A dialogue on acupuncture

[johnny74]

What sort of energy then? How does this effect the chemical reactions that exist between cells? As the most recent nerve explanations I have seen have put all interaction between them at a chemical level and internal to the nerve at the electrical level.

The energies that are talked about are entirely woo, it might have an effect but that would not be becuase of manipulating energy, but because of physiological effects.

To be fair the whole chi thing is just another way of looking at a problem. It's not very scientific, but then if you think about everything in a purely scientific way you will miss some of the answers.

The proper scienitific way of looking at alternative medicine would be with an open mind. Unfortunately an open mind is not the weapon of choice across some parts of this forum.

My acupuncturist has never made any claims about curing cancer and is a very thorough practitioner.

Considering that the pharmaceutical industry would like to see alternative medicine dead and buried (much the same way that McDonald's was reported to have sued small village stores that were named "McDonald's") it is credit to the subtle efficacy of TCM that it is one of the very few sorts of alternative medicine that have a large number of credible studies done on it.

There are some horror stories which I will try and find for you of the pharm industry rigging research to disprove TCM.

 

[RichardR]

To be fair the whole chi thing is just another way of looking at a problem. It's not very scientific, but then if you think about everything in a purely scientific way you will miss some of the answers.

This is a fallacious appeal to science doesn't know everything. Of course, science doesn’t know everything, but it seems you think the corollary is that any idea you like the sound of, that cannot be proven false, is worthy of consideration. Wrong. Something is only worthy of consideration if there is a reason to suppose it is true.

The proper scienitific way of looking at alternative medicine would be with an open mind. Unfortunately an open mind is not the weapon of choice across some parts of this forum.

Oh no, not a fallacious appeal to be open minded. An open mind is open to all ideas, but it must be open to the possibility that the idea could be true or false. It is not closed-minded to reject claims that make no sense, but if you can’t accept the possibility that an idea might be false, then you are the closed minded one.

There are some horror stories which I will try and find for you of the pharm industry rigging research to disprove TCM.

Irrelevant to whether TCM works or not. To show TCM works you need to show evidence it does. I have shown evidence acupuncture doesn't work.

 

[robinson]

This is a fallacious appeal to science doesn't know everything

Interesting. That sort of reasoning is what I consider woo. If I say a true statement, like "People who claimed to use scientific reasoning have often made huge errors in the past", that is what I mean by that. If some woo takes my statement and then adds a bunch of more stuff to it, that is dumb. Saying "People who claimed to use scientific reasoning have often made huge errors in the past" doesn't mean everything scientist do now is wrong. That would be dumb.

The believer thinks the corollary is that any idea he likes the sound of, that cannot be proven false, is worthy of consideration.

That is a dumb thing to say. For several reasons. I understand it might sound like it is smart, but it isn't. You don't know what somebody thinks. See? That is woo talk, claiming you know what somebody is thinking. Then saying what they mean. When its really what you said, not them. See? Nobody said that, except the person who is trying to make up stuff. It is dumb. Adding stuff that nobody said, and then saying they said it, is stupid. Like this:

Something is only worthy of consideration if there is a reason to suppose it is true. Usually that means some evidence.

No, things that are not true are important to consider too. That is part of education and using your brain. If nobody considered anything that they didn't already know was true, there would be no progress. No discoveries, and no exploring.

Its also hard to get a woo to understand this. They think they know everything.

 

[JoeTheJuggler]

Isn't acupuncture based on the premise of meridians? I thought meridians were some sort of pre-dissection idea of human anatomy--like they thought there was really some actual physical structure (not the mystical or "spiritual" sort of thing). Am I wrong on this?

Isn't it akin to naive and ignorant medical theories such as balancing the "humours" by bloodletting in medieval Europe?

Since now we know of no structures that correspond with these meridians, I would consider acupuncture claims to fall in the category of extraordinary claims and therefore demand extraordinary evidence. I don't think we've got anything close to that (consistent, reproducible, clear results from placebo-controlled, double blind tests).

 

[robinson]

I posted links to double blind tests. That use "sham" needles and animals as well. I wonder what the hell is going on.

