So there it was.
Open heart surgery yes, strangely ambiguous language about 'numbing' of the chest - local anaesthetic or acupuncture?
Basically the first half of this docu was tripe; the second half had some intriguing things.
I was especially interested that Edzard Ernst seemed to acknowledge the American trial she bigged up did prove an effect for that particular condition: no mention of 'pending replication', and no mention of what was a valiant effort to create a sham, but ultimately seemed to me unconvincing.
Ditto her own study, and simply not enough about protocol was mentioned. Is it published anywhere yet? Statements like "we even tried to make sure the acupuncturist didn't know which condition the subject was allocated to until the very last moment", as though t'were the pinnacle of cutting edge methodological excellence, raise my eyebrow.
I realise the difficulty of fully double-blinding such a study; but I really think, with the sham acupuncture they showed with the self-concealing needle, that could be achieved if always contained in a tube (which could, of course, be opaque instead of translucent).
Basically, a few interesting things with lots of unnecessary filler - and it's so frustrating that just not enough protocol issues were described, and no acknowledgement of methodological limitations, or what they might mean, were given. Professor for the public understanding of science, indeed! She's more attractive than Dawkins, and no mistake, but this certainly lacked a certain something.
