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COMMENTS AND OPINIONS
Acupuncture Research: Placebos by Many Other Names
Barker Bausell, PhD;
Neil Edward O’Connell, MSc
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Two acupuncture trials recently published in the Archives1-2 share 2 seemingly incompatible characteristics: (1) they both appear to be high-quality experiments using adequate sample size and credible placebo controls and (2) both abstracts contain epistemologically unfounded conclusions.
As is usually the case for competently performed alternative medicine trials, both studies found no statistical significance between their experimental (also called "true," "real," or "classic" acupuncture) and placebo (also known as "sham," "fake," and "simulated" acupuncture) arms. Unfortunately, both sets of authors were allowed to conclude that acupuncture significantly reduced back pain, presumably because both trials also included a "usual care" control group to which both "true" and placebo acupuncture were superior.
Epistemologically, the reason for using a placebo control in a clinical trial is to test the hypothesis that (1) any therapeutic benefit exhibited by the intervention (be it an alternative therapy or a . . . [Full Text of this Article]
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