Humans have an innate drive to make sense of the world. To understand how things work and see if we can reliability influence the outcome on something. To find a way to get more of what we want, or less of what we dislike.

When you think about it, life is one big research experiment as we are constantly testing out ideas of how things work.

But often when we think about research we are thinking about laboratory controlled environments or double blind studies. And there is a place for those, but those models aren’t that helpful when it comes to using a researcher’s eye to better understand acupuncture.

Lisa Taylor-Swanson fell in love with research before she fell in love with acupuncture. She’s a researcher with the heart and eye of a clinician who is investigating the use of non-linear and complex adaptive systems theory to design research that helps us to go from “does acupuncture” to “how acupuncture helps.”

Head on over to the show notes page for more information about this episode and for links to the resources discussed in the interview.