Assertion: acupuncture's benefit | /r/HasProperty | small
Facets:
value: at best
type: DEGREE
value: quite
type: DEGREE
value: to the point
type: OTHER
value: in other words
type: DEGREE
Source sentences:
text: A 2010 Cochrane review found that acupuncture shows statistically significant benefit over sham acupuncture in the treatment of peripheral joint osteoarthritis; however, these benefits were found to be so small that their clinical significance was doubtful, and "probably due at least partially to placebo effects from incomplete blinding".
text: However, a Cochrane review of acupuncture for peripheral joint osteoarthritis (Manheimer et al, 2010) concluded that sham-controlled trials show statistically significant benefits; the authors stated, however, that these benefits are small, do not meet the authors' pre-defined thresholds for clinical relevance, and are probably due at least partially to placebo effects from incomplete blinding.
text: In other words, even when meta-analyses found a significant difference between sham (placebo) acupuncture and real acupuncture, the “benefits” of real acupuncture were quite small, often to the point that they have no clinical significance.
text: If that is the case, then the best you could possibly say, with a really generous interpretation of the literature, is that there is wide-spread disagreement among studies, there are only a handful of afflictions with reasonably consistent results, and even for those, the benefits are so small that most people won’t notice them.
text: And when acupuncture is tested on thousands of patients, the average benefit is too small for a person to notice.
text: Last month, in the journal Anesthesia and Analgesia, two leading medical rationalists, pharmacologist David Colquhoun and neurologist Steven Novella, stuck in the knife: "the benefits of acupuncture are likely nonexistent, or at best are too small and too transient to be of any clinical significance," they wrote.