 

[robinson]

Animal studies have demonstrated that acupuncture antagonized various stress-induced responses.

Iwa M, et al. Department of Surgery, Duke University and Durham Veterans Affairs Medical Center, Durham, North Carolina, 27705, USA.

http://www.acupuncture.com/newsletters/m_aug06/res.htm#1

http://ajpgi.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/00068.2005v1

 

[RichardR]

That is a dumb thing to say. For several reasons...

The piece you quoted before you wrote the above was not what I wrote, was it?

I wrote "it seems you think the corollary is that any idea you like the sound of, that cannot be proven false, is worthy of consideration". And that is what he seemed to be suggesting.

No, things that are not true are important to consider too.

Again, not what I wrote. I wrote, "Something is only worthy of consideration if there is a reason to suppose it is true".

 

[thaiboxerken]

If the CAM brigade is so hooked on anecdotal evidence then they can try this for size.

They aren't interested, they only look at positive anecdotes. It's just like the anecdotal evidence for psychics and mediums, only the hits are counted.

 

[thaiboxerken]

http://www.nih.gov/news/pr/dec2004/nccam-20.htm

I thought it was common knowledge that acupuncture worked. For some stuff. There was even animal experiments where it was used for anesthesia. How strange.

It's more like a common belief. It's not actually true that it works.

 

[ponderingturtle]

To be fair the whole chi thing is just another way of looking at a problem. It's not very scientific, but then if you think about everything in a purely scientific way you will miss some of the answers.

This is wrong for several reasons. First chi fits fine into science, it is a proposed theory for how things work. And then you test it and see what if the results fit the theory.

The not very scientific part comes from it being wrong, not from fundamental premise.

And this shows a incorrect view of what science is, science is not a set of facts but a way to go about determining the merit of ideas.

The proper scienitific way of looking at alternative medicine would be with an open mind. Unfortunately an open mind is not the weapon of choice across some parts of this forum.

And an open mind is not an empty mind. We know many things that this contradicts, so it has a very large burden of proof. Add this to the unknown and possibly poor quality of any individual study, and we start from a place of disbelief.

For example the citation about Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine is a book not a journal and this is its description

This book provides readers with an introduction to unconventional modes of therapy, including practitioners' perspectives on specific therapies. It is divided into 9 sections: history, and underlying principles of alternative medicine, nutrition, physical medicine, energetic medicine, botanical medicine, homeopathy, miscellaneous therapies, integration into veterinary practice, and complementary and alternative perspectives. Some of the many topics covered are nutritional therapy, acupuncture, chiropractic, massage therapy, physical therapy, kinesiology, laser therapy, magnetic field therapy, bioenergetic medicine, herbal therapy, ayurvedic medicine, and homeopathy. The appendixes include resources, including suppliers, web sites, recommended texts and periodicals, organizations, databases, and diagnostic software.

link

So it does not look like it is likely to have a strong protections against bias, as for example every homeopathy test where the bias was well controlled showed no meaningful results. Add that to it showing that modern chemistry is wrong, then why does it work and you have the reasons why many here don't believe such things.

My acupuncturist has never made any claims about curing cancer and is a very thorough practitioner.

Guess he is not trying to get more business then. What claims does he make then?

Considering that the pharmaceutical industry would like to see alternative medicine dead and buried (much the same way that McDonald's was reported to have sued small village stores that were named "McDonald's") it is credit to the subtle efficacy of TCM that it is one of the very few sorts of alternative medicine that have a large number of credible studies done on it.

Yea, getting people medicine that can be shown to be effective is such a downer, lets all go natural, I recommend Ricin, it is an all natural plant extract after all.

There are some horror stories which I will try and find for you of the pharm industry rigging research to disprove TCM.

Yea, trying to get out observer bias is such a downer for Homeopathy that many homeopaths have decided that double blind tests are a bad tool.

 

[Asolepius]

To be fair the whole chi thing is just another way of looking at a problem. It's not very scientific, but then if you think about everything in a purely scientific way you will miss some of the answers.

The proper scienitific way of looking at alternative medicine would be with an open mind. Unfortunately an open mind is not the weapon of choice across some parts of this forum.

