> Maybe that's another signal (along with the linked article) that the "science" in this arena hasn't advanced to the point of being repeatable and predictable.
Why would there be a treatment right now that works well but can't be shown to work in a controlled study? There's nothing special about back pain that makes it impossible to scientifically study.
Personally, I think the signal you mention is more because back pain is susceptible to placebo effect, coming and going by itself, clearing up by itself or because something else you recently changed around the same time is helping it. These reasons and more are why you have to do large scale controlled studies to find out if something works rather than relying on anecdotes.
I don't see many people giving anecdotes for how alternative medicine fixed their broken leg or cured their cancer.
Back pain actually is kind of special in that the back and spine are so complex that a wide variety of different underlying conditions can cause similar symptoms. That introduces a lot of noise into the data and makes it harder to scientifically study.
It's easy to see if someone has a broken leg or test them for cancer. For most back pain, you can't even prove that person is actually suffering from it.
> For most back pain, you can't even prove that person is actually suffering from it.
Why does this matter? You ask the patient to report on their subjective experience the same way you would in studies about cures for depression and headaches.
My point is that 1) only when no surefire scientifically backed cure exists will most people take alternative therapies seriously and 2) problems that can resolve on their own (self-limiting) are very susceptible to generating unreliable anecdotes about cures. Back pain fits these two so generates many unreliable anecdotes which you should be highly skeptical about.
Why would there be a treatment right now that works well but can't be shown to work in a controlled study? There's nothing special about back pain that makes it impossible to scientifically study.
Personally, I think the signal you mention is more because back pain is susceptible to placebo effect, coming and going by itself, clearing up by itself or because something else you recently changed around the same time is helping it. These reasons and more are why you have to do large scale controlled studies to find out if something works rather than relying on anecdotes.
I don't see many people giving anecdotes for how alternative medicine fixed their broken leg or cured their cancer.