Herbs & Supplements and Alternative Therapies

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This unbiased, interactive authority on herbs, vitamins, minerals, and other food supplements tells you what's proven to work - and what's not. Assembled by physicians and pharmacists, it contains extensive information on natural remedies. Please refer to Complementary and Alternative Medicine Editorial Board for information on our review personnel.

They seem quite scientific. They've also got something on Alternative Therapies. Here's part of what they say about Acupuncture:

Although there have been numerous controlled studies of acupuncture, there is no condition for which acupuncture's supporting evidence is strong. There are several reasons for this, but one is fundamental: even with the best of intentions, it is difficult to properly ascertain the effectiveness of a hands-on therapy such as acupuncture.

Only one form of study can truly prove that a treatment is effective: the double-blind, placebo-controlled trial. However, it isn’t easy to fit acupuncture into a study design of this type. One problem is designing a form of placebo acupuncture, and an even more challenging problem is to keep participants and practitioners in the dark regarding who is receiving real acupuncture and who is receiving fake. But without such blinding, the results of the study can be skewed by numerous factors....

There is another problem to consider as well: acupuncture causes a very strong placebo effect, whether it’s real or fake....

And finally the fact that the Chinese have regularly lied in their research does not help:

There is one additional problem in evaluating the evidence for acupuncture: many of the studies were performed in China, and there is evidence of systematic bias in the Chinese medical literature.⁵ Researchers evaluating the acupuncture studies from China discovered that every one found acupuncture effective! This led them to look further into other Chinese medical research. Upon review of controlled trials involving other therapies such as standard drugs, it was noted that Chinese trials reported positive results 99% of the time. By comparison, trials published in England were positive only 85% of the time. Although some bias exists in all medical publications, this finding suggests a particularly high rate of bias in the Chinese research record.