A consideration: what was the 'traditional' nausea remedy? "Have some pills?" One thing I wonder with the acupuncture is if the patients might have responded simply because the treatment involved more personalized, thorough care. If acupuncture were generating a placebo effect, there'd be a lot of reinforcement for it.

Personally I don't have any opinion of acupuncture, but I'd think researching it would be difficult as it'd be almost impossible to have a double-blind study.