Speed the 150-year-old tortoise dies at San Diego Zoo

[longship]

16. If it fails the scientific method, it fails as a hypothesis.

And, as I wrote, many diseases are self limiting, for instance the common cold which, no matter what your treatment, lasts the same number of days.

What you have fallen into is confirmation bias, the tendency to selectively believe facts one believes and dismiss facts which one does not.

But that is not how science works. One cannot use a single case to establish a new fact. That is why anecdotal evidence is rubbish, and why any such stories about acupuncture are equally rubbish.

When studied in a double blind method, the science unequivocally says:

1. It does matter where one sticks the needles. (So much for meridian points, i.e., Xi.)

2. It doesn't even matter if one sticks needles. (Tooth picks which do not penetrate but which feel the same, when disguised, have the same placebo effect, in other words, none whatsoever.)

So, not only does acupuncture have no plausible mechanism of action -- what the fuck is Xi? -- but the best studies show that acupuncture has not only no plausibility, it has no effect beyond placebo. And when one is poking needles into flesh, that would be an unethical modality for a physician to use.

Anyway, acupuncture is bollocks.

Or as Perry DeAngelis said: Remember Xi spelled backward is crap.