Here's why *real* medicine is different than woo:

[Quixote1818]

109. Wow, you are off by a mile. Here is an explanation from the authors of the paper

Snip> The authors themselves try to put it into context:


To give an example of what these effect sizes mean in real terms, a baseline pain score on a 0 to 100 scale for a typical RCT might be 60. Given a standard deviation of 25, follow- up scores might be 43 in a no acupuncture group, 35 in a sham acupuncture group, and 30 in patients receiving true acupuncture. If response were defined in terms of a pain reduction of 50% or more, response rates would be approximately 30%, 42.5%, and 50%, respectively.


According to another scientist: What Vickers et al are arguing is that a change of 5 on a 0-100 pain scale (which would be a change of 0.5 on a 0-10 pain scale), a subjective scale, is noticeable by patients. It’s probably not.

Snip> Here’s a hint: -5 (the difference between sham acupuncture and “real” acupuncture) is not clinically significant. The only way you can even approach clinical significance is to compare no-acupuncture controls versus acupuncture, in which case you’re adding placebo effects into any other effect observed, even if that effect is real (which I highly doubt it to be). Indeed, Vickers et al labor mightily to try to convince readers that this tiny effect, if it exists, is not just statistically significant, but clinically significant. They doth protest too much, methinks. In fact, I very much like how the grand master of the scientific analysis of “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM), Edzard Ernst, put it:


Edzard Ernst, emeritus professor of complementary medicine at the University of Exeter, said the study “impressively and clearly” showed that the effects of acupuncture were mostly due to placebo. “The differences between the results obtained with real and sham acupuncture are small and not clinically relevant. Crucially, they are probably due to residual bias in these studies. Several investigations have shown that the verbal or non-verbal communication between the patient and the therapist is more important than the actual needling. If such factors would be accounted for, the effect of acupuncture on chronic pain might disappear completely.”

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2012/09/12/can-we-finally-just-say-that-acupuncture-is-nothing-more-than-an-elaborate-placebo-can-we-2012-edition/