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What I don't get is how rabidly so many people here oppose the existence of dark matter. I'm having trouble grokking a financial or religious motive for that one.

It's an "X" invented to plug a hole between a theory and observation, and with no evidence for it other than that discrepancy (despite much searching for it). That makes it inherently suspicious. That it supposedly makes up the lion's share of matter in the universe makes it even worse that we can't detect it in some other way.

However, attempts to plug the hole by modifying the theory of universal gravitation have been unsuccessful. So dark matter as a theory survives.

Actually, it explains several apparently unrelated anomalies.

And FYI, MOND is very good at explaining galaxy rotation curves, but utterly fails at the other stuff.

Sorry, but I don't remember what the other stuff is or how dark matter explains it. But all that is a favorite topic at the Starts with a Bang blog, and in fact I notice that he has yet another post on it right now, so if you're interested it may be worth a read.

How about a few hundred pages going about trying to prove that 1 + 1 = 2?

Oh, and to your quantum entanglement theory:

I suggest you start .

This method may involve the most work and get the best result: Laid Back Turkey. It was first popularized by Julia Child. You remove the entire carcass except certain bones, broil the exposed, livid flesh for a while, then lay the whole thing broiled side down on a huge pile of stuffing, then bake it. Further instructions here: http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/11/18/how-to-cook-a-turkey-2/

Just to let you know... ... it was the latest thing on Pharyngula.

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2012/10/13/the-ducks-are-gonna-get-you/ ;-D

--
BMO

PZ Myers ripped Kurzweil to pieces a number of times. I think it's fair to say that Kurzweil is at best optimistic, and at worst full of shit and a crank.

> Yes they have. It's the speed of light.

> But if the sun vanished right now, it would take 8 minutes for the earth to stop orbiting and shoot off into space.

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/grav_radiation.html

There's a number of competing models which fit existing data.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2010/08/25/what-is-the-speed-of-gravity/

See the closing paragraph referencing LISA ~ 2030 A.D.

The real way to measure the speed of gravity is to detect and study gravitational waves. By comparing the arrival of a gravitational-wave signal with that of an electromagnetic signal from an astrophysical source, one could compare the speed of gravity to that of light to parts in 10^(17).

As I understand it, we're still waiting to find out if gravitational waves/radiation propagates at the speed of light.

Interestingly, Dr. Oz and Dr Phil are woo-spewing kooks and more modern pediatric research has moved away from much of Spock's advice.

Still, Spock changed the way the western world thinks about raising kids, and for the better. I'm not sure I'd be happy about being linked to pop-psy TV personalities like Dr Phil and Dr Oz.

I would have agreed with you a year ago, but read up on conservapedia's crazy leader.

Take a look at this:

http://scienceblogs.com/builtonfacts/2010/03/while_doing_some_poking_around.php

You are citing the Daily Mail as an authority on global warming? These people routinely misquote and distort comments made by scientists on the topic. They are a pack of outright liars.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2010/02/14/daily-mail-caught-in-another-l/

There are researches on that. This is the simplest one I can find, you your google-fu to find more.

...both of the library variety and the hands-on variety in his practice. He cites thousands of reference sin his book "Eat to Live" and has had thousands of patients over his career.

Researchers at Harvard University have seconded the vitamin D deficiency hypotheses as a potential cause of autism.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/news-archive/2009/new-harvard-paper-on-autism/

Yet your post got modded +5 insightful. Still so much mis-info on slashdot about health... But I still feel it is slowly improving. And you are reasonable to be skeptical.

You might like this article critical of Dr. Hyman:
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2009/09/08/dr-mark-hyman-mangles-autism-science-on/

None-the-less, if you truly are a hard-working skeptic and not just a lazy skeptic-of-just-new-ideas, the entire scientific enterprise has failed in several big ways in relation to medicine, as I quote here: http://www.pdfernhout.net/to-james-randi-on-skepticism-about-mainstream-science.html#Some_quotes_on_social_problems_in_science
"Much of what medical researchers conclude in their studies is misleading, exaggerated, or flat-out wrong. So why are doctors -- to a striking extent -- still drawing upon misinformation in their everyday practice? Dr. John Ioannidis has spent his career challenging his peers by exposing their bad science."

