Best Hospital Eye Roll
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Science: Figuring things out is better than making things up. A tee shirt I
recently saw. Except… In a recent post Mayo Clinic Promotes Reiki, Steve
seem...
2 hours ago
Scientology = Space Opera
NOI = Race Opera
I think I see how you develop an explanation of the world and our place in it when you found a cult.
You just make up any unlikely nonsense and dox be damned.
In my cult, Grebnon made our nostrils by poking our noses with a poking stick, um, 12ty thousand years ago. How do I know this? Well, I just do.
"As noted above, the most recent well powered clinical trials of acupuncture for chronic low back pain showed that sham acupuncture was as effective as real acupuncture. The simplest explanation of such findings is that the specific therapeutic effects of acupuncture, if present, are small, whereas its clinically relevant benefits are mostly attributable to contextual and psychosocial factors, such as patients’ beliefs and expectations, attention from the acupuncturist, and highly focused, spatially directed attention on the part of the patient."And the author's recommendations for a hypothetical middle-aged male with chronic low back pain:
"He has specifically requested a referral for acupuncture, and we would suggest a course of 10 to 12 treatments over a period of 8 weeks from a licensed acupuncturist or a physician trained in medical acupuncture."tl;dr: Acupuncture is crap. But tell your patients to go ahead and drop about a thousand bucks on it.
I e-mailed the NEJM editors and got a quick reply. Due to confidentiality issues I cannot post their exact response.OK now that just makes me rage.
Briefly, they state that they are aware of the controversial aspect of the published article but that the ultimate judge once "the evidence" is presented, will be the reader.
__________________________
Dear NEJM editors,
DO YOUR JOB, BITCHES!
STAND UP FOR SCIENCE!
kthxbai,
The Tufted Titmouse