> The science however is not saying it's pseduoscience. It's saying that the Qi and meridians and that sort of stuff is wrong. Whereas the actual needles are scientifically based as providing pain relief in a small and short term effect.
You seem to be conflating the concepts acupuncture and needling as well as the concepts of science and efficacy. Qi and Meridians are a part of acupuncture and it is entirely fair to point at that these systems are unscientific. The Grokipedia entry certainly considers qi and meridians to be parts of acupuncture.
Also, for something to be scientific, it has to be based on scientific methods. If acupuncture wants to be a science, it needs to discard all the baseless qi, meridians, and yin-yang explanations and there needs to be more widespread and rigorous investigation of the therapies.
I am an avid yoga practitioner (I do yoga 4 or 5 days a week) and I think it has all kinds of health benefits. That doesn't mean that yoga is "scientific." Indeed, if someone described yoga as pseudoscience I would probably agree (though it varies a lot between studios), because it is common for teachers to go off on unscientific explanatory tangents involving "chakra," "energy," "detoxification" and so on. Is yoga beneficial by various benchmarks? Yes. Is it based on and further developed by scientific inquiry? Not so much.
So it seems to me like you've misinterpreted a sentence in the wikipedia article. It is actually stating something like: "the acupuncture system is unscientific." You've interpreted it to mean something like: "needling therapy is ineffective." And from that misinterpretation, you've drawn lots of invalid conclusions.
You seem to be conflating the concepts acupuncture and needling as well as the concepts of science and efficacy. Qi and Meridians are a part of acupuncture and it is entirely fair to point at that these systems are unscientific. The Grokipedia entry certainly considers qi and meridians to be parts of acupuncture.
Also, for something to be scientific, it has to be based on scientific methods. If acupuncture wants to be a science, it needs to discard all the baseless qi, meridians, and yin-yang explanations and there needs to be more widespread and rigorous investigation of the therapies.
I am an avid yoga practitioner (I do yoga 4 or 5 days a week) and I think it has all kinds of health benefits. That doesn't mean that yoga is "scientific." Indeed, if someone described yoga as pseudoscience I would probably agree (though it varies a lot between studios), because it is common for teachers to go off on unscientific explanatory tangents involving "chakra," "energy," "detoxification" and so on. Is yoga beneficial by various benchmarks? Yes. Is it based on and further developed by scientific inquiry? Not so much.
So it seems to me like you've misinterpreted a sentence in the wikipedia article. It is actually stating something like: "the acupuncture system is unscientific." You've interpreted it to mean something like: "needling therapy is ineffective." And from that misinterpretation, you've drawn lots of invalid conclusions.