in fact, it would make people stop using their heads... Without a patent, everyone would just use the 1st method and nobody would want to improve upon it.

Nonsense.

"Also, don't use words you don't understand. It's pretty pathetic to see someone use the phrase "ignorant diatribe", when diatribe means "highly educated monologue"."

Hahaha... *irony meter implodes*

...and far from earning respect, Microsoft's thieving, scattergun approach to acquiring patents deserves only disgust and contempt. I know it's really the patent system's fault that Microsoft and others are both motivated and enabled to steal by patenting the trivial, the broad, the already invented etc. in the first place, but if theft and extortion were made legal it wouldn't make calls for respect from professional thieves and racketeers any more palatable, would it?

Years ago studies declared open source a security risk.

Since when did risible falsehood and fallacy filled rants written by swivel-eyed ideologues count as 'studies'?

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Ken_Brown

Economists have always worried about whether the patent system actually works as intended or not. For evidence that it probably does not work for e.g. software, start here: http://researchoninnovation.org/ Before reading the recent literature, however, I'd recommend reading Machlup's famous review: http://www.mises.org/etexts/patentsystem.pdf in which it is made clear that fairness is an outdated way of thinking about patents and a weak justification for them at best: the disclosure benefit is dubious, to say the least, and the patent privilege is something which needs to be justified as beneficial despite its potential for *unfairness* (and its various other negative effects).

It's a pain that popular compression algorithms are covered by patents

Quite.

http://www.ross.net/compression/

but I think it's quite fair to say that advances there are patentworthy, just like advances in analog techniques of bandwidth reduction for broadcast video.

And as any student of the patent system will tell you, the patent system never has been and (for various reasons) cannot be made to issue patents only for "patentworthy" inventions. Unless there is good reason and evidence to believe that making patents available in some field/industry "promotes progress...", the economically (and ethically) rational thing to do is to not make them available. See e.g. Machlup's review http://www.mises.org/etexts/patentsystem.pdf and http://researchoninnovation.org/

The patent (PDF) is a highly information-rich document that offers remarkable insight into the device.

Well of course it is. If you can't actually build a working device from the information disclosed in the patent, the patent isn't valid:

http://www.uspto.gov/web/offices/pac/mpep/documents/2100_2164.htm

Perhaps someone knows of studies to the contrary (or which support these tentative beliefs)?

You should read the book (or at least an accurate review of it) before you decide your recollection substantially differs from it. ;-) Unless your earlier investigation of these matters was a long time ago or cursory you probably read some of Ernst's work or at least saw mention of it.

Ignore idiots like him and read peer reviewed journals and abstracts before basing your own judgment.

As I and others have pointed out below, your citations do not refute the book's claims concerning acupuncture or anything else and you are the one making a fool of yourself. Perhaps if you'd taken your own advice and at least read a more reliable book review: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v453/n7197/full/453856a.html you wouldn't have made such absurd accusations against Ernst & Singh but there really is no excuse for this.

Would you prefer citations from journals that require a subscription or academic access?

Your citations of individual studies are irrelevant and do not support your original post's assertion that they constitute a refutation of Ernst's position:

that is but one of the author's claims that actual published studies in the medical literature refute

Ernst's position on acupuncture is informed by the totality of the evidence to date. That evidence includes systematic reviews etc. which will have taken into consideration individual studies like those you linked to (even if only to then discard them as being of too poor quality).

Perhaps you've been misled by the awful book review here but that doesn't really excuse your ludicrously illogical, inapt and ironic smears against a highly respected "alternative" medicine researcher.