---
title: "Conformance register"
url: "https://acuiq.com/wiki/research/conformance"
updated: 2026-10-14
last_verified: 2026-10-14
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
section: "research"
basis: "Modern research"
audience: "Anyone"
published: "2026-09-05"
reading_minutes: 8
sources: 11
---

# Conformance register

_Every norm AcuiQ holds its own database to, the authority behind each one, and how much of the corpus deviates._

On 2 October 2026 AcuiQ measured its database against eleven stated norms for the second time and published the result. The dataset at the foot of this page, [conformance register 2.0](/data/conformance-v2.json), is that measurement: one row per rule, each carrying the authority the rule derives from, the date a person last read that authority, and the share of the corpus that deviates from it. The first reading, taken on 5 September 2026, stays published as [conformance register 1.0](/data/conformance-v1.json), and the register below carries its rates beside the new ones.

The rules were already there. AcuiQ has been [dropping animal studies at ingest](/wiki/research/nothing-ever-fails#what-we-changed) since August, refusing to link a herb whose Latin name matches two catalogue rows, and reporting points whose safety text forbids the condition the same row is indicated for. What none of those rules said was where their norm came from, or how much of the corpus broke them. They are one register now, and this page reports its second reading.

## A count is not a rate

The audit used to report 41 self-contradictory treatments. That number climbs when the corpus grows and falls when it is pruned, and neither movement means the data improved. It now reports 41 out of 6,156 treatments carrying any warning text, which is 0.67%.

Every rule declares its own eligible set, and both numbers are published. A deviation rate without its denominator is a claim about the literature that nobody can check, and this is a health surface. AcuiQ publishes no rate here without the eligible set it was taken over.

## Three kinds of norm

A rule's kind decides what evidence is allowed to move it, and the three kinds do not behave alike.

**Internal** rules ask whether the database contradicts itself. No outside authority is wanted. A point whose caution names the condition it is listed as treating renders both blocks on the same page, one above the other, and a reader cannot act on it. That row is wrong on its own terms, whatever any standard says. These are the rules AcuiQ is closest to clean on: all five sit under 2.4%, and the worst of them is 147 treatment rows shadowed by a same-code sibling, where one Latin binomial carries two safety texts and the lookup keeps whichever it read last.

**Documentary** rules ask how the record is written: which code scheme, which binomial, which identifier. The norm comes from a named body and never from a tally, because here the majority of the published corpus can be wrong and is. Most papers using auricular codes number the points anatomically. This catalogue keeps its own numbering under some of the same prefixes. So a code crosses the boundary without its scheme attached, resolves to a real but different point, and nothing anywhere reports an error. Counting how many papers use the anatomical numbering would tell you about publishing habit and nothing about which reading is correct.

**Empirical** rules ask about the world: does this prescription treat this condition. Here the count is the evidence. Unrelated groups arriving at the same prescription is the strongest thing anyone can offer, and a point list asserted by a committee with no trials behind it is the weaker claim, not the stronger one. AcuiQ takes that position and the register encodes it. What the position requires is that the sources be independent, and that is where this corpus needs watching.

## The register

| Rule | Kind | The norm | Deviation, 2 Oct | Violations / eligible, 2 Oct | Deviation, 5 Sep |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| `warnings/self-contradiction` | internal | A treatment does not caution against a condition it is indicated for. | 0.67% | 41 / 6,156 | 0.67% |
| `warnings/protocol-conflict` | internal | A protocol does not prescribe a point whose caution names what the protocol treats. | 0.44% | 28 / 6,320 | 0.44% |
| `warnings/pregnancy-gestational` | internal | A point forbidden in pregnancy is not prescribed for a pregnancy meant to continue. | 0.57% | 36 / 6,320 | 0.64% |
| `indications/inverted` | internal | A contraindication is never filed as a symptom the treatment addresses. | 0.00% | 0 / 39,809 | 0.00% |
| `treatment/single-safety-profile` | internal | One code carries one safety text. | 2.38% | 147 / 6,170 | 2.38% |
| `points/code-resolves` | documentary | Every stored point reference resolves to a catalogue row. | 0.18% | 62 / 35,145 | 0.19% |
| `points/protocol-has-treatments` | documentary | A protocol reaching the matcher prescribes at least one point. | 0.00% | 0 / 6,328 | 0.00% |
| `herbs/binomial-unambiguous` | documentary | A Latin binomial identifies exactly one catalogue row. | 18.77% | 751 / 4,001 | 18.77% |
| `sources/verifiable-identifier` | documentary | Every protocol cites a resolvable identifier, not a citation string. | 16.17% | 1,023 / 6,327 | 23.05% |
| `sources/human-subjects` | documentary | Every protocol comes from human clinical evidence. | 0.13% | 2 / 1,536 | 0.13% |
| `evidence/independent-corroboration` | empirical | A symptom AcuiQ answers rests on more than one independent source. | 65.28% | 2,982 / 4,568 | 67.29% |

## What the documentary rules found

Point codes resolve well. Of 35,145 point references stored across the corpus, 62 have no catalogue row behind them, which is 0.18%. The largest group is 28 references to XB02, Jiaji, the points beside the spine, written without a vertebral level. The catalogue files Jiaji as 29 rows, one per level from [XB02C1](/points/xb02c1) to XB02S5, as [point codes](/wiki/nomenclature/point-codes) explains, and holds no bare XB02. Eight more are ashi points, tender spots found on the patient, which have no code by definition.

