When is a Science not Actually Science?

Chinese medical practitioners some thousands of years ago determined that the body has 12 meridians and some 400 points through which one's qi (chi) flows. Regulating/correcting the flow of qi with needles on the appropriate points counteracts these imbalances, and thus restoring health and curing a wide variety of ailments is the practice of acupuncture.

Let's put aside the fact that this medical treatment predates knowledge of a circulatory system, germs, and virtually everything we know about the human body. Let's also put aside the fact that the mysterious energy force known as qi has never been detected, not has any evidence of its existence ever been found by modern technology.

My question is, how did it's discoverers determine where these points and meridians lie on the body? What research methods and analysis were used to document these findings? And why is it that this basic research apparently cannot be duplicated?

That's the thing about real science - you have to "show your work". Other scientists must be able to duplicate your research and analysis, or no one will take your work seriously. I don't have to just accept that the speed of light is 186,000 m/s squared, I can choose to get a telescope, measure the time it takes for moons to go around Jupiter, and do the math myself. You can't base an entire science around central facts that may simply be "made up".

There is plenty that we don't know. It's also true that we don't even have to understand how or why something works to prove that it actually does work. If you can measure and document an effect in a proper scientific double-blind, randomized study, then you can prove that the effect exists. And, oh, by the way, acupuncture doesn't work.