use crap acupuncture for the treatment AND the placebo. Brilliant.
So the results are always the same, wow [bad] acupuncture works well for headaches, but so does the placebo treatment [bad acupuncture!]. Get a real acupuncture treatment and the results are twice as good. - enosp, on 01/21/2009, -0/+5At this point in the game, no it doesn't suggest further research. Acupuncture has been tested ad nauseum at the expense of millions of dollars with extremely limited to zero reproducible efficacy, and the bogus concept of chi overwhelmingly disproven. So no, we shouldn't keep doing the same experiments over and over every time someone comes forward with a new anecdote, wasting resources when the money could go towards legitimate research. That is not a progressive mindset, cut your losses and move on.
- Harabeck, on 01/21/2009, -4/+9Maybe the injury healed on its own? Maybe the vet was wrong about the seriousness of the injury in the first place?
- anonypanda, on 01/21/2009, -4/+8Lived in china for a while when I was younger. tbh I never had any benefits from acupuncture....
- EnergyEinstein, on 01/21/2009, -4/+8The AMA (American Medical Association) was created to counter and put down the Homeopathic / Naturopathic Medical Association which existed first... just saying.
- exscape, on 01/21/2009, -0/+4You can delete your own posts, at least during the edit window (5 minutes).
- PrintScrn12, on 01/21/2009, -1/+5Judging the medical effectiveness from a single sample without a control is haphazard to the point of uselessness, even when ignoring the placebo effect: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ ...
- PrintScrn12, on 01/21/2009, -0/+4Anecdotes are not evidence. They aren't even evidence for your own treatment. (http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ ...
That said headaches are what's in the article not dementia. - Valmorian, on 01/21/2009, -1/+5puter: You say that as though there haven't been many studies of acupuncture. There have. The problem is that they fairly consistently show no definitive benefits over placebo. Placebo, of course, does occur in virtually all clinical trials (and is particularly pronounced in some cases, like those involving pain). That's why it's essential to have a control that takes this into account. A properly conducted clinical trial will do this, and there are a number of ways they do it in acupuncture trials;
1. They can use sham acupuncture, where the needles are placed in the wrong locations.
2. They can use needles at the right locations, but only penetrate very slightly.
3. They can use a fairly recent invention, a collapsable fake acupuncture needle.
There's a pretty good examination of Acupuncture in the book "Trick or Treatment" if the subject interests you. - flybygyrrl, on 01/21/2009, -4/+8Hello?!! I had ten treatments and they gave me back my LIFE!!!!.
This was a chronic condition undiagnosed by doctors and I felt like Living Death.
Now I feel able to do things every day.
Why would you deny anyone the chance at a new beginning?
Unless you want them to be the Walking Dead. Also, HRT therapy is bringing early onset of dementia to women. - PrintScrn12, on 01/21/2009, -1/+5Actually it is very common for ailments to resolve themselves, when they do that is when people take notice (confirmation bias) and assume a causation. This is one of the reasons why anecdotes are not evidence even for individual cases. Misdiagnosis is also very common.
That said the treatment might or might not work. You just don't know until you do rigorous controlled tests. So such treatment is on the same level of lucky rabbit tails or magnets. Plenty of anecdotal evidence, like your own, without passing rigorous controlled tests. - andytronic, on 03/25/2009, -0/+4I know. I was too late.
- Judasmac, on 01/21/2009, -1/+5Poorly written article. And the title is worse. This reminds me of an article I saw on a Vitamin C study, the point of which was supposed to be that a study showed C to be useless for the prevention of colds. But the article also mentioned that the study found C to shorten colds and lessen their severity. And that it did help prevent colds in very active people. Headline: "More bad news for vitamin supplements"
- MalarkeyPN, on 01/21/2009, -2/+6No, but apparently my employer wastes money on it since it's covered under my health insurance.
- Valmorian, on 01/21/2009, -3/+7Pure post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning here. The proper way to determine if something is effective is through properly controlled clinical trials, not some anecdotal story about one dog.
- PBrane, on 01/21/2009, -1/+5-- The Simpsons --
Crowd: We need a cure! We need a cure!
Dr. Hibbert: Why, the only cure is bed rest. Anything I give you would only be a placebo.
Blonde Woman: Where do we get these placebos?
Man: Maybe there's some in this truck!
[the panicky crowd push over a truck, boxes labeled "danger killer bees" break open, the bees go everywhere and everyone panics, one man puts a bee in his mouth]
Man: I'm cured! I mean, ouch! - drunkenoaf, on 01/21/2009, -0/+4It's difficult to find a control for the pain of a needle in your skin-- that's why the best that could be done is the random placement of needles.
The placebo effect needs the brain to be involved; a fair experiment needs the subject not to know the difference. What you're proposing doesn't cover it. - Hetman, on 01/21/2009, -8/+12Why is everyone trying to justify acupunture. Did you waste some money on it or something?
- inactive, on 01/21/2009, -2/+6Your reason for the dog makes perfect sense.
/s - MxM111, on 01/21/2009, -0/+4In either case it is not the biggest. Not even close.
You want the biggest - here it is - organized religion. Try to beat that! - ZeMeisterstuck, on 01/21/2009, -2/+5I don't believe in the chi charade, but I do know that pain releases endorphins.
- cissie, on 01/21/2009, -2/+5I have had substantial relief from acupuncture. I had a disk problem in my lower back and was looking at surgery for relief until my friend told me about an acupuncturist who was also a chiropractor. He was a Chinese man, and old fashioned in his approach. He examined me, and worked on me for 1and 1/2 hours and charged me 75.00. Since then, I have had no trouble with my back and that was 6 years ago. I cancelled my pre laminectomy appointment with the ortho doctor and never looked back.
- Wulffy, on 01/21/2009, -5/+8Biggest *****.
- Jough, on 01/21/2009, -0/+3Very true. If a doctor tells someone they can cure a sore muscle by rubbing mustard on their stomach and running around half naked yelling "I am the monkey man!", people are sure to try it with successful results.
- MalarkeyPN, on 01/21/2009, -0/+3Yeah, at this point I'm just glad to be covered at all. My roommate just broke his wrist sledding. He had surgery yesterday and it would have cost him $30k if he had been uninsured.
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