Some of society’s most vexing questions today span the axis between public policy and personal responsibility. Recycling plastic is good for the environment and a civic duty, of course. But, according to past reporting by PBS and NPR, it’s also a status quo that plastics-producing companies have, themselves, quietly promoted since the 1970s to avoid regulations against single-use plastics by foisting the industry’s responsibilities onto consumers.

Could it be possible that bad posture at your desk job or any repetitive stress injuries incurred by sedentary labor might be more of a systemic issue than a question of your personal failings? This thorny, rhetorical, and maybe unanswerable question is at the heart of the issue with ergonomics—but fortunately physiotherapists at Australia’s University of Technology Sydney (UTS) have now taken the most comprehensive look yet at ergonomics’ efficacy for occupational health. Their results, published Wednesday in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, found that “ergonomic interventions” appear to show “no meaningful effects on pain, function, recovery, quality of life or work‐related outcomes (sick leave) compared with no treatment or usual care.”

“When we pooled the best available trials, ergonomic interventions made little to no difference,” the review’s lead author, UTS physiotherapist Poonam Mehta, said in a statement. Mehta and her colleagues scrutinized 20 studies on the issue involving 2,478 participants suffering from work-related complaints of the arm, neck, or shoulder (CANS).

“The certainty of that evidence ranges from low to moderate, so this is a clear signal that the case for these interventions is weaker than many people assume,” Mehta, a senior lecturer at the UTS Graduate School of Health, said.

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