So, it is hard to move beyond that. Look at what happened to the guy who suggested doctors wash their hands after dissecting corpses before they then deliver babies:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ignaz_Semmelweis
".. As a result, his ideas were rejected by the medical community. Other more subtle factors may also have played a role. Some doctors, for instance, were offended at the suggestion that they should wash their hands, feeling that their social status as gentlemen was inconsistent with the idea that their hands could be unclean.[7]:9[Note 6]
Specifically, Semmelweis's claims were thought to lack scientific basis, since he could offer no acceptable explanation for his findings. Such a scientific explanation was made possible only some decades later, when the germ theory of disease was developed by Louis Pasteur, Joseph Lister, and others.
During 1848, Semmelweis widened the scope of his washing protocol, to include all instruments coming in contact with patients in labour, and used mortality rates time series to document his success in virtually eliminating puerperal fever from the hospital ward. ...
In 1865 JÃnos Balassa wrote a document referring Semmelweis to a mental institution. ... He died after two weeks, on August 13, 1865, aged 47, from a gangrenous wound, possibly caused by the beating. ..."

Cold fusion has gotten the cold shoulder too for twenty years...
http://pesn.com/2012/09/06/9602177_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_September6/

Who are the real charlatans of medicine?
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
"In the most recent study investigators reviewed 61 trials, involving 25,388 patients, in a meta-analysis comparing angioplasty and stent placement with no treatment or medications alone. A meta-analysis pools numerous studies on the same subject. The findings indicated that there was no evidence that angioplasty and stent placement for coronary artery disease resulted in fewer heart attacks or deaths when compared to patients with the same level of disease who

http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2007/04/15/strange-loops-dennis-ritchie-a/

NASA's (mis-)management aside, congress added an extra $2.2B to the cost by disregarding the review panel's findings and not funding the project in a timely manner. Read more about it here, courtesy of an earlier slashdot article: How the Webb Space Telescope Got So Expensive.

Not really, that's just one guy who wrote a self published book full of misrepresentations and distortions. Read what actual scientists have to say about it here. The went through and did a comprehensive take down of that guy's nonsense. Alternatively, this is a fun well cited video. My favorite bit: he claims that transgenes are taken up by gut flora and continue to function, meaning that they could be producing the Bt protein that kills insects (which is totally harmless to humans anyway, but whatever). He cites Netherwood 2004 as proof. That paper's abstract ends with "we conclude that gene transfer did not occur during the feeding experiment." So they guy who wrote that site either does not bother to even look at the papers he cites, or he flat out lies. He is also one of the leaders in the anti-GE movement, and is very highly respected and often cited among those who espouse anti-GE sentiment. So what should that tell you?

But either way, if there is nothing wrong then there should be no reason against the labeling.

If there's nothing wrong why should the be labeled? There's tons of things we do to plants that are not dangerous that most people have never heard of, like mutagenesis and doubled haploid hybridization and selection of bud sport mutants. I don't think GE should be singled out. That is just using people's ignorance to scare them about genetic engineering by making it stand out as something different and unique.

If I have a choice between a gmo product that hasn't been in the food supply long enough to know if its okay or not and one that isnt a gmo product, I'd be happy to have the information to make my own informed choices.

That is easy to do already and I'll tell you how. Corn, soy, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, and papaya. Eight species have been genetically engineered in the US. Due to the way they are processed, anything containing them that is not labeled as organic or non-GMO contains genetically engineered crops. Now you know how to avoid them if you want, and you can do it without a label. However, they have been in the food supply for a long time, and tested even longer, and there is no reason whatsoever to think they pose any more of a health risk than any other crop.

That having been said, since Dr. Oz recommends avoiding GMO foods

That interview was horribly edited by the way. And somehow, those of us who support genetic engineering are the deceitful ones.

Eh, I just took the first google result on the topic to show that 'zero' may be an inaccurate assessment. I'm afraid I have to take a 50,000 foot view of the situation in order to see that most nutritional studies get it wrong the first, second and third times. I also see many nutritional studies that omit data or game their acceptance criteria to get the result they really wanted in the first place.

