Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Invisible wrote:
>>> (There are people who think that accupuncture is nonesense. But now 
>>> scientists are finding that it causes measurable chemical changes in 
>>> the body that do, in fact, do something. As crazy as that sounds...)
>>>
>>
>> It is nonsense.
> 
> Thanks for clearing that up for us. I guess all the actual medical 
> doctors can stop looking into it now.
> 
Yep.. Right along with "alternative medicine", which results in stupid 
BS like one guy a while back that nearly died from a treatable genetic 
disorder, because the doctor looked him over and concluded he was merely 
lacking energy, so prescribed an "herbal supplement", until he didn't 
feel any better and went to the emergency room. It took, ironically, one 
look from a nurse to rush him into a better doctor.

Medical doctors are not, for the most part, scientists. Some manage to 
pass their examines while believing in creationism, denying germ 
theories of disease, and thinking that the brain has nothing to do with 
"thinking". They are basically human repair techs, who know how to 
determine, when they bother to *actually* apply stuff, instead of 
picking and choosing which things to look for (in some thankfully rare 
cases), to diagnosis.

They are not trained in double blind studies, they do no conduct 
experiments (nor would they be allowed to, considering the consequences 
of what they would be experimenting on), they are not even often aware 
of *every* detail of their own practice, never mind necessarily their 
own specialty, and often, the things they end up trying, like 
acupuncture, isn't even *in* their own specialty. In short, most of them 
a) will make mistakes that a more careful study would catch and b) don't 
know how to properly conduct such a study.

There are some that *are* and *do*. Guess which ones are producing the 
negative results and saying it doesn't work, and which ones claim its 
effective... Others, do know, and have been caught making claims that 
don't hold up, when looking at the data. I.e., their results are based 
on confirmation bias, not proper testing or analysis.

The only reason people are still "studying" it is that there are a great 
many people obsessed with the idea that it does still work (just look at 
the huge and growing amount of new "alternative" BS being sold every 
year), and an endless line of non-specialist, non-scientist, non-trained 
in such investigation, doctors jumping in to look at something that is 
pretty much dead at this point. Give it another 20 years, maybe, and 
acupuncture will be "fringe", like like homeopathy. And, like 
Chiropractic treatment, which is, I repeat, *not* provided by medical 
doctors, but a side line industry with its own "schools", it will 
probably still be used, despite all evidence that its pure gibberish.

Again.. All the studies done to find mechanisms for both provide none, 
all evidence for both suggest it doesn't work like described, the 
effects of both might be provided by less inconvenient (or in one case, 
dangerous) means, and the studies that do suggest it works don't 
generally ask, until recently, why, how, or even 'if' it works in a way 
that is better than placebo.

-- 
void main () {
   If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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