According to Dr. Montalvo, there's a ton of contradictory research out there, partly because it's surprisingly difficult to come up with a way to compare the kinesio tape's effectiveness with other kinds of tape. "When you’re comparing an application to the skin to another application to the skin, you can’t rule out that any improvements aren’t due to some sort of stimulation of the skin," she says. What researchers really need to be able to account for is the attention participants are getting from their doctors, which, obviously, is much more difficult to do.