Re: Acupuncture for Headaches

In article <1185730472.951697.113330@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, The One True Zhen Jue <Andrew_Kingoff@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

: I may have missed that, but that isn't the issue. I sincerely believe
: that you wouldn't believe it in any case. I may be wrong about that,
: but I'm pretty sure you'll keep writing off positive studies for any
: reason you see fit. Either the population will be too small, the
: condition too nebulous (headaches), the lack of blinding, etc. You
: may sincerely be open to the possibility, but either I'm not hearing
: it or perhaps you're really not transmitting.

You seem to believe that *any* study that reports positive results must
be correct, even when the study is clearly flawed. If all you can produce
as evidence of the efficacy of acupuncture is a list of studies that are
obviously flawed, I would say that you have failed to prove your case.

: In either event, I'll henceforth say that you remain open to the
: possibility, but unconvinced.

That is a much more reasonable statement of my beliefs.

: Further, I'd its fair to imply that you
: won't accept it until their is double-blinding, or at a minimum,
: blinding that exceeds any prior experiments. Fair?

I won't accept it until I see an experiment in which some effort is made
to make proper controls. Double-blinding is one typical way of producing
a control population for which placebo effects are likely to be minimal.
Since the evidence that you have presented indicates that there is a
strong psychosomatic component to the self-reported severity of headaches,
it seems to me that if the patient knows whether he is receiving treatment
or placebo might very well affect the outcome, which implies that the
patient should *not* know. On the other hand, one could perhaps test the
hypothesis that the positive results claimed by acupuncturists are more due
to the patient's belief that the practitioner is personally involved in
effecting the cure than they are to unbalanced qi. For instance, one might
try comparing the results of several different "hands on" therapies
(acupuncture, "therapeutic touch" -- which is already known not to work,
having someone stand in the room and think happy thoughts with the patient,
for which two groups would be needed, one of which is told that "happy
thoughts" therapy has been shown to be effective and one of which is
not, etc.) and seeing if acupuncture does better than the others.

:> On the other
:> hand, if you believe that one need not be a L.A. in order to obtain positive
:> results, then why do you believe that a double-blind test of acupuncture is
:> impossible in principle?

: I don't know of any good way to double-blind the experiment. If
: you've got a good idea, there are many researchers who would sincerely
: like to hear it.

Since according to you, one need not be a L.A., one can take a "naive" (i.e.
untrained) group of people and have half of them trained to find the
"proper" points and half of them trained to find points that are not "correct."
Then these people could be sent to use acupuncture on a test group of
patients: neither the patients nor the practitioners will know who is getting
the treatment and who is getting the placebo.

:> That's pure science. But since you don't believe in science, I'm not
:> sure that we have any common ground on which we can talk.
:
: That's silly. I'm a big fan of science. I'm not one of those
: goofballs who think that all modern science is bull***. I'm for
: vaccines, don't fear chemicals in principle, and don't bear a grudge
: against the healthcare system.

Can you propose an experiment that could determine whether or not
Qi exists?

: First off, you can argue that they can't pass a class in statistics
: all you want. Its required in both the undergraduate and medschool
: curiculums. Secondly, you believe that all unblinded studies are
: statistically meaningless. So, the real question is why do you ask
: since you don't care?

I never said that "all unblinded studies are statistically meaningless."
I said that the *one* study to which you referred does not appear to have
given statistically significant results. Unblinded studies are suspect,
but not because of statistics.

: Its acceptance within mainstream
: medicine is growing like Kudzu and soon to be at medical facility near
: you.

While that's not exactly the metaphor that I would have chosen, I do
appreciate (and I really am *not* being sarcastic here) that you know
the difference between "its" and "it's" -- a significant fraction of
usenet posters would have gotten it wrong in that sentence.

-----
Richard Schultz schultr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
"an optimist is a guy/ that has never had/ much experience"
.

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