Big Data was used to see if TCM was scientific (2023)

What Counts as “Medicine” and Pseudoscience

• Several comments stress: once a treatment is rigorously shown to work, it’s just “medicine,” regardless of origin.
• “Unproven” is distinguished from “disproven”; traditions can contain both effective and ineffective components.
• Many note it is extremely hard to know what works without expensive, large, controlled trials; intuition and anecdotes are usually misleading.

TCM Hits vs. TCM as a System

• Multiple drugs (artemisinin, arsenic trioxide, ephedrine, statins from red yeast rice, etc.) are cited as having origins in TCM or other folk practices.
• Others counter that this does not vindicate TCM’s underlying theory (qi, meridians, yin/yang) any more than willow bark vindicates medieval European medicine.
• Some frame TCM (and Ayurveda) as a massive trial-and-error reservoir: unsurprising that repeated empirical tinkering finds some real effects over millennia.

Critiques and Risks of TCM

• TCM is described as internally inconsistent: different practitioners give wildly different diagnoses and prescriptions, even for COVID.
• Concerns include: unregulated herbs, contamination, toxic plants (e.g., Aristolochia–associated renal failure), animal parts (rhino, tiger), and unknown dosages, especially for children.
• Critics see much of TCM as placebo, symptom-focused, or outright “bullshit,” with danger when it replaces effective care.

Evidence, RCTs, and Acupuncture

• Commenters debate how much RCT evidence supports TCM modalities, especially acupuncture; some claim strong nervous-system effects, others call it pseudoscience.
• The replication crisis is noted, but RCTs are still seen as better than proto-clinical “notes and anecdotes.”
• Disagreement appears on whether TCM’s individualized concepts (yin/yang body types, microbiome differences) fundamentally resist standard trial designs.

Placebo, Chronic Illness, and Patient Experience

• Many illnesses are self-limiting; placebo and time explain much “success.”
• Several anecdotes describe chronic/idiopathic issues (eczema, back pain, stress-related sickness) where conventional medicine “shrugged,” but TCM, acupuncture, chiropractic, or exclusion diets seemed to help.
• Some argue dismissing such avenues outright sacrifices potential improvements in outcomes for “intellectual purity.”

Politics, Academia, and Propaganda

• Chinese state support for TCM is linked to cost control, historical need to cover a huge population, and nationalist symbolism.
• Commenters worry about floods of low-quality pro-TCM papers from metric-driven systems (China, India, Vietnam) degrading peer review, likening it to a “51% attack.”
• Others note similar publication and incentive problems in Western academia; all funding models carry bias.

Science vs. Culture and Integration

• Several insist there is no “Chinese medicine” vs “Western medicine,” only treatments that pass or fail the same scientific tests.
• Others accuse “Western chauvinism” of assuming only Western methods can discover useful treatments.
• Broad agreement at the end: any remedy—traditional or not—should be rigorously validated, effective parts isolated and standardized, and then folded into mainstream medicine; the rest should be discarded.