Do you suffer from chronic pain? Maybe acupuncture is just what the doctor ordered. Millions of people say that acupuncture has alleviated their suffering and boosted their bodies, but others insist that it's more rooted in belief than scientific fact. Is acupuncture really the cure for what ails you, or does it only turn you into a human pincushion?
Please select the category that most closely reflects your concern about this content,
so that we can review it and determine whether it violates Civility 101 or isn't
appropriate for some other reason.
Abusing this feature is also a violation of Civility 101.
Explanation:
4
1
2
0
1
1
1
1
2
0
0
0
1
0
Biweekly updates on new debates and experts
Please check your email to confirm your subscription.
© 2008 Opposing Views, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Opposing Views, Inc. is not responsible for the content posted on this website. Please view full disclaimer under Terms
What About Common Sense Reasoning?
- From Bill Reddy
By Bill Reddy - American Association of Acupuncture...
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Argument ad populi is easily shot down.
Just look to astrology for a parallel example: completely false, scientifically disproven, and nonsensical (even on the "common sense" level) - yet it has been around for ~5000 years and some people still believe their horoscopes.
There's no sense in venerating a prescientific belief merely because it's old, and even less sense in holding onto it despite careful science that shows it to be false.
Human recollection and perception are notoriously fallible and easily fooled or distorted. Anecdote in the absence of research can be taken with a grain of salt, but choosing anecdote over the results of carefully controlled study is plainly foolish.
- David Simmer
September 4, 2008 1:31PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Experience based versus(!) Evidence Based
You make a good point with astrology - but modern science has not thrown out all of human endevour and learning. For most of human history most of our endevours have been based upon empirical trial and error and accumulated experience over generations. Humans have been farming for thousands of years and people have become very skilled at this. Scientific method may show up some false ideas, but if the main part of this body of knowledge was not reasonably sound we would presumably have starved to death by now. So why should traditional medicine not similarlly be given a reasonable benefit of the doubt?
- AAPrescott
September 12, 2008 9:30AM
Reply to this Recommend (1)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
Define "experience."
As I said above, in the absence of research or prior scientific investigation, you can take a plausible yet untested old idea with a grain of salt - there might be something to it. However, it's folly to carefully test an idea, find experimental results wanting, note that it is based on pre-scientific ideas which have elsewhere been disproven, and yet still give more weight to anecdote than to the careful research.
No one has ever died for lack of acupuncture; with interventions that are safe but not effective, the historical record doesn't have anything so obvious to point to as "hey look, we're still alive, so it must work."
Remember, research is experience too - in fact, it's superior experience when done right, because we put effort into being accurate, reducing confusion, and accounting for as many complicating factors as possible. Yet many people continue to give more weight to their personal "experience" which is a tangled, unexamined mass of hearsay, confounded situtations, and data recalled from the notoriously faulty human memory. It's astounding.
- David Simmer
September 12, 2008 12:08PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: No
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
The gorilla in the room
A few years ago a number of editors of medical journals wrote an open letter expressing concern about the way the reduction of public funding, and the greater emphasis on pharmaceutical company funding was skewing results of trials and studies. This was what I meant in an earlier posting by 'politics' being a factor. Double blind controlled trials are not a foolproof system because they are done by human beings, if people can skew their results (consciously or unconsciously) in order to please a drug company then they can presumably be skewed by beliefs and expectations. Studies have been done that prove one thing and others get opposite results - last year cardiologists were very upset to hear that 30,000 operations a month(?) done preventatively for asymptomatic patients were not effective at preventing heart attack. So I just do not consider these to be the last word on whether acupuncture works.
- AAPrescott
September 12, 2008 1:47PM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Yes
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.
No solid evidence
This argument would only convince anyone, if it were based on solid evidence. Sadly the best data we have today do not suggest that acupuncture is cost-effective.
- Edzard Ernst
September 15, 2008 3:13AM
Reply to this Recommend (0)
Side: Uncommitted
Thank You for your Comment
We review all comments before they're posted. For more on our comment policy, please see our FAQ.