Acupuncture

How do you know it was not a placebo?

If it "works" by creating a placebo effect then as good as there being an actual mechanism in there at work but it's still a placebo. So it's difficult to tell in a one man trail. What works as a placebo may work for one man but not another.

It's a difficult one to test, but currently the bulk of evidence is against it.

It could well be true is some special cases, your specific back problem might be one, but I think people have to be very careful with unproven medicine. There are a lot of charlatan out there, who manipulate people in the world of unproven medicine.

A bit of googling seems to suggest this is the paper to read for which cases it seems to work for (WHO)

http://apps.who.int/medicinedocs/en/d/Js4926e/#Js4926e.5

I really don't care to argue with you. I doubt you'd find a more cynical, logical and ruthless person on here when it comes to applying science to life. But having experienced back pain, and having exhausted the answers science proposed... acupuncture worked.

You're going to get a fierce response to what you are posting though.

By responding to my response with the "it's a placebo" line, you must clearly hold the view that the pain that I experienced was not real. In fact you're implying that it was invented, that it was in the mind, that I had no physical manifestation of the injury and that there was no physical pain... in effect, I feel that your line is that I am effectively lying about the pain I experienced. Could that be more offensive to me?