Science-Based Medicine

Dec 20 2012

Bodytalk: Medical theater

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18 responses so far

18 Responses to “Bodytalk: Medical theater”

1. # rorkon 20 Dec 2012 at 9:56 am

   Thankyou. Red flags review was good for me.
   That pointer to the 103 page pdf where Veltheim was quoted was interesting. Around 40 pages in comes a listing of every method they want to be CAM, in which they sprinkle some sensible things (nutrition) in with the lunacy. Gardening is listed, but fishing wasn’t, so I protest. I find bow-hunting deer really works too – I typically loose 5 pounds between Oct 1 and Nov 14, and feel better, which makes me more likely to eat sensibly and exercise over winter. It did make me wonder if doing anything can help, so long as you manage to get some awareness in people that makes them alter their behaviors a bit (diet, exercise). I might like having a coach of some sort, though I’d be a bit put-off if they lapsed into mumbo-jumbo theatrics or analysis of my past lives. Large employers trying to reduce health care costs might be an avenue for (real) research on these behavioral issues – mine is trying various things.

2. # Mikaon 20 Dec 2012 at 10:31 am

   “His video bring up another useful screening tool for pseudoscience: Any reference to magnetism in health care (unless you’re discussing MRI) is close to 100% sensitive and specific for pseudoscience.”

   I’d like to make a suggestion to any SBM contributors that when/if you have the time, please check up on Bemer therapy ( http://www.bemeramerica.com/bemerGroup/welcome/ ) and write your thoughts about it. It has recently started to spread like fire in Finland, probably due to the high level visibility it got from the Olympic Team’s involvement, and I would very much like to have one place where I could point everyone to get reliable information (ie. debunking) about it. More and more PTs are using Bemer equipment in their practice, something that makes me both sad and angry. Arguing against it’s use is tedious especially since all the information someone will find from the net is very much pro-Bemer.

3. # nobeardpeteon 20 Dec 2012 at 10:55 am

   Talking about “quantum effects”, and non MRI/electronic use of magnetism are both highly specific for quackery, but I don’t think they’re very sensitive. There are plenty of different varieties of nonsense, only some of which seek to tie themselves to physics in this sort of way.

4. # cervanteson 20 Dec 2012 at 11:09 am

   “Here’s another screening question to add to the list above: Any reference to “quantum” in the context of health care is close to 100% sensitive and specific for pseudoscience.”

   Err, no. May be 100% specific but definitely not 100% sensitive. To say it is 100% sensitive means that no pseudoscience can exist that does not reference the term quantum. I don’t think you meant to say that.

5. # stanmrakon 20 Dec 2012 at 11:55 am

   Thanks for the link to Robyn O’Brien’s TED talk. She sums up the whole GMO scam in simple layman’s terms. A must-see!

   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rixyrCNVVGA&feature=youtu.be

6. # Scott Gavuraon 20 Dec 2012 at 12:02 pm

   @cervantes: Thanks for pointing that out – you’re correct, and I’ve updated the wording.

7. # WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 20 Dec 2012 at 12:06 pm

   TED included Elaine Morgan as a speaker on human evolution based on the aquatic ape hypothesis. Among anthropologists, the AAH would probably be comparable to laetrile. On that fact alone, I’ve stopped seeing TED talks as an endorsement for any idea, quite clearly they are more interested in interesting ideas than they are in any measure of truth.

8. # Janeton 20 Dec 2012 at 12:51 pm

   ” Reading this blog regularly helps. In time you’ll annoy your friends and family with the ability to spot medical hocus-pocus with a quick glance.”

   I’ve lost quite a few “friends”, which had been going on for some time, but escalated since I got better at speaking up through this blog. Happily, I’ve gained the respect of those who remain and am now quite the “go to” source for anything sCAM-y.

   @WLU

   I read that awful book years ago and even then, thought it was a heap of rubbish. It was shocking to me at the time that Morgan claims to be an anthropologist–about as much of one as Deepak is a physician.

