Cupping Therapy – Science or Pseudoscience?

Cupping therapy is an ancient Chinese form of medicine that is still used to this day to cure many different conditions. Some people believe that anything practiced medically must be scientific, however that is not always correct. Whether cupping therapy is a science, or a pseudoscience, is not yet proven. Cupping has been depicted as a special therapeutic method, but the evidence provided is controversial. Causation and correlation are a major factor of the medical method which often gets confused and leads to the arrival of the conclusion ‘science’. The uses of cupping therapy will be explored and further criticized in depth to arrive at the conclusion of whether the correct title for the medicinal method is either science or pseudoscience.

Science allows people to observe, experiment, update our knowledge and learn It has many aspects and features, and that’s what makes it multifaceted. Science isn't set in stone, so new theories and evidence can arise. As Albert Einstein once said: “The important thing is never to stop questioning” (Australian Academy of Science, 2017). Science is testable. So, for example, if an ‘idea’ is testable it should be able to have observations made that can logically support that idea and prove its truth. Conversely, a set of observations could be gathered that are logically unreasonable or inconsistent to prove that the ‘idea’ is in doubt false. In science, an idea requires a lot of reasoning to work out an appropriate test and it might require someone to make independently testable assumptions to test — but to be scientific, an idea must be testable, somehow, someway.

Science is multifaceted, which is why the term often gets misused. A pseudoscience is a branch of science that “consists of statements, beliefs, or practices that are claimed to be both scientific and factual, but are incompatible with the scientific method” (Wikipedia, 2019). Pseudoscience is generally the result of having information or research that is “based on faulty premises, a flawed experimental design or bad data” (Rouse, 2019).

The main differences between the two are that science explains and argues using data collected from experiments and scientific knowledge, whereas pseudoscience uses ignorance to prove it’s point and has little to no scientific evidence. Additionally, science tends to convince people through logical and scientific information, but pseudoscience preys on people’s emotions and tries to convince them through faith and distrust. To sum it all up, science continually tries to disconfirm its hypothesis in contrast to pseudoscience, which focuses on proving and confirming its truth without mentioning its flaws.

In science, experiments and observations are conducted to either confirm or disconfirm a hypothesis. While on the other hand, pseudoscience begins with a hypothesis and from there finds information to confirm that statement, and also doesn’t include any evidence that is contradicting. To verify or support a hypothesis in science, scientific knowledge and data/results collected from multiple experiments are included. Whereas, in pseudoscience there is minimal scientific evidence or results included in the explanation because experiments can’t be conducted due to the hypothesis having such broad claims. Lastly, pseudoscience uses anecdotal (personal stories or testimonies), which “isn’t useful for scientific knowledge, which requires reproducibility”, and “collecting a bunch of anecdotes isn’t the same thing as a carefully designed study, because without controlling for variables, you simply can’t determine cause-and-effect relationships” (Raff, 2013).

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Cupping therapy is an ancient form of medicine. Its true origin is unknown as it has dated back to many different countries, however the earliest records of cupping can be located in Egypt at around 1550 B.C. People believe that the Chinese introduced the method due to their advance knowledge and uses of the therapy. In China, “it was applied using cattle horns or cross sections of bamboo. To create negative pressure inside the horn or bamboo” (Kootenay Columbia College of Integrative Health Sciences, 2018). The cattle horns “were used mostly to draw out pus and blood in the treatment of boils” (Kootenay Columbia College of Integrative Health Sciences, 2018). Originally cupping was used as a replacement for traditional Chinese surgery, but was later found to be useful for ‘treating other diseases’, and so was developed into a special therapeutic method. Due to the advancements and changes in the world cattle horns are no longer used, they are replaced with glass or plastic cups. It can be used as treatments for skin conditions like muscle weakness, eczema and boils, inflammatory conditions, emotional conditions, helps to improve high blood pressure and is also used in cosmetic purposes for weight-loss and removing/treating cellulite.

