Acupunture - pseudoscience?

[Esquilax]

I highly doubt placebo effect would have helped me two times.

Next time, you can just say "I don't know what the placebo effect is." Because I'll give you a hint: you can't develop an immunity to it.

Then I know another person who it helped.

And I know one that it didn't. Why privilege the experiences that align with what you want to be true, over ones that don't?

Why should I believe these studies more than personal experience?

Because if you believed personal experience over and above verifiable scientific data, then you would be obliging yourself to believe a large number of contradictory claims; I don't know if you've noticed, but you can kinda find people willing to claim personal experience of anything.

Oh, there's also that, you know, your personal experience does not contain any sort of verifiable evidence by which you could claim that it was the acupuncture itself that caused the effect you experienced, which would mean that you have, at best, a correlation that you're irrationally spinning into a causation, but why would simple logic stop you after the fallacious statement you just made above, right?

(damn, I know that theists also have personal experience with their God, but I am sure my p.e. is different)

So you understand that you're accepting those personal experiences you want to be true, while rejecting those you do not, and you don't see the special pleading there because...?