Acupuncture Study In a study of treatments for back pain, 641 subjects were randomly assigned to the four different treatment groups of individualized acupuncture, standardized acupuncture, simulated acupuncture, and usual care (based on data from “A Randomized Trial Comparing Acupuncture, Simulated Acupuncture, and Usual Care for Chronic Low Back Pain,” by Cherkin et al., Archives of Internal Medicine, Vol. 169, No. 9).