People such as celebrities and athletes are recommending cupping. It’s been labelled the ‘celebrity cupping craze’. Celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston, Victoria Beckham, Justin Bieber and Kim Kardashian, actress Gwyneth Paltrow, and athletes such as Serena Williams and Michael Phelps are all sporting the ‘fresh cupping marks’ on their backs (Morgan Massage, 2019). The trainer of Michael Phelps said that cupping therapy has aided in reducing soreness and sped up the muscle healing process of overworked muscles. In comparison tennis champion Serena Williams said to the press: “It feels like a suction. It feels like an octopus, although I don’t know what an octopus feels like”. And Williams tried to explain to the press: “I think I snapped once a while back. It looks weird, the cupping. Yeah, I always do it, but I just did it for fun, so… But, yeah, so it just feels like it’s suctioning, and it just feels good” (Morgan Massage, 2019). While Michael Phelps trainer states that cupping is used as a treatment for muscles and helps to improve healing, Serena Williams says that she uses the ‘therapeutic method’ because it feels good and is fun. This is a clear example of contradiction, which causes skepticism to arise about whether cupping therapy is in fact a treatment or just an activity that people do because it feels good.

Like science and pseudoscience, causation and correlation are terms that are often confused and misused. Causation is the relationship between cause and effect whereas correlation is a relationship between two or more variables. However, seeing two variables moving together does not necessarily mean we know whether one variable causes the other to occur. This is why we commonly say ‘correlation does not imply causation’. A correlation might denote causality, but still does not signify that one variable is the cause of another. There are always explanations that can be made for this relationship, for example, it may be the result of random chance, where the variables appear to be related, but there is no true underlying relationship. And there may be a third, lurking variable that that makes the relationship appear stronger (or weaker) than it actually is.

Cupping therapists and cupping proponents are quick to jump to the conclusion that cupping causes the treatments of skin conditions, diseases and infection. Nonetheless, the relationship between the two variables is most likely a correlation rather than a causation. When people go to cupping practitioners to have cupping therapy, a massage is usually accompanied with the method. Often a massage occurs both before and after cupping therapy has taken place. Information gathered from scientists deduced that massage actually has a mechanism by which it provides relief. A study was conducted at McMaster University in Canada, which established that the mechanism caused by having a massage is actually proven to treat anxiety, stress, a variety of pains, injuries to muscles. It is scientifically upheld that massage significantly improves the healing of muscle because it reduces tissue inflammation and promotes cell growth (Dunning, 2013). Consequently, the results of cupping therapy are a correlation to both the benefits of a massage, and the apparent benefits that are still unknown of cupping therapy. Cupping practitioners are mixing the effects of a massage with the effects of cupping and are concluding that cupping is the cause of the medical benefits. Likewise, the source (Science Direct, 2019) state that having cupping therapy “with a healthy diet and psychotherapy, [will] cure or prevent disease completely”. Cupping therapists have clearly not completed their research properly, made assumptions, and definitely haven’t taken into consideration the quote ‘correlation does not imply causation’.

Cupping therapy is a pseudoscience. It’s a type of medical therapeutic method that claims to cure and treat many serious health conditions, however cupping “masquerades as a science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy which it would not otherwise be able to achieve on its own terms” (Lower, 2013). Proponents of cupping conclude that the benefits have a direct relationship with cupping. While they propose that it treats many medical conditions, the people who claim it works do not back up their claims with scientific evidence, rather their personal stories or testimonies to prove that the method effectively works. Cupping therapists are continuously trying to confirm the science behind cupping and are constantly trying to prove that the effects of cupping are real. However, a proper scientist would try to disconfirm cupping therapy and its medical effects by finding evidence that can disprove that cupping is a treatment for a variety of disease and conditions. Cupping is a clear example of people confusing the terms causation and correlation. Correlations of cupping might imply or significantly appear to be the cause, however, correlation does not imply causation. While cupping proclaims to be a medical method, that treats a multitude of conditions and diseases, its benefits aren’t directly related. Other medical methods can also be responsible for some of the benefits that cupping claim to have.

While cupping therapy does show some evidence of healing, it cannot take full responsibility for its benefits when it is completed in conjunction with other scientifically proven medical methods such as massage. It lacks scientific justification and cannot be properly verified without results gathered from experiments. Rather than cupping proponents implying and assuming relationships between cause and effect, it should base its hypothesis off of accurate reproducible data. Therefore, cupping therapy can be placed under the category of pseudoscience.