Randomized, placebo-controlled studies are a rare commodity in interventional pain medicine. Pain Medicine , is therefore, pleased to publish such a study, in which Kappural et al. report their results of transdiscal biacuplasty for the treatment of chronic low back pain ⇓. Publication recognizes that a study was methodologically sound. Purists might argue that the study of Kappural et al. ⇓ could have been more stringent. For instance, the sham treatment might have involved penetrating the disc with the electrodes but not delivering radiofrequency current. However, for practical purposes, the authors performed their interventions as well as might realistically be expected, for an invasive procedure in human, volunteer subjects. For the manner in which the treatments were conducted, the risk of bias was low; and this is corroborated by the results obtained. To the credit of the authors, the results are presented in …