Remember when butter and lard and coconut oil would kill you, so we should use transfats, hydrogenated fats and margarine? I suspect that maneuver killed millions. Eggs are bad, eggs are good, eggs are bad, eggs are good, eggs are bad again? Salt is bad for you if you remove the 50% of the study participants that showed no effects from eating salt, like Intersalt did. The lipid theory that 'proved' that saturated fats are bad for you had to eliminate 17 countries out of 22 to get that result. The truth in re-reading the study shows that patients who live in countries that eat high calorie, high energy, heavily processed and packaged foods had heart trouble

Not really, that's just one guy who wrote a self published book full of misrepresentations and distortions. Read what actual scientists have to say about it here. The went through and did a comprehensive take down of that guy's nonsense. Alternatively, this is a fun well cited video. My favorite bit: he claims that transgenes are taken up by gut flora and continue to function, meaning that they could be producing the Bt protein that kills insects (which is totally harmless to humans anyway, but whatever). He cites Netherwood 2004 as proof. That paper's abstract ends with "we conclude that gene transfer did not occur during the feeding experiment." So they guy who wrote that site either does not bother to even look at the papers he cites, or he flat out lies. He is also one of the leaders in the anti-GE movement, and is very highly respected and often cited among those who espouse anti-GE sentiment. So what should that tell you?

But either way, if there is nothing wrong then there should be no reason against the labeling.

If there's nothing wrong why should the be labeled? There's tons of things we do to plants that are not dangerous that most people have never heard of, like mutagenesis and doubled haploid hybridization and selection of bud sport mutants. I don't think GE should be singled out. That is just using people's ignorance to scare them about genetic engineering by making it stand out as something different and unique.

If I have a choice between a gmo product that hasn't been in the food supply long enough to know if its okay or not and one that isnt a gmo product, I'd be happy to have the information to make my own informed choices.

That is easy to do already and I'll tell you how. Corn, soy, canola, cotton, alfalfa, sugar beet, summer squash, and papaya. Eight species have been genetically engineered in the US. Due to the way they are processed, anything containing them that is not labeled as organic or non-GMO contains genetically engineered crops. Now you know how to avoid them if you want, and you can do it without a label. However, they have been in the food supply for a long time, and tested even longer, and there is no reason whatsoever to think they pose any more of a health risk than any other crop.

That having been said, since Dr. Oz recommends avoiding GMO foods

That interview was horribly edited by the way. And somehow, those of us who support genetic engineering are the deceitful ones.

http://rabett.blogspot.com/2012/07/bunny-bait.html
http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/2012/07/30/why-wattss-new-paper-is-doomed-to-fail-review/

Firstly, let us be clear on what we're talking about: current temperature appears as a statistical blip in the historical record.

Secondly, Richard Muller is not and never was a skeptic. Way back in 2003 he was saying things like, "Let me be clear. My own reading of the literature and study of paleoclimate suggests strongly that carbon dioxide from burning of fossil fuels will prove to be the greatest pollutant of human history. It is likely to have severe and detrimental effects on global climate." and even more incredibly, "If Al Gore reaches more people and convinces the world that global warming is real, even if he does it through exaggeration and distortion - which he does, but he’s very effective at it - then let him fly any plane he wants."(2008).

Thirdly, even William Connolley, the guy banned from editing Wikipedia for 6 months due to his attempts to rubbish skeptics, thinks Muller is a wazzock for making the claims he has. So, slashdot, the excitement you are experiencing here is really quite misplaced.

"So fucking what?"

People die from everything all the time, including boring crap like water. And I don't mean by drowning, just by drinking too much of perfectly fine water. But speaking of water, swimming pools are more dangerous for children than guns, and when are those getting banned?

Somebody somewhere is definitely making millions off those, yet they were responsible for 550 children drowning in 1997, if you RTFA. So?

Strange Loops: Ken Thompson and the Self-referencing C Compiler
Reflections on Trusting Trust - Ken Thompson

Wish I had points because I found these links really interesting. Thanks.

Strange Loops: Ken Thompson and the Self-referencing C Compiler Reflections on Trusting Trust - Ken Thompson

Those are old and outdated papers from before diverse double compilation techniques were described. Source code is the fundamental requiement for both auditing and efficient discovery of exploits. This is the reason why the Chinese government insists on and gets access to Microsoft Windows source.

Strange Loops: Ken Thompson and the Self-referencing C Compiler
Reflections on Trusting Trust - Ken Thompson

Not in the US! I mean religious in the US would never downplay the contributions of deists ( http://www.dailypaul.com/128828/texas-yanks-thomas-jefferson-from-teaching-standard ) or exaggerate the religiosity of other founding fathers ( http://home.comcast.net/~pobrien48/Lies%20for%20Jesus%20and%20Christiaity.htm http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2011/06/09/you-know-david-barton-has-a-re/ ), and then used that fictional history to complain about how we're moving away from what the founding fathers wanted for the United States.

