There's some serious spinning going on in that article. The asthma study showed that (in that particular case) the placebo treatment did not work at all. The p

There's some serious spinning going on in that article. The asthma study showed that (in that particular case) the placebo treatment did not work at all. The patients reported feeling as good as with using the real treatment, but it did nothing to alleviate the actual symptoms. The last paragraph tries to claim that placebo (sham acupuncture) may be as effective as the real treatment (real acupuncture). That's not what the study shows. The result of the study is: the "real acupuncture" doesn't work either. Placebo is the null hypothesis. It's something that all treatments show regardless of their actual effect. It's the level that you have to beat before you can say that your treatment has any benefits. If something is no different than a placebo, that means that it has no effect other than the placebo effect. Therefore, the original treatment does not work. Period. Placebo effect is a psychological hack. You get it regardless of the active component in the treatments. It's about the feelings and expectations of the recipient. In sham medicine, all you get is the placebo effect. But when you get actual treatment, you're benefiting both from the placebo effect and from the treatment itself. I'm not saying that feeling good is not a desired outcome. It's just that if you have real issues that won't be resolved by feeling better, placebo is of no help.