The herb catalogue is the opposite. On 2 October, 18.77% of its 4,001 [Latin binomials](https://www.worldfloraonline.org/) carried more than one row, so the name identifies a species and the database cannot say which row it means. That is not a data error waiting to be pruned. It is one of two reasons AcuiQ links no herb protocols: picking a row would publish a guess with a citation attached, and the guess would be about which safety text applies. The other is that the protocol card treats every entry as an acupuncture point, with a link to a point page and a location diagram, and has no way to show a herb.

16.17% of protocols, 1,023 of 6,327, cite a reference with no DOI or PubMed link, against 23.05% on 5 September. The norm comes from [Crossref's display guidelines](https://www.crossref.org/display-guidelines/), which make a DOI link for each item in a reference list a condition of membership. At the first reading those references split into four groups of roughly equal size. One is website addresses, nearly all of them a single page at sacredlotus.com. One is English-language citations to the Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, which MEDLINE indexes, so the paper exists in PubMed and the entry does not say where. One is Chinese- and Korean-language citations. The last is shorthand for a book, such as PGA for Deadman's _A Manual of Acupuncture_, and citation strings from other journals. The underlying work may be sound and the extraction may be faithful. Without an identifier, nobody outside can check either.

## One source per condition

65.28% of the conditions AcuiQ answers rest on a single source, against 67.29% on 5 September. 2,982 of 4,568 conditions that carry any protocol at all trace back to one reference.

A source is not always a paper with a link. Of those 2,982 conditions, 2,352 rest on one study with a DOI or PubMed link, 438 on one reference written out as text, and 192 on one website. At the first reading, most of the text references were journal articles cited without an identifier, and about a fifth were a textbook or a practitioner's notes. 191 of the website conditions – 670 protocol rows – come from a single page at [sacredlotus.com](https://www.sacredlotus.com/go/acupuncture/get/acupuncture-point-prescriptions). The other comes from an acupuncture course site. Those rows are labelled on the page that serves them, because AcuiQ resolves what a reference is before it says the word protocol, and a website is not a trial. They are still there, and they still count toward a number a reader might read as evidence.

The page for such a condition still shows a protocol count, and a reader can be forgiven for reading that count as agreement. It is not. Part of this corpus once stored [a two-page paper](https://doi.org/10.1016/S0254-6272(09)60059-5) with four prescriptions as 252 rows, each prescription repeated across 63 ages the paper never reported, and every one of those rows passed every check that looks at rows one at a time. The rule counts distinct sources rather than rows for that reason.

## What a source count cannot see

A distinct reference is a publication, not an independent group. The same authors publishing twice read as two here. A trial reprinted in a second journal reads as two. Vickers and colleagues reviewed 252 controlled trials of acupuncture in 1998 and found that every trial from China, Japan, Hong Kong and Taiwan reported a positive result, which is the shape a corpus takes when its sources share more than a subject. Distinct-reference counting cannot see any of that, so 65.28% is an upper bound on corroboration and never a floor.

Tightening it needs each source's authors and their affiliations. The metadata AcuiQ fetches to check whether a study was run in people holds a title, an abstract and MeSH subject terms, and no author list, so that has to be fetched first. When it lands, two publications from one group will count as one source, so the rate can only rise.

## What happens next

The register grows by entries. Adding a norm now costs a record stating what it rests on and what it is measured over, not a script. Two candidates come next: whether a paper declares the [point-location standard](https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/353407) it followed, and whether a registered trial ever published its results. Each reading is published with its date, so the rates can be compared with the previous one rather than read as a verdict.

AcuiQ indexes what other people published and checks none of it clinically. The register does not change that. It says which of AcuiQ's own claims about its data can be checked, by whom, and against what.

### Sources

1. WHO Standard Acupuncture Point Locations in the Western Pacific Region, 2008 — https://iris.who.int/handle/10665/353407
2. Crossref display guidelines — https://www.crossref.org/display-guidelines/
3. World Flora Online, plant name authority — https://www.worldfloraonline.org/
4. Vickers et al., Controlled Clinical Trials, 1998 — https://doi.org/10.1016/s0197-2456(97)00150-5
5. AcuiQ conformance register 2.0, 2 October 2026, CC BY 4.0 — /data/conformance-v2.json
6. AcuiQ conformance register 1.0, 5 September 2026, CC BY 4.0 — /data/conformance-v1.json
7. Positive results in acupuncture research and in AcuiQ’s data – AcuiQ — /wiki/research/nothing-ever-fails
8. TF4 is not a point – AcuiQ — /wiki/research/codes-are-not-identifiers
9. Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, NLM Catalog — https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/nlmcatalog/8211546
10. 76 Cases of Hypomenorrhea, Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 2009 — https://doi.org/10.1016/S0254-6272(09)60059-5
11. Acupuncture point prescriptions, Sacred Lotus Chinese Medicine — https://www.sacredlotus.com/go/acupuncture/get/acupuncture-point-prescriptions