Actually the evidence at this point strongly suggests that the bubonic plague was so severe because there was poor sanitation and they didn't know how to do very basic care. http://scienceblogs.com/erv/2011/10/13/black-death-not-initiated-by-a/. Simillarly, the 1918 flu was so devastating in part because it occurred at the end of World War I so basic infrastructure was severely damaged, and you had massive numbers of returning troops as well as refugees moving all over thus making it spread easily.

uh, the first two people you list are string theorists (lol.) so is the third, but he's also a complete charlatan and quack.

give me a fucking break.

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2001/07/27/levittpoolsvsguns/

According to stats children are 100 times more likley to be killed by a swimming pool than a gun.

For a while I thought this, but then I was pointed out that Muslims have very low acceptance rates of evolution even though Islam doesn't need the details of a creation story in any deep theological way. http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/02/21/acceptance-of-evolution-by-var/. This may be due in part to the general more reactionary and hyper-religious aspects of Islam currently having more sway than in much of Christianity, but at least on its surface this suggests that whatever causes high rates of creationism in Christianity may be more subtle.

The reason the Cambrian stands out is that it's the first period that saw widespread hard body parts that actually had a decent chance of fossilizing. And we even have some good reasons for the morphological variation seen.

The reason the Cambrian stands out is that it's the first period that saw widespread hard body parts that actually had a decent chance of fossilizing. And we even have some good reasons for the morphological variation seen.

Aspartame sat sidelined by the FDA because of tests showing it was a carcinogen and neurotoxin

Citation needed. Last I checked none of those concerns turned out to have any scientific merit.

Since recent studies show that you are what you eat and food RNA can effect your genes [discovermagazine.com] the entire genetic modification of base food crops is a little worrying.

Why exactly would you expect a transgenes to be more or less likely to have an effect on you than any other gene? That study made no mention of GE crops and was just used by the anti-GE nutters Read this this or this for a complete take down of the nonsense that was said about that study.

Millions of years of symbiotic evolution is being altered in ways not even fully understood yet.

Do you also oppose every other method of altering plant genetics? Even conventional breeding has produced things that could not be found in nature, like corn (broccoli, strawberries, wheat, and cabbage are other crops created by humans). . And why should it matter that plants are being altered? Farms aren't exactly natural environments. And who says they are not fully understood? They are studied quite extensively, and while it is true that there could always be an unknown unknown, appeals to ignorance are not very strong arguments for rejecting known benefits.

I'm all for scientific advances but rushing to market and forcing this down people's throats is not a good attitude.

I agree that things should not be rushed for the sake of profit, but at this point, that argument holds very little water when applied to GE crops as a whole. Maybe two decades ago that would have been a more reasonable thing to say, but not anymore.

You really should read that a little closer.

Your claim was that "next year is the year they predicted for the Arctic to be ice free."

That article says "could be," not "will be," and is from one team led by Wieslaw Maslowski, which gained his team "a deal of criticism from some of their peers" according to the BBC (example).

The possible scenario from Maslowski was also about summer ice melt.

In other words, you were lying. You were giving the impression that the entire scientific community was saying that the Arctic would be ice-free by 2013 when it was a possible scenario by Maslowski's team alone. You were giving the impression that the Arctic would be totally ice-free, while they were in fact talking about the ice-minimum during summer.

You might want to take a look at what is actually happening.

Now, this is typical of you deniers. You will make claims that are either flat out lies, or claims that may seem to be correct if you don't pay attention, but then it turns out that you're twisting words and basically presenting things as something they aren't.

Just as I thought. And this is the reason why you don't want to post sources. You know they are weak and will expose you as a liar.

Global Warming: Separating the noise from the signal
Separating Signal from Noise in Global Warming
Uncertainty, noise and the art of model-data comparison

I wasn't able to find any articles that I consider credible that talk about this small signal to noise ratio (when dealing with appropriate lengths of time). Do you know of any I could read?

When you get to the "talking points" BS, basically means you lost this conversation.

No it means that I'm pointing out that you are just spewing the same old denialist talking points.

"talking points" as you put it are there because they distill the whole point into something even an idiot can consume and understand.

