It is being prescribed in Wales for specific medical conditions for which it has been shown to work. It was in fact prescribed in the UK as a medicine for symptomatic relief of colds right up until the US insisted we ban it because it was being used by black people.
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Citations please.
Would my personal claims to it not working a damn count?
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I guess that it might be flat what viewed in homeopathically small samples 
@LDoBe, I think I heard that keeping an old analogue multi-meter in your workshop can improve your Feng Shui.
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Actually, the earth is flat. It’s just a very roundish sort of flat.
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Yeah, I literally couldn’t believe it when I first saw the NCCIH site. I thought it was a clever fake until I realized with growing horror it was for real. The National Institutes of Health are among the most prestigious medical science institutions in the world and to see politicians plant a cuckoo into their midst is just unbelievable. It’s like a Christmas present to every snake oil salesman on the planet. Every argument inevitably starts off with proponents of these idiotic remedies throwing the NCCIH in your face,
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Absolutely. This snarky article was no doubt fun to write, but your comment hit the nail on the head. Especially in the current health care clusterfuck we all live in (prescription painkiller epidemic, community acquired disease vector epidemic, antibiotic pipeline down to its last molecules, growing resistance to diseases which were treatable not long ago, lack of preparedness for threats such as Ebola or biological attacks, etc etc), the ‘conventional medicine’ community is hardly in a position to laugh at the very concept of studying alternative approaches. The 2nd problem with the snark is it ignores how modern medicine is often merely traditional medicine or innovative approaches which have been accepted and gone mainstream. (The guy who discovered the relationship between helicobacter pylori and stomach ulcers was laughed at for decades before winning the Nobel). A 3rd problem is simply the cynical premise that investing money in integrated healthcare is foolish. Who needs nutrition? Who needs exercise? Who needs their doctor to understand their lifestyle and what factors might affect their health? Who needs to study marijuana? Or turmeric? Or anything which isn’t bankrolled by big Pharma? And finally the attempt to link homeopathy with integrative as if everything not labeled Pfizer etc is somehow the same.
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No need to worry - you need to do the special shaking the container stuff to activate the magic thingies.
Or do you? I can never keep up with the rapid advances in homeopathy.
I can certainly see the appeal of being paid to check whether various substances become more potent after being vigorously shaken with a dilution of water (ideally beginning in a frozen state).
I’d even be prepared to undertake such research for quite a minimal sum beyond basic research expenses.
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Most alternative therapies don’t work better than placebos… but OTOH it’s probably worthwhile to actually study the placebo effect, and figure out how to better use it to improve patient outcomes. If this centre is not a glorified lobby group but does actual scientific work, personally I welcome it.
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Except the existence of the NCCIH doesn’t really support their position. Up through the 90s, advocates of alternative practices, confronted about the lack of credible evidence for their beliefs, relied on the excuse that without Big Pharma support they couldn’t get money for controlled research. Establishment of the NCCIH took that excuse away. For a long time they couldn’t get advocates of such practices to even apply for funding.
I know some traditional medical researchers who have managed to get grants from the program by adding some kind of extra dimension to their normal research.
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“A Roundish Sort of Flat”? Wasn’t that a hit for Procol Harum some time back in the sixties? Or am I mixing it up with something else?
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If it was the “College for Health Sciences" then I would agree. However, this suggests that the building is somehow homeopathic. What is a homeopathic building? A brick in a field? Well, if they are planning that, and trousering the change then they are naughtier than I think. Otherwise, its four in four. Yay.
PS: I understand the parting, but how does a fool get that much money in the first place?
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I believe that’s called “drowning”.
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No it doesn’t. Consciousness has nothing to do with the double slit experiment. Measurement is what counts and it makes no difference who or what makes the measurement.
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I leave this here without further comment:
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That’s an opinion, yes. Opinions are awesome. Presenting opinions as universally accepted fact are not.
A retired lumberjack here swears by his cannabis as an effective pain relief medicine. He’s packed on a few pounds but seems much happier on a daily basis. (Oh, Canada!)
It’s my personal opinion that using ample donated resources to continue to study all of the aspects of various “alternative” medicines could make them less “alternative” if we discover ways they can be effective.
I’m unclear why staying curious and exploring possible health resources of all types, given the funds, is a controversial opinion.
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I would actually be a data point. The question is, would both times count as two data points or would it count as a single one due to them being used on the same patient.
Anyway, they were a complete waste of my time.
It’s true that you’d be a data point, as someone with a poor experience with acupuncture. I’ve personally had two terrible, damaging experiences with psychotherapy, but that was due to terrible therapists using bad techniques, not because every kind of therapy by every therapist is a waste of time for everyone.
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I personally think its controversial when it amounts to using what are in fact limited, rather than ample, resources to study ‘alternative’ medicines which have already been thoroughly studied and debunked.
It’s that ‘given the funds’ bit. If we had enough money (and researchers) to study everything, studying everything would make sense. We don’t. So there have to be some things that are not sensible to study.
As far as acupuncture specifically goes, I agree with you - nothing wrong with studying whether and if so how that works.
There certainly do seem to be enough anecdotal data points that it does work to some extent for some people to make it worth examining what and how.
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