`   fwiw, , in my view this is messier than most people will actually acknowledge and deal with.  One reason I appreciate Middle 8's perspective on Acu is that he actually deals with that.   There are a set of difficult, hard facts here that there is no room in the acu article for, due to POV-pushing on both sides, namely: * acu is indeed based on pre-scientific principles.   If anybody claims today that ``qi`` and ``merdians`` have any reality, they are doing pseudoscience * conventional medicine fails to help people sometimes, especially with regard to pain, which we still do not understand very well on basic scientific levels and even today we lack drugs and devices that  effectively help some people who are in pain * clinical studies have shown benefit of acu in some populations of people who are still in pain when doctors have done their best with conventional medicine.   the placebo issues don't matter, clinically.  the risk is tiny and compared to actually doing nothing extra, some people who are otherwise in pain are helped by this extra procedure.  that is what matters.  * the use of acu as a complementary medicine in the situations mentioned above is discussed in medical textbooks (it doesn't get more mainstream than that) and is widely practiced.   some of that is driven by market demand but medical centers wouldn't offer it if there wasn't some rationale (the clinical evidence) for it I believe that Middle 8 gets all that, which is rare around here.  A reasonable article about acu would be anchored on those facts and I think if Middle 8 had the article to himself, it would look that way.  But you get acu-proponents constantly making insane claims about acu and the quack-fighters pushing back way too hard.  The article is a wasteland, and there is no way to make the extremes step away.   So I stepped away.  That's my view, again, fwiw.  (and none of this excuses Middle 8's poor judgement in bringing the AE)   `