The problem with your talking points is that they are blatant lies.

I never said it was globally.

Then what is the relevance? Do you really not understand the difference between local (2% of the planet or so) and global? But you didn't specify the US did you? You wrote: "The warmest decade for the 1900s was the 1930s" - nothing about this only being the US. You have been caught red-handed again.

You did look at what you sent me, right? You do realize that it shows that GW in the past was because of orbits and then we got the heat + co2, right? You do realize that we are in one of those warming orbits, right?

Actually, the sun has had a cooling trend for nearly 40 years. And how did you miss the part of that page which says "bout 90% of the global warming followed the CO2 increase"? Face it, you were just spewing another denialist talking point because you are clueless, and now you are trying to pretend that the article supports your nonsense.

Finally, about the models. Very accurate eh? I guess you missed this article too

No I didn't. The article is based on a shitty piece of pseudoscience (really, really shitty) by creationist and "God decides the climate on the planet and there's nothing science can do to change that" moron Roy Spencer.

There was a really nice graph showing the UN predictions and reality somewhere.

You mean the very, very old predictions that actually turned out to be rather accurate, and actually predicted less warming than we have seen?

I bet you are STILL not convinced. It's time to get you mad as you realize you've been duped, played for a sucker

Says the moron who blindly believed in creationist loon Roy Spencer's pseudoscience. Your crappy article even repeats the old "they predicted an ice age in the 70s" lie.

Check this out - http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.Blogs&ContentRecord_id=2158072e-802a-23ad-45f0-274616db87e6

Check what out? This crappy list of engineers and other non-scientists who are completely incompetent?

The question is, are you still fooled. Member of Al Gore's/Mr. Strong's church of Man Made Global Warming?

Al Gore is irrelevant. He is not a scientist. I realize that you hate science and can't be bothered to refer to actual scientists, though.

Now you linked to the daily mail, otherwise know as the daily hate. To show the bias read its article on the survey versus this one and you will see the hate filled anger the daily mail is going for.

The headline of the daily mail article is

Almost a quarter of Muslims believe 7/7 was justified

but the question asked in the survey was

To what extent do you agree that the July bombings were justified because of British support for the war on terror?

(To which 11% strongly agreed, 11% tended to agree, with it saying all agree was 22%. I don't know where they got the 24% I think maybe channel 4 shifted the figures slightly for some reason).

Now as you can see the question is not as the title of the article suggests, "Do you believe the July bombings are justified?" but "...were justified because of British support for the war on terror?".

This is really badly worded, I can read it to mean did the bombers justify it because of the British support for the war on terror, in which case I would also agree with this statement. I'm not saying everyone who read the question interpreted it that way but I'm sure some did.

On doing a little reading around this study, I found this blog and specifically this comment, that reflects my views on it, I'll the relevant part below

Posted by: Bernard Bumner Author Profile Page | October 7, 2009 5:53 AM

If, on the other hand, you are using this to support your case:

To what extent do you agree that the July bombings were justified because of British support for the war on terror?

22% All Agree

Then I would have to say that I don't really understand the question - the bombers certainly justified their unjust actions by reference to British support fo the war on terror.

It is an ambiguous question. I suspect that many people were expressing support for the bombers, but I cannot reasonably conclude that it is all of that 22% of respondents, and in the absence of properly published methodology and data, I certainly wouldn't extrapolate this to represent British Muslims as a whole.

Actually, the presentation of that survey data is rather worrying, because it conflates (via proximity) the 7/7 bombings (the qeustion above) with what could easily be benign insight into social discord; 13% of respondents agreeing that,

I can understand why young British Muslims might want to carry out suiceide [sic] operations

At the same time, offering up the absolutely meaningless:

It is acceptable for religious or political groups to use violence

(Which only 9% agree with, and tends to cast further doubt on the idea that 22% agree with the actions of the 7/7 bombers).

It be blunt, it is not well-presented data, and is therefore difficult to draw conclusions from.

On other matters: I'm not sure why anybody on this thread would assume that anti-semite, Holocaust denier, and convicted racist Nick Griffin is not a racist leader of a racist political party.

So there's probably a 100 year window in a civilization's development where its unintentional broadcasts are detectable.

Exactly. A civilization will go unnoticed if we don't detect its emissions that originate from the brief instant (relatively speaking) between their invention of radio and their understanding of information theory.

