I'm surprised by the credibility given to martial arts in an otherwise fairly rational post. Martial arts has to be one of the largest mines of spurious mystical nonsense that I'm aware of. The vast majority is explainable by conventional physiology, and the stuff that seems extraordinary can invariably be shown to be fakirism, trickery or just plain lies.
A martial artist babbling about "qi" would make me MORE suspicious.
Regarding the acupuncture study, what's interesting is that it doesn't matter where you stick the needles - providing compelling falsification of the "meridian" hypothesis (at least insofar as it applies to acupuncture).
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
Martial arts has to be one of the largest mines of spurious mystical nonsense that I'm aware of. The vast majority is explainable by conventional physiology, and the stuff that seems extraordinary can invariably be shown to be fakirism, trickery or just plain lies.
A martial artist babbling about "qi" would make me MORE suspicious.
Regarding the acupuncture study, what's interesting is that it doesn't matter where you stick the needles - providing compelling falsification of the "meridian" hypothesis (at least insofar as it applies to acupuncture).