Magnet therapies 'have no effect'

This is one that hardly surprised me. Regarding the use of magnet to control pain,

"... a systematic assessment comes to the conclusion that the evidence is not compelling for the effectiveness of static magnets for reducing pain above non-specific effects."

The reply from an industry advocate was not surprising:

Debbie Shimadry, director of World of Magnets, said use of magnets was not a cure, but a treatment that was very effective for relief of symptoms of joint-related disorders.

This type of unsubstantiated claim is typical in the field of alternative medicine, where practitioners depend upon persuasion rather than clinical evidence to attract clientele. Sadly, professional TCM relies on this type of charlatanism, as well. This is unfortunate as there is ample evidence that various natural treatments are effective, but the more practitioners cry wolf, the less anyone wants to listen to them at all. To make matters worse, there is now a drive in the field of TCM to elevate anecdotes of personal experience to be considered as reliable as actual clinical evidence. Flying under the banner of scholarly discourse, one academic writes that there is "evidence in these [ancient chinese] manuscripts for a medical tradition led and shaped by bodily experience, rather than clinical observation." If this is correct, it does not make the TCM explanation of physiology more reliable, but rather highly suspect.

It is interesting to note that the scholar Paul Unschuld has written at length about the two major strains of thought in the development of TCM. One was a highly analytical strain, while another was an empirical one. While there were no doubt those who based their assumptions upon personal experiences in their own bodies, there was another group whose ideas were based upon long clinical observation. It will be a dark day for TCM if the rationalists prevail over the empiricists.