I think his point is that there is no scientific evidence linking ergonomics to RSI. So it's possible that your belief that improved ergonomics improved your RSI is the placebo effect in action (which is remarkably powerful!).
"The National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine recently released their long-awaited report on Musculoskeletal Disorders and the Workplace. The report, requested by industry groups and conservative Republicans who opposed an OSHA ergonomics standard, finds that there is strong scientific evidence showing that exposure to ergonomic hazards in the workplace causes musculoskeletal disorders and that these injuries can be prevented. Prepared by some of the world's top scientific and medical experts in ergonomics, the report calls MSDs an important national problem and strongly supports the approach that OSHA took in its now-defunct Ergonomics Program Standard.
This is the third comprehensive review of the scientific literature in the past four years that has come to the same conclusions. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) published a comprehensive review of the data on the relationship between MSDs and the workplace in 1997. The NAS also came to similar conclusion in an earlier report published in 1998.
The NAS report puts to rest, once and for all, the claims by some industry groups and conservative Republicans that there is no scientific evidence that workplace exposures cause musculoskeletal disorders. It shows without question that an OSHA ergonomics standard is needed and justified."
If you ask me, any claims stating that there is no scientific evidence that ergonomics is linked to RSI are abuses of science of the kind put out by the cigarette industry. It is bad science by those who want to create FUD about the proper remedies. It is a cynical agenda by those who would rather treat employees as disposable, rather than spending a single penny to help their employees continue on with their means of feeding and sheltering themselves. And then the same such cynical people, after putting employees with such ailments out on the street want to tell them, "Just get a job!"
This is patently absurd. People who say such things could not be more wrong on this issue.
I have a number of very significant chronic ailments, and there are many putative treatments that I should have liked to work. Almost none of them every do. If the placebo affect were that strong on me, I'd be a much happier person.
Furthermore, it's a repeatable experiment: everyone I know who has switched to a Kinesis Contour keyboard has had their RSI problems massively helped. Sure, you can try to explain it away saying that it's all "placebo effect", but this doesn't address the issue that many of these people, including me, tried other things first to no avail.
