A lot of people get confused, because they argue that you can't test something unless you understand exactly how it works This is actually not the case We just need to be able to quantify the EFFECT of a treatment on people to test it, not the treatment itself
-
-
Show this thread
-
If someone claimed to be able to work actual, Harry-Potter style magic with a wand to cure headaches, we could test that because we can test headaches even if we can't actually test magic
Show this thread -
If someone says "This is impossible to test in an RCT", what they're really saying is either: a) I don't understand RCTs b) I don't think my treatment actually works
Show this thread -
Note: this is NOT the same as saying "I can't do an RCT on this". There are many reasons that RCTs are hard to do, chief among them funding because RCTs are quite expensive
Show this thread
End of conversation
New conversation -
-
-
Or things that are unethical (such as testing whether cigarettes cause lung cancer), or completely unfeasible due to logistics and/or finances. There are plenty of those
-
Yeh but I was mostly talking treatments here, not risk factors and lifestyle influences. It's definitely true that there are things you can't test in RCTs, but this is almost never true for treatments themselves
- Show replies
New conversation -
-
-
You can have sham acupuncture as a control, which does not hit the "special magical spots", just so random poking with the needles
Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
-
-
-
There are some acupuncture trials controlled by sham acupuncture, no? Either needles that do not penetrate the skin, or needles stuck in random locations (rather than ‘meridians’ or whatever).
-
Yep but you can't blind practitioners to what they're doing, so until we invent entirely machine-autonomous acupuncture it's never going to be double-blind
- Show replies
New conversation -
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.