Acupuncture might work

[Janot]

This news article might support my notion that acupuncture is the only alternative medicine which has actually been demonstrated to have some use.

[SKIRRID5]

I suppose the questions are:
1 Did all the women know they were receiving acupuncture? It would would be hard to do it without their knowing, you'd think!
2 Can a woman's emotional state affect her chances of conceiving? One of the people quoted seems to think so. It would have to do so, for a placebo effect to take place.

[SkepticReport]

The article is a good example of a catchy title that doesn't quite match up to the content:

However, many of the studies were conducted in Chinese clinics which had a lower pregnancy rate than the average European clinic.

When only the three studies reaching this average - success in 28% of IVF cycles - were included, a different picture emerged.

Here, there was no evidence of any extra benefit from acupuncture, suggesting that offering the treatment in Europe might not offer as great, or any, increases in success rates.

Unfortunately, it's the title that survives in public opinion, and not the facts.

[Janot]

Unfortunately, it's the title that survives in public opinion, and not the facts.

This is a very good point, and it demonstrates how much influence journalists can have over how such tests are evaluated and remembered. When conclusions are not black and white (and they seldom are) journalists often fail us by over-interpretation or over-simplification.

[Ramontheskeptic]

I am interested to learn what the 'sham' accupuncture control was. I presume needles were inserted but at random and not on the traditional meridian lines & designated points. Or were the same points used but perhaps without puncturing the skin? It may be that the act of sticking needles in someone does provoke more than the placebo response, and elicits some form of endorphin release - who knows what effect this may have on fertility? But if this were true then it should work when needles are placed in places officially designated by the practitioner to treat, say, haemorrhoids or bunions.

[Cuddles]

I am interested to learn what the 'sham' accupuncture control was. I presume needles were inserted but at random and not on the traditional meridian lines & designated points. Or were the same points used but perhaps without puncturing the skin? It may be that the act of sticking needles in someone does provoke more than the placebo response, and elicits some form of endorphin release - who knows what effect this may have on fertility? But if this were true then it should work when needles are placed in places officially designated by the practitioner to treat, say, haemorrhoids or bunions.

I posted some links a couple of times on the JREF forum about this, and I'll try to dig them up again later. Placebo acupuncture has two main problems. The first is that even the best techniques are noticeably different from real acupunture, even in people who have never had acupuncture before. Whether the difference is statistically significant seems to depend on how they decide to interpret the results, and as an outsider looking in, it's not at all convincing.

The other problem is that even newer, specially designed fake needles actually induce a physical response in a significant number of people. This means that they're not actually a placebo at all. Again, it seems to depend on how they interpret the results, and again, it doesn't look especially convincing.

[Blue Wode]

Hype over science: Does acupuncture really improve the chances of success for in vitro fertilization?
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=43

[JJM]

Blue Wode beat me to it. But wait! I thought I was seeing double. No, Wallace Sampson posted on the same subject just before Gorski:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=45#more-45

[SkepticReport]

This is a very good point, and it demonstrates how much influence journalists can have over how such tests are evaluated and remembered. When conclusions are not black and white (and they seldom are) journalists often fail us by over-interpretation or over-simplification.

Often enough, journalists don't write their own headlines. Editors do.

Sometimes, there just isn't time enough to either read or understand what the journalist has written.

[Cuddles]

Here's a post I made a while ago on the JREF forums about this. In addition to the problems I've noted about the lack of a good placebo, as JoeTheJuggler also points out in that thread, it's almost impossible to double blind any trials, since the person using the needle will know if it is fake or not. This also applies to the trials which have shown that it doesn't matter where you stick the needles - since the person placing the needles knows if they are using the traditional points or not, the trials cannot be double blind.

[JJM]

There is yet, another, crtique of acupuncture at SciBasedMed:
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=44