In article <1185730472.951697.113330@w3g2000hsg.googlegroups.com>, you wrote
"In either event, I'll henceforth say that you remain open to the
possibility [that acupuncture works], but unconvinced.  Further, I'd its [sic]
fair to imply that you won't accept it until their [sic] is double-blinding,
or at a minimum, blinding that exceeds any prior experiments."

Which of the statements is the lie, the one in the article to which I am
responding, or the one that you wrote previously?

Why don't you have a go at the list of articles that I posted that
describe experiments testing the efficacy of acupuncture, or to the article
that Peter Moran posted in that thread proposing a likely hypothesis to
explain them?  My offer to explain to you the statistical problem in more
detail than he did still stands.

The reason that I do not "accept the efficacy of acupuncture as established
fact" is that it is only "established fact" in the eyes of True Believers.

In science, when someone discovers an unusual effect, if the effect is real,
further experiments invariably refine the initial discovery and improve the
signal-to-noise ratio.  For example, Budnorz and Muller reported the first
cuprate high-temperature superconductor in 1986.  Their "High-Tc"
superconductor had a Tc of 35 K.  Within a decade, cuprate superconductors
with Tc's above the boiling point of nitrogen had been developed -- despite
the lack of a good (or at least a universally accepted) theory to explain
how they worked.  Kroto, Smalley, and Curl reported the unusual stability
of C60 at about the same time.  Within a decade of their discovery, fullerenes
had gone from a strange peak in a mass spectrum to chemicals that one
could purchase in quantity.

In 1989, Fleischmann and Pons announced the discovery of "cold fusion."
(I was at the press conference at which they made their announcement --
I can be seen in the video that at least used to be on YouTube, FWIW -- and
at the seminar that Pons gave shortly thereafter).  After a brief flurry
of activity, it was discovered that their results were not reproducible,
and by the time that a decade had passed (actually, more like within five
years), the only people reporting positive results for cold fusion were a
small number of True Believers who could only get positive results by
performing experiments of truly wretched quality.  I don't know if Google
has the entire archive of sci.physics.fusion, but the articles from the
early and mid-90s make quite interesting reading -- especially when you
compare the rhetorical style of the True Believers over there with that of
the True Believers in m.h.a.

In the 1950's, Irving Langmuir gave a famous lecture about what he called
"Pathological Science."  He noted several characteristics of pathological
science, including claims of much greater statistical significance than
was warranted by the data.  The text of the lecture was reprinted in an
issue of _Physics Today_ from late 1989 (my copy seems to have disappeared,
but it's quite an interesting read).

In 1997, the NCCAM (which, despite Mr. Kingoff's best efforts, is not
identical with the NIH) published a "consensus statement" that hinted at
experimental results that supported the efficacy of acupuncture.  A decade
later, that page comes with an explicit disclaimer that the information may
be out of date.  The *current* NCCAM acupuncture web page refers to the
consensus statement, but carefully avoids mentioning *any* positive results
from that statement or *any* followups to those results.  The literature
has a number of articles reporting positive results -- many of which
quite clearly suffer from problems such as poor controls -- and a number of
articles that report negative results.  As far as I can tell, the ratio
has not increased in favor of positive results, as would be expected from
a real effect.

I understand that if acupuncture were proven not to be effective, it would
not only impact Mr. Kingoff's livelihood; although, given the number of
people who are passionate supporters of outright charlatans, of whom I
hasten to emphasize Mr. Kingoff is *not* one, I doubt that it would affect
his livelihood much.  The notion that acupuncture might not be effective
is as heretical to him as the notion that Jesus might not have been the
Son of God would be to a born-again Christian.  So I can understand very
well why he feels so threatened by skepticism about acupuncture.  And,
despite what he wants to believe (it's called "projection"), there is no
symmetry here -- if acupuncture were found to be effective (beyond the
placebo effects that I have already indicated I believe to explain most if
not all of its claimed efficacy), it would not affect my life much one way
or the other.  That's because I am sure that *if* acupuncture works, it
almost certainly does *not* work by rebalancing "Qi."

Thus, I do not expect any kind of objectivity from Mr. Kingoff, and in fact
would advise him not to bother replying to this article.  But I leave as
a thought question for those who are willing to think critically about
the matter -- to which example does acupuncture seem to be closer,
high-Tc superconductors, or cold fusion?

-----
Richard Schultz                              schultr@mail.biu.ac.il
Department of Chemistry, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat-Gan, Israel
Opinions expressed are mine alone, and not those of Bar-Ilan University
-----
". . .Mr Schutz [sic] acts like a functional electro-terrorist who
impeads [sic] scientific communications with his too oft-silliness."
  -- Mitchell Swartz, sci.physics.fusion article <EEI1oz.43q@world.std.com>

When they go back to work, stop taking meds, and get back to their
life.  Either that, or people have a very high spontaneous remission
rate within a couple weeks of getting acupuncture from me.  I'd think
Occam would say it is more likely the former than the latter; unless
you want to attribut Rasputineque powers to me.