Well, Don't Us Skeptics Of Acupuncture Feel Silly Now!
Keywords: study, woo, alternative medicine, acupuncture
I just came across this article on Cnet News entitled "Think Acupuncture's A Hoax? Think Again" written by freelance journalist Elizabeth Moore.
For the record, I don't believe that Acupuncture is a hoax. I think that Acupuncturists are fooling themselves, but for the most part I think they actually believe in what they do.
Moore claims to have previously been a skeptic of Acupuncture, and I'm sure that she had her doubts. But reading her article, it strikes me that she's way too easily swayed by weak evidence to really have employed much critical thinking here.
She calls the evidence "yet another pin in the proverbial coffin for skeptics like myself:" And what is this evidence? It's simply this: A study done on mice demonstrates that a needle puncture can release a nucleoside known as Adenosine into the surrounding tissue, which may help with pain relief.
Sound's pretty simple and scientifically valid, right? What could I possibly have to say against that?
I just came across this article on Cnet News entitled "Think Acupuncture's A Hoax? Think Again" written by freelance journalist Elizabeth Moore.
For the record, I don't believe that Acupuncture is a hoax. I think that Acupuncturists are fooling themselves, but for the most part I think they actually believe in what they do.
Moore claims to have previously been a skeptic of Acupuncture, and I'm sure that she had her doubts. But reading her article, it strikes me that she's way too easily swayed by weak evidence to really have employed much critical thinking here.
She calls the evidence "yet another pin in the proverbial coffin for skeptics like myself:" And what is this evidence? It's simply this: A study done on mice demonstrates that a needle puncture can release a nucleoside known as Adenosine into the surrounding tissue, which may help with pain relief.
Sound's pretty simple and scientifically valid, right? What could I possibly have to say against that?
Well, I can accept that there may be some pain relief mechanism here. You'd need to conduct real world experiments on humans in order to show a significant therapeutic effect... but I won't dismiss this study as being completely absurd. I have my doubts as to whether this line of research would prove fruitful, but at least they have some sort of hypothesized mechanism and some objective measurements.
The problem here is one of definition. Poking somebody with a needle in order to relieve pain at the site of the puncture is just not Acupuncture. The study is absolutely useless for testing the validity of acupuncture, because it doesn't test any form of Acupuncture!
If Acupuncture was about sticking a needle into places where it hurt, then people wouldn't charge money to do it to you. You could buy special sanitized needles yourself and stick them on your knee or elbow for joint pain, or whatever you're suffering from.
Acupuncture is something completely different. Acupuncture relies on the pseudoscientific notion of "meridians" and Acupuncture points. They have "trained professionals" who have all this stuff memorized, and the whole theory is based on placing needles in special points that are completely separate from where it actually hurts.
And even if it turns out that you can stick a needle into a sore spot and get some relief (which again, isn't Acupuncture), that still does nothing for many of the problems that Acupuncture is supposed to help with, such as constipation, diarrhea, allergies, eczema, psoriasis, and so on.
It's pure silliness to think that this study validates the practice of Acupuncture in any way. But we've got lots of people who will accept this study as concrete validation of Acupuncture because they just haven't thought it through.
It's just another case that shows how much definitions matter.
