The Efficacy Of Acupuncture

Randomized controlled trials with low false positives and low false negatives are considered the highest level of evidence within a clinical setting (Sackett, 1969). The importance of weighing different forms of evidence has been a persistent difficulty when assessing the efficacy and reliability of acupuncture for several reasons. First, TCM (and more specifically, acupuncture) utilizes different ideas and concepts that do not overlap with modern biomedical understanding. Second, there is still no clear consensus on what can be considered acupuncture as opposed to sham acupuncture and non-acupuncture modalities (Langevin, 2010). On this note, there are also significant doubts within the literature that sham acupuncture, a necessary component