On Fri, Dec 16, 2011 at 2:51 AM, Joshua Cude <[email protected]> wrote:
> It's very difficult in the case of acupuncture to do blank controls; you > know when someone sticks a needle in you. > Yes, which makes testing sticking needles in you very difficult to test. But traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture is much more than sticking needles. The claim is that sticking the needles in *very specific places* with fancy names is important to the end result. It's simple to design a control experiment in which one set of acupuncture points is in accord with the Chinese tradition and another set of points is not. The person who sticks in the needles is simply trained to do it correctly and to follow directions on where to place them. The individual scoring the result is a third party. The experiment is thus slickly double blind. When you do that, there is no statistical difference in choosing traditional spots vs random spots for the needles. Experimental design and proper, blinding, controls and calibrations are everything in science. Someone should confront Rossi with that fact every time he pipes up with a new claim or demonstration.
