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On Mon, 10 Jan 2000, Leigh Palmer wrote:
You guys haggling over what is and is not snake oil need some
perspective.
That is what is called the "placebo effect"; it is real.
Yes. Agreed. Absolutely.
[ . . . ]
Accupuncture is very big here in Vancouver, and it works for
many people, especially for those who believe in it.
So would placebos. One of the important questions in the context of
science education is "does accupuncture work better than placebos?" This
would be a difficult experiment to design, of course, because the patient
typically knows if he or she is being stuck with needles or not. It's not
just substituting a sugar pill for the real medicine. (Hmm -- could we
anesthetize the patients?)
Still, imagine one group which is stuck with pins at all the correct
"accupuncture points", and another group which is stuck with pins at
"incorrect" points, and pick patients who don't know the difference. This
would be a blind study. However, the *practitioner* would still know, and
this can bias the study. In properly controlled double-blind medical
studies, neither the practitioner nor the patient knows who is getting the
real medicine and who is getting the placebo.
For an accupuncture trial, I suppose we could train a bunch of
practitioners, half with the "correct" points and half with the
"incorrect" points. Then all practitioners would believe that they were
administering accupuncture correctly and we'd be pretty close to a
double-blind study.
Show me a statistical difference in such a double-blind study, and I'll
believe there is difference beyond the placebo effect. Otherwise, I have
no reason to believe accupuncture works any better than a placebo.
--
Andy Dougherty doughera@lafayette.edu
Dept. of Physics
Lafayette College, Easton PA 18042