Welcome to the wonderful world of medicine, WG.
Whether something works or not isn't black and white I'm afraid.
In the old days, we relied on what "experts" thought would work, because it seemed logical-more often than not it didn't.
Thankfully most of these practices have now been overtaken by the science of evidence based practice.
We still get the odd dinosaur who thinks that his or her opinion is the best, because he can shout the loudest, but most health care commissioners are waking up to the fact that we really need robust evidence before we can subject our patients (and the people paying for health care), to unproven treatment.
Which is why we refer less and less patients for useless, or dangerous operative procedures.