Well, that's not actually true, because he was buying and selling assets, filing documents, etc. And he was paying out returns. The problem was that he promised high returns, and had to sell off incoming assets to pay them. Many people were getting excellent returns for years, until he didn't have enough money coming in to pay them (that's the principle of a Ponzi scheme - that you use incoming assets to pay out initial investors).

But, whatever; the point is that people selling things (be it a product or service) that are not what they are made out to be shouldn't be allowed to sell them, because the Average Buyer doesn't have the skills to know if the claims are correct or not. I don't think that we should allow people to be duped by anyone, even just if it's "their money."

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What is often missing in those discussions is that a positive placebo effect isn't a given. You can have less of a placebo effect, you can even have a nocebo effect... (depends a lot on how patients are handled, on expectations etc.) And a maximum placebo effect with a harmless procedure might be better than what was believed to be the real thing. See e.g. here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12110735 - people were used to have an effect after surgery but we have to recognize it was placebo, Wouldn't it be great if you could achieve a similar effect by needling those people (in the paper it is sham surgery) - even if you scientifically conceptualize it as a cheap way to achieve a nice and welcome placebo effect?

Hyperpape answered you well enough for me.

I believe it is not ethical for someone to offer any services or treatments if they themselves believe it to be ineffective. I believe there are two situations in question here:

a) There are plenty of acupuncture practitioners who genuinely believe in what they do, and their customers believe that it is effective treatment. I do not see anything wrong with this arrangement. If the people are feeling better as a result, placebo or otherwise, that makes the treatment not a waste of money either. I don't mean that this is therefore a treatment that is physiologically effective, but I still have no problem with these things happening. There is no "sham" involved here, which implies an attempt to deceive.

b) There are plenty of people out there, colloquially known as snake oil peddlers, deliberately scamming swathes of the public for a quick profit. This I have never believed is ethical, and fair trading laws should, in an ideal world, be able to mete out an appropriate punishment to these people. I re-iterate, if the person selling the treatment or product knows it is an ineffective product, then I do not consider it ethical practice.



I genuinely believe the majority of homoeopathic practitioners and acupuncturists believe whole heartedly that what they are doing helps people. This, combined with the belief of others that there is deliberate deception for financial gain going on, is most likely the core reason that the debates and fights get so downright unpleasant. I may not agree with them, but I don't believe what they are doing is unethical. I reacted to post originally because whilst saying something "doesn't work" is unjustified in a literal sense, in this particular case I think it's a quite reasonable opinion to hold. Saying it's a "sham" also makes an accusation against people's motive, which I feel is not only unsupported but also rather unreasonable.



Sure, but the Average Buyer does not believe they are being duped, even being presented with the evidence. They instead go purely on their personal experiences, like magicwand, and couldn't care less whether the effect was a placebo or directly caused by the treatment. From their perspective, they got better and it was worth the money. From the practitioner's perspective, the customer got better just as they had expected. Everyone's happy, and the truth of whether it was really the treatment or not is both unknown and irrelevant - where's the foul?

We fight for free will, free belief, and free speech, and I think market restrictions to prevent these activities is unnecessarily prohibitive unless deliberate deception is shown to be taking place.

ADDENDUM: I'm going to hazard a guess that you're an atheist Kirk. Many Christian denomination churches consider a 10% net income tithe to be an appropriate contribution to the furthering of buildings, staffing, and evangelistic activities. Should we disallow this too, as an atheist would consider the congregation "duped" not only into believing a false faith but also being indirectly deprived of their money out of a sense of obligation?

Actually, the only double-blind possible with acupuncture is sticking people with needles in places that don't correspond to meridians. It definitely complicates any studies.

The paper you cite, though, is a very interesting one, which totally shocked the medical community, where doctors were convinced that this type of intervention was beneficial. Science is interesting...

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Re Topazg's last post... I'm not going to quote stuff, because it's annoying.

a) Definitely true. I've seen plenty of them. (I have a fair amount of experience in these things, actually, which is why I am so against them now. Long story...) They are part of a flawed belief system which is perpetuated by different organizations. For example, homeopathy is covered by France's national health system (which is how I got involved in seeing homeopathic "doctors"; I felt that if the state reimbursed it, it must be valid).

B) Definitely true. They should be burned at the stake.

However, regarding motive, take an MD who uses homeopathy. He should be intelligent enough to question the validity of his sugar pills, and read the research. If not, he doesn't do the due diligence that he should be doing. As for manufacturers of sugar pills, it's even worse (IMHO). They should know that they are bilking people, such as the billion-dollar duck liver (http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=2005 ; someone calculated that one liver generates 1 billion dollars of income).

Where's the foul? Honesty; critical thinking; look at the US where a vast number of people think that Adam and Eve lived alongside dinosaurs, and that the Earth is 6,000 years old. And see the effects that has on the political process...

As for religion, I think churches should be taxed. If people want to give money to their preferred belief system, that's fine; but let the church pay a fair share of that money to society. But I think that is getting way off-topic...

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I'll follow your lead and not quote, just to say I agree completely with all of that post

An MD most definitely should "know better", and do the research himself into what evidence there is for treatments he would choose to prescribe.

And on that happy agreeable note, an over used quote that represents my position on the scenario A people:

QFT.

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For some people, a quasi-medical treatment like acupuncture tends to produce emotional responses that favor regulation, but how many personal trainers are offering unscientific advice about health related activities? Is there an obviously relevant difference? For that reason, I

That said, I will differ about the true believers. I think they are often doing something quite wrong: they are believing things based on insufficient evidence in a case where this wastes other people's money. They have a degree of responsibility to get it right, and they make other people worse off by not doing so (perhaps accupuncturists don't make others worse off, because of placebos or because people like the idea that they are helped. This is less plausible for homeopaths). It is akin to negligently harming people, where we don't think that ignorance of the truth is a defense.

Of course, this is generally far less bad than knowingly selling people something useless. Do note that the person who intentionally sells a useless product doesn't thereby compromise any placebos, or even produce any noticeable change in his patients, so long as they don't discover that he doesn't believe.

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Occupy Babel!

@Topazg: I thought I was disagreeing with you in 2) because I thought you were saying you really should just stick to saying "there's no evidence yet that X works".

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Occupy Babel!

I like Pie!

Oh and this has to rank up there as the worst thread ever .......although I'm sure someone will argue other wise.

Haha, really? I thought we'd handled a topic that normally goes really badly downhill in a pretty civil way considering

Oh la la, how arrogant. =,=!!!

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求而不得
舍而不能

For a study to be double blind, not only should the patients not know whether they are getting a placebo or not, but the treating doctors also shouldn't know (to prevent them from behaving differently towards different patients).

For a double blind on acupuncture, they use something know as "sham acupuncture" (sham is also a medical term), where they put the needles in places that are not acupoints (which is complicated by the fact that there is no universal agreement among acupuncturists on where the acupoints are).

All in all, quite a complicated thing to research

Well, the question remains what you are testing then. The whole meridian theory might turn out to be not necessary. If needling next to the acupoint has the same effect, that is not the same as proving that acupuncture does not work, it is just casting doubt on the usual explanation.

As this is an anti-doping thread. Let us ask the main question: If acupuncture were performance enhancing in Go (which is of course not proven or not even likely if you ask me), should it be allowed (as it does not harm) or should it be prohibited? If it should be prohibited, then only during the tournaments, a time span before the tournaments or even altogether?