The knee pain study is giving me a headache.

I'm baffled by this study in the British Medical Journal. It took a group of runners ages 14 to 40 with knee injuries and split them up. Half were given a six-week rehab program designed by a physical therapist. The other half were just told to kick back and take it easy.

They followed up with the participants at 3 month and 12 month intervals. These were the findings.

Supervised exercise therapy resulted in less pain and better function at short term and long term follow-up compared with usual care in patients with patellofemoral pain syndrome in general practice. Exercise therapy did not produce a significant difference in the rate of self reported recovery.

Um, don't those two sentences contradict each other? Wouldn't "less pain and better function" be "significant" (read: the only) indications of recovery?

So I looked around for another explanation and got this take on the study from Consumer Reports:

If you want to see quicker improvements to your pain and ability to use your knee, exercises may help. If you’re happy to wait and let nature heal, the outcome is likely the same in the long run.

But the Consumer Reports article also said:

After a year, people were still reporting somewhat less pain in the exercise group than the rest group. But all the other outcomes were about the same, including whether people were recovered and how well they could use their knee.

Again, in my perhaps overly-philosophical opinion, "somewhat less pain" isn't the same as somewhat more pain, so what I got out of the study is that physical therapy is a good thing and it helps with pain and function.

Someone tell me I'm wrong.