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When you go to see a doctor, you might encounter them boasting: "I cured so-and-so of the same illness." Sure, they might not be lying—but what they don't tell you is that there could be dozens or even hundreds of patients with the same condition whom they failed to cure. In other words, their success rate might actually be very low. Moreover, how can you verify whether those claimed "cures" were truly due to their treatment or simply the result of natural recovery? How can the efficacy of their treatment be validated?

First, understand the types of "efficacy." Medical efficacy can generally be categorized as follows.

When a patient enters the consultation room and sees the doctor, they feel their condition has improved, this is called the Hawthorne effect ⁽¹⁾, but this effect is usually not long-lasting.

The medication given to the patient is a placebo (such as glucose, vitamins) or the treatment provided is ineffective (like acupuncture deliberately avoiding acupoints), but the doctor does not tell the truth, or claims it is effective, the efficacy obtained in this way is called the "placebo effect." According to research, the efficacy of some placebos can be as high as 30% or more, so theoretically, the efficacy of any drug or treatment must be >30% to be meaningful ⁽²⁾.

Some diseases have a fixed course, such as the common cold, regardless of whether treatment is received, it usually "resolves on its own (remission)" within one or two weeks, that is, relying on self-healing, modern medicine treatment may only alleviate symptoms, but does not help shorten the course of the disease.

Such as the "Hawthorne effect," "placebo effect," "spontaneous remission," etc., may be called "false efficacy," because modern medicine wants to see "real efficacy (real effect)," which is the final effect after excluding all "false efficacy."

To verify whether drugs or surgeries have "real efficacy," modern medicine has developed many verification rules and clinical trials, such as single-blind tests, double-blind tests, random sampling, experimental groups, control groups, ..., the purpose is to filter out and exclude "false efficacy," in order to verify how much "real efficacy" remains, rather than relying on the doctor's word, or claiming efficacy based on curing one or two patients.

One of the main arguments used by scholars who do not agree with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) to negate TCM is that TCM "might" be a "placebo effect," of course, before raising this question, they themselves have no evidence to prove that this is the case. TCM must prove that it indeed has "real efficacy," or let others prove that TCM is a "placebo effect."

In Taiwan, because medical and administrative resources are mainly controlled by those in power with a modern medicine background, TCM receives very few resources (< 4%), making it difficult to conduct large-scale TCM clinical experiments or statistics. But the author believes that for quite a number of diseases, modern medicine has already investigated and statistically analyzed their epidemiology, disease cause studies, pathology, clinical manifestations, and even diagnostic and treatment measures quite clearly, we only need to take TCM treatment for some diseases that modern medicine is helpless against, require long-term symptom control, and are impossible to reverse, reverse their course, and free them from drug control, even if only one patient is cured, it is the best proof (of course, modern medical test reports must be provided as evidence)──because this is a miracle for modern medicine, but commonplace for TCM.

In addition, the author often uses acupuncture in clinical practice to treat various internal medicine, five sense organs diseases, muscle stiffness, muscle and bone soreness, and can quickly achieve results, after acupuncture, ask the patient how much their symptoms have improved, from 10% improvement to complete recovery, faster than taking medicine, no wonder even WHO recognizes the efficacy of acupuncture.

However, it must be said that although the "Hawthorne Effect" and the "Placebo Effect" are not considered "real therapeutic effects" in modern medicine, they do indeed trigger the body's self-healing power through the mind and thoughts, revealing the immense potential of the body's self-healing capabilities. If a physician can cultivate their own character and demeanor, presenting a reassuring presence to patients, and can educate and repeatedly inspire the self-healing abilities within patients, wouldn't this also be the most cost-effective and non-toxic form of excellent therapy? In contrast to the "real therapeutic effects" achieved through toxic drugs and surgical procedures, isn't this "fake therapeutic effect" far superior to the "real therapeutic effect" by several measures?

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1. There is also the "Reverse Hawthorne Effect," a term proposed by the author, defined as "the patient's condition worsens after seeing a doctor compared to not seeing one." The effect can vary in intensity, depending on the individual patient and doctor.
2. The placebo effect can be as high as 30%, and some "clever" doctors are quite adept at utilizing this effect. For example, for retinal membrane disorders, even though eye drops are clearly ineffective, some ophthalmologists will still prescribe a few bottles of eye drops and wait to see if a "miracle" occurs; while other "honest" ophthalmologists will directly inform you that surgery is the only option. There is also the "Nocebo effect": if a patient does not believe in the effectiveness of the treatment or holds a pessimistic attitude, it may worsen the condition.