Acupuncture in Medicine

Acupuncture in Medicine is a quarterly peer-reviewed medical journal covering aspects of acupuncture and related techniques. The journal was established in 1982 by the British Medical Acupuncture Society, but has been published by the BMJ Group on behalf of the Society since 2008. The current editor-in-chief is Adrian White.

In an opinion piece for Forbes on journals about pseudoscience published by reputable publishers, Steven Salzberg listed this journal, alongside Journal of Acupuncture and Meridian Studies (published by Elsevier) and Chinese Medicine (published by BioMed Central), as examples of "fake medical journals"; his critique was repeated in an article written for Monthly Index of Medical Specialities exploring whether acupuncture was a medical sham or genuine treatment. When the BMJ Group started to publish the journal in 2008, David Colquhoun criticized the group for endorsing acupuncture "at a time when it is emerging that the evidence for any specific effect is very thin indeed." While he gave credit to BMJ Group and Acupuncture in Medicine for not espousing "the mumbo-jumbo about 'meridians' and 'Qi'", he also noted that "like all journals devoted to alternative medicine [Acupuncture in Medicine] suffers from a fatal conflict of interest. If this journal were ever to conclude that acupuncture is a placebo, it would destroy the journal and the livelihoods of many of the people who write for it."