I remember hearing an interesting talk discussing this. I forgot the author, but I'll try to relate a bit of the content. Doing proper experimental testing for

I remember hearing an interesting talk discussing this. I forgot the author, but I'll try to relate a bit of the content. Doing proper experimental testing for surgeries often has significant ethical problems. For instance, to do it correctly you need to do "fake" surgery on some patients. This is to account for the placebo effect. However, doing this exposes the patient to health risks, which is arguably not ethical. Then there is the tricky problem of the case where a technique does work, and not performing it causes a patient to die. Yes, they died in the name of science, but it still goes against the goals and ethics of many doctors. On the other hand, performing ineffective surgery also exposes patients to significant risk, and may even cause death. So it's a really difficult topic. Myself, I'd still like to see the experiments done, even if the cost if not saving some lives we could have at times.