   I quickly quit watching TED talks for the examples given by Scott G. and others here, as well as some I quickly spotted as dodgy myself. I hope they heed the advice they’ve been given as the intent seems a worthy one. I was overrun with TT’s as “recommendations” from Netflix based on the viewing of some documentary or other. Worse yet I was at the same time overrun with “recommendations” for many other supposed “documentaries”, mostly of the complete nonsense variety, some of which have been addressed by this blog. Netflix, like the public library, makes no distinction between science and science-y. It’s also really really amusing to see what Netflix labels “cerebral”!

9. # cervanteson 20 Dec 2012 at 1:32 pm

   Scott – glad you updated the wording but you updated it upside down. Please check again.

10. # richardigarberon 20 Dec 2012 at 3:39 pm

    Scott:

    One wild claim by some BodyTalk practitioners is that they can do healing at a distance. Two examples are:

    http://www.bodytalkinla.com/remote-distant-bodytalk-sessions/

    and

    http://www.distanthealing.org/paramabodytalk.htm

    Richard

11. # Lytrigianon 20 Dec 2012 at 6:11 pm

    the innate wisdom of the body

    If my body is so goddamn wise, how come my gustatory apparatus keeps telling me Cheetos are yummy and I ought to eat a lot of them?

12. # nybgruson 21 Dec 2012 at 11:48 am

    Thanks for this Scott.

    I too have been dissapointed with TED talks. I know people who have done them and they can, of course, be quite good. When they first started I was really into them. But then they marketed out so much, became so popular, and did so many that they had to fill the stage somehow and that is how it all went downhill.

    The requirements by TED for vetting scientific talks is certainly heartening though… and necessary. There was one last year by a guy who claimed to have demonstrated quantum superposition of physicial states on macroscopic objects which would allow for us to quantum teleport because the conditions are so close to “normal” and so far removed from standard conditions in which we see quantum effects. A classmate of mine was totally snookered by this and argued many times that this was a good video. It was total bunkum. The guy himself was obviously a bit unstable (probably bi-polar and currently in a manic phase, or else he took some cocaine before his talk) and was demonstrating quantum effects on a piece of insanely pure and visible only under microscope sliver of silicon, in a bathysphere type device at near perfect vacuum at near absolute zero, only observable by EM spectra of the resonance of the silicon sliver. He then went into a tirade almost as long as his scientific demonstration about the “spirituality” of what that means and how this experiment will allow us as humans to teleport around the world and the universe.

    I don’t watch TED talks these days unless it is someone I personally know giving them or it is recommended to me by one of the few people I trust to be quite discriminatory.

13. # Rafael Scienceon 21 Dec 2012 at 12:12 pm

    “In time you’ll annoy your friends and family with the ability to spot medical hocus-pocus with a quick glance”

    That is describes very accurately what happen every time my family and friend gather and I am present. It’s weird for them (and sometimes for me) that I am usually the only one that have a real skeptical thinking about the universe. I fell that people are eager to understand my thoughts, even the most religious ones.

    Two problems are very frequently :

    1 – People don’t understand that science is made of facts and criticism. You PHD or Nobel dosen’t count on the reliability of any claim.

    2 – Our brain fail very frequently on making correlation/causation. You just got to test before make the claim

14. # stanmrakon 21 Dec 2012 at 12:49 pm

    # Lytrigianon

    “If my body is so goddamn wise, how come my gustatory apparatus keeps telling me Cheetos are yummy and I ought to eat a lot of them?”

    It’s not that your body is stupid, it’s the neurotoxins in junk food that get you addicted. Ever wonder why junk food is so compelling? Your brain enjoys the stimulation. Keep eating crap like that and your body will eventually reveal its true wisdom.

15. # WilliamLawrenceUtridgeon 21 Dec 2012 at 1:09 pm

    It’s not that your body is stupid, it’s the neurotoxins in junk food that get you addicted.

    Citation needed. Are you sure it’s not “Cheetos are designed to be delicious”? With the ability to manipulate food chemically, we gained the ability to deliver high doses of very primal food molecules. No need to invoke neurotoxins, an extremely unlikely food additive.

16. # JJ Borgmanon 21 Dec 