And if we do think there's other life out there, do we really trust it enough to tell it where we are?

It has, indeed, been pointed out that this is a really bad idea. Safe to say any other intelligent civilizations will reach similar conclusions.

So, yeah, SETI is pretty much a waste of electricity.

No, it's definitely prions. They were identified as an infectious agents and were even shown to evolve (!!!) resistance to experimental anti-prion drugs. http://scienceblogs.com/notrocketscience/2009/12/evolution_without_genes_-_prions_can_evolve_and_adapt_too.php

It is disappointing that the original paper doesn't not appear to consider MOND (Modified Newtonian Dynamics) or TeVeS (a Tensor-Vector-Scalar theory of gravity, the relativistic version of MOND).

From what I've read (e.g. this, MOND can be parameterized to explain galactic rotation curves *better* than the dark matter hypothesis does. However, there are a variety of other reasons to believe there's something out there that might be loosely described as "dark matter", and for all those other reasons, MOND doesn't work at all.

Gravatational lensing and dark matter.

Naturally my analogy was an exaggeration, and like most analogies has its flaws. But I do understand stem cells; I'm currently doing a PhD in biology that relates to stem cells and differentiation. I'm certainly aware of the potential that stem cell-based therapies have, but they ought to be done in a controlled and experimentally-validated manner, not just injecting some cells into humans and hoping they help. They might be beneficial - this needs to be properly studied - but they might do nothing, or even risk causing other pathologies or even cancer.

This gives some thoughts on the subject, and this is a recent review article on the risks associated with various therapies.

Those comments were still impressively appalling and stupid. I'd love to see a pic of statuses of *reactions* to those statuses though... and saying "facebook and twitter were filled" with such comments is silly either way. That collage is, but well duh.

http://scienceblogs.com/stoat/Myth-1970-Global-Cooling-BAMS-2008.pdf

That talking point has been hammered so hard in the media that even some scientists were surprised to find what the real state of the literature was in the 70s.

... how is it different from

http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/10/beck_tries_to_kill_parody_webs.php

???

Actually it only takes 6 months to get all the representative days since the solar cycle is effectively symmetrical.

Not on Earth.

http://scienceblogs.com/startswithabang/2009/08/a_question_of_why_the_analemma.php

-AI

Joking aside (... or not quite...), after staring (with your remaining eye)

You do know that the rangefinders use rapidly moving lasers which are far less bright than,

So...whoosh!

---

Do the lasers cause interference?

Just kidding (... or maybe not?): yes, they do. The result... the cars will observe a hologram, possibly detecting the objects from around the corners.

There has been mathematical studies on how long irregular verbs might survive in the English language for a long time. I remember seeing the first such article a while back.

Basically the more used a verb- the longer it will take us to be liberated from its influence. Some like the verb "to be" are so enconsced in our language that they may take many many generations to eliminate.

Of course- this ignores any political movement to eliminate them- as countries become closer- if English remains the language of democracy- there may be a push to make English more standard. A new English without all the rule contradictions it currently has would be double-plus good.

I hope you also read through the entire source code. And compiled the compiler you used. And hand assembled the compiler you compiled the compiler with :)

The standards were tightened 10 years ago by the Clinton administration acting on best scientific evidence available at the time.

Sadly, our tests of these pseudo-scientific medical practices has shown them to come up short:

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/sham_acupuncture_is_better_than_true_acu.php

This is partially my point, though. This article says "sham" acupuncture is equivalent or better than the real thing, but leaves out that both are better than the usual treatment:

http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2007/09/acupuncture-may-be-more-effective-for-back-pain-treatment-than-conventional-medicine.ars

So yeah, all of the magic behind acupuncture and placement points and whatever other junk may not be true, but that doesn't change that there's something about the process of acupuncture that seems to help. So there's no need to throw it out. It really does help, and science should work to figure out why so we can make it better, not throw it away because it doesn't work exactly like practitioners think it does.

Actually...not quite.

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/04/sham_acupuncture_is_better_than_true_acu.php

"Both treatment groups, "true" and sham acupuncture, experienced decreases in the intensity of arm pain, arm symptoms, and noted improvement in arm function. However, patients in the sham acupuncture group improved more than patients in the "true" acupuncture group in the intensity of arm pain and just as much in measures of arm function and grip strength."