I think I am going to throw up if I hear this `open mind' argument again. What do you think science is? It is the process of crash testing ideas. Without open minds there will be no ideas. But I think your definition is different - to you it means believing everything you are told.

Considering that the pharmaceutical industry would like to see alternative medicine dead and buried (much the same way that McDonald's was reported to have sued small village stores that were named "McDonald's") it is credit to the subtle efficacy of TCM that it is one of the very few sorts of alternative medicine that have a large number of credible studies done on it.

There are some horror stories which I will try and find for you of the pharm industry rigging research to disprove TCM.

Vomit time again. OK, let's have the evidence for that claim. I've deliberately delayed replying to give you time to come up with the `horror stories', and so far there's nothing. I can accept the possibility of drug companies rigging their own trials (although have never heard of such a case), but how are they going to rig someone else's? Frankly, TCM is not even on the drug companies' radar.

 

[Yahzi]

But as I said, I don't NEED you to believe or "know" that acupuncture is effective.

That tells you all you need to know. Just last night, discussing some other woo with another woo, I heard virtually the exact same words.

She knows it works for her. That's all she needs to know. Since she's aware of the placebo effect, she knows it could be an illusion. And she knows that if she investigates it and finds out it is an illusion, it will stop working for her.

She has chosen to fool herself. She knows this is the case, which is why she's suddenly uninterested in proof (can you think of any other topic where she doesn't care about proof? WMDs? Bank statements? Car mechanics?). And she can't talk rationally about it, because that would be the same thing as admitting she's chosen to fool herself - and if she admits that, she'll have to stop.

 

[Yahzi]

Interesting.

Your complaints seem rather misdirected.

If I say a true statement, like "People who claimed to use scientific reasoning have often made huge errors in the past",

Reading the quote that RichardR responded to, it is clear the poster is referring to the idea that there are "other ways of knowing." In that context, Richard's response is correct.

You don't know what somebody thinks.

The entire point of communication is to be able to know what other people are thinking.

It is a common facet of woos to think that if something cannot be proven one way or another, they get to make up whatever they like. In this case, the original quote does not explicitly express this idea, but Richard inferred it from the totality of the post. I see no reason to suspect his inference is inaccurate.

No, things that are not true are important to consider too. That is part of education and using your brain. If nobody considered anything that they didn't already know was true,

It is considerably ironic that you would spend so much of your post lambasting Richard for not responding to what people actually wrote, and then do the same yourself.

If you look at Richard's comment, you will see he never said that we should not consider things we "don't already know are true." What he said was we should only consider things we have "a reason to suppose it is true."

Perhaps putting both of the comments in the same paragraph will allow you to recognize the extreme disparity between them.

 

[jon]

Animal studies have demonstrated that acupuncture antagonized various stress-induced responses.



http://ajpgi.physiology.org/cgi/content/abstract/00068.2005v1

Eventually got round to looking at the article. From what I can see, this isn't 'normal' acupuncture, but instead inserting hook-shaped needles into a 'sham' and a 'real' acupuncture point in rats (god knows how they determine which is which...) They then used 'electrical acupuncture' by wiring up the needles.

This could just show that sticking needles in one part of a rat has different effects to sticking needles in another part (the sham point might have hurt them more/caused more stress, for example). It could also be that the way the needle-sticking and electrical stuff was done - odd-shaped needle, stuck in deep and near a nerve, then electrical acupuncture - was really stimulating a nerve (the authors seem to think that this was happening). This doesn't show that other acupuncture points do anything useful, and may not be applicable to humans (sticking needles deep into people, and near nerves, may be too risky? Also, this acupuncture point may not be effective if the acupuncture is non-electrical...

ETA: this is just a quick look, of course - there may well be more problems with the study. However, at any rate the study doesn't show - as people often cite it as showing - that 'acupuncture works'

 

[robinson]

...From what I can see, this isn't 'normal' acupuncture, but instead inserting hook-shaped needles into a 'sham' and a 'real' acupuncture point in rats (god knows how they determine which is which...) They then used 'electrical acupuncture' by wiring up the needles....

