The control intervention could be placebo acupuncture, sham acupuncture, or no acupuncture.

对照组则是安慰剂式的针灸、伪针刺、或不给予针刺。

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The discovery challenges a widely held view among scientists that any benefit patients feel after having acupuncture is purely due to the placebo effect.

这一发现向一则科学家间的共识发起了挑战，即病人在接受针灸后感受到的任何好转都纯属安慰剂效果。

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The other holds that acupuncture works through a placebo effect, in which the patient's thinking releases endorphins.

另一观点认为，针灸只是一种安慰剂效应，给患者以内啡肽释放的想象。

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The researchers found individuals with a COMT variant that triples the amount of dopamine in the front of the brain felt no improvement without treatment but an improvement with the placebo acupuncture.

BBC: Placebo effect may be 'down to genes'

Even if acupuncture works by placebo it was shown more effective and it is clearly much safer than conventional therapies.

FORBES: Does NIH recommend acupuncture?

The only benefits are placebo effects, as the sham acupuncture experiments demonstrate.

FORBES: Acupuncture Infiltrates the University of Maryland and NEJM