A new study looking into whether acupuncture is useful in helping women undergoing IVF treatment to get pregnant has concluded that acupuncture has no effect on the success rate. See: BBC article.

Although acupuncture itself is implausible (see: acupuncture), the thinking behind the claim was that acupuncture helps to relax the woman and increase blood flow thus helping the embryo implant. i.e. it may work for reasons other than the far-fetched claims of acupuncture.

After comparing real acupuncture to fake acupuncture and doing nothing, the pregnancy success rates were the same in all three groups. This shows that acupuncture has no effect.

However:

But Paul Robin chairman the Acupuncture Society, said: "I'm really surprised by these findings.

"I've been treating people for twenty years and in my experience treatment does seem to improve their chances of becoming pregnant.

"This study has shown that there's no proof that acupuncture can help - so that suggests that there should be lots more studies to examine the question.

"I'm convinced it can help."

How could acupuncturists have been treating people for such a long time and finding that women were getting pregnant after using acupuncture if it doesn't work?

Well, there's always the fallacy of falsely attributing the pregnancy to acupuncture when it would have occurred in any case - and there's the fallacy of confirmation explained here.

By concentrating primarily on the successful outcomes, it creates the illusion that acupuncture is actually being of benefit; whereas in a proper study that controls for such biases, it's found that acupuncture makes absolutely no difference to the outcome whatsoever.

Using acupuncture to aid pregnancy with IVF can cost several hundred pounds; but it gives no improvement in the chances of success.