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Originally Posted by droid  I really don't get your logic or how you arrived to that conclusion,but it it is your opinion,which i respect!Totally agree Nullmouse,it's a pity Western medecine and TCM couldn't work as complementary treatments eh? |
I agree with The TickingTime-Bomb as the more recent the evidence the more likely it is to be carried out to the highest scientific standards. For example, our understanding of the placebo effect and how it can impact poorly controlled trials is relatively recent to medicine - Older trials will most likely be subject to inappropriate controls that make it hard to work out what is a true effect and what is placebo.
Just to be clear, I don't think we should recommend any treatment without evidence. That evidence should be gathered in the strongest, most robust way - But the ways in which we gather this evidence does not rely on the need to know the mechanism why a treatment works. For example, acupuncture is claimed to work due to insertion of needles into certain regions (meridians) that are specific to the ailments presented. We don't need to know how (or indeed, if) meridians work to understand that a good control would be to insert needles in to regions that weren't specific. We could then compare how well the two groups did, and make some observation on how effective the treatment was.