... However, at any rate the study doesn't show - as people often cite it as showing - that 'acupuncture works'

Using that study to conclude "acupuncture works" would be dumb. And I would like to know how they determine acupuncture points for rats, or any other animal as well. That sounds woo to me, and excuse me for being more than a little skeptical about the entire procedure as well. Just assuming there ARE acupuncture points for rats, or any other animal, sounds fookin nuts to me.

 

[johnny74]

This is a fallacious appeal to science doesn't know everything . Of course, science doesn’t know everything, but it seems you think the corollary is that any idea you like the sound of, that cannot be proven false, is worthy of consideration. Wrong. Something is only worthy of consideration if there is a reason to suppose it is true.

Oh no, not a fallacious appeal to be open-minded. An open mind is open to all ideas, but it must be open to the possibility that the idea could be true or false. It is not closed-minded to reject claims that make no sense, but if you can’t accept the possibility that an idea might be false, then you are the closed minded one.

Irrelevant to whether TCM works or not. To show TCM works you need to show evidence it does. I have shown evidence acupuncture doesn't work.

Wow! You can type really big!

There's some fair points there but I don't believe I am closed minded. If someone showed that acupuncture didn't work I wouldn't use it. You haven't yet done that. I'm not an idiot. It seems to work very well on me and is worth what I pay for it as it keeps me able to do a full time job. If there is an alternative treatment for my condition I would take that instead if it were proven to be more beneficial. Even if it does turn out to be a placebo (something I'd be very surprised about) how exactly would you intend to replicate the curative effects of such?

I have no problem with science not knowing everything. It would be pretty dull if it did. I do have a problem with people asserting that something definitely doesn't exist when there is no proof either way (and I'm not specifically talking about acupuncture here - I've already asserted that it does but then I have actually tried it for myself which I think counts for something).

 

[robinson]

Hello new blood. Don't be surprised if some people want to tell you that actually trying something doesn't count. You can't be trusted if you actually do something, and note what happens.

 

[Yahzi]

There's some fair points there but I don't believe I am closed minded... It seems to work very well on me and is worth what I pay for it as it keeps me able to do a full time job.

You require this treatment to work, so you can continue being employed.

But this doesn't strike as evidence that you are heavily biased into believing it works?

Even if it does turn out to be a placebo (something I'd be very surprised about) how exactly would you intend to replicate the curative effects of such?

Why would you be surprised? Sure sounds like you've already made up your mind. That's a far cry from your pretense that you have not already formed an opinion on this issue.

And how we would replace it is with a cheaper placebo.

I do have a problem with people asserting that something definitely doesn't exist when there is no proof either way

Don't you think it's a slightly larger problem when people assert that things do exist when there is no proof either way?

Also, haven't a number of people provided proof in this thread for or against acupuncture? Does that really sound like there is no proof either way? Or does it sound like there is proof, and at least one side is just wrong?

 

[ponderingturtle]

Hello new blood. Don't be surprised if some people want to tell you that actually trying something doesn't count. You can't be trusted if you actually do something, and note what happens.

Of course, this is why we are replacing studies with anecdotes. Didn't you hear about the new FDA regulations removing the need for studies and having people come forward and say "I feel it helped me" is enough.

THe reason is for all this is we know there are no reliable anecdotes, not even our own. A proper skeptic would know that just because they think taking something made them feel better, does not mean it did, because they are volnerable to the power of suggestion and observational bais just like everyone else.

For example if through hypnosis I remembered a past life or an alien abduction, I would not take it as positive evidence of either because I know about false memories and such.

So the reason why you will see people disagreeing with people who say X worked for them, is that they are often wrong.

 

[robinson]

According to your logic, nothing you said should be accepted, because it is anecdotal. Until proper scientific testing and research on your ideas has been published, and peer reviewed, checked for bias, and the studies replicated and reviewed, nothing you said can be considered at all.

In fact, we can't even be sure you exist. There is no evidence. Just because words appear here, there is no evidence anyone wrote them. This screen and these words might be an illusion. If science and skeptics don't approve something, it isn't real.

So don't trust what you experience, only in authorities who know better than you. This is the path to wisdom.