Dyson-Hudson et al reported that they observed little or no difference in outcomes between acupuncture and "invasive sham acupuncture" in spinal cord injury patients with chronic shoulder pain. This clinical trial failed to reject the null hypothesis: H_0 equals the exposures are not different. However, the only basis for doubting this null hypothesis exists in unsubstantiated acupuncture theories. "Invasive sham acupuncture" involves, as its name implies, inserting needles into patients, which may stimulate mechanoreceptors and is certainly not inert.2 Despite certain extant beliefs about acupuncture, it has been observed that the specific means and methods of point stimulation used in acupuncture practice are of low importance.3 Both treatment arms involved inserting needles into the patients and no a priori biologic rationale or explanation was offered to justify the proposition that the exposures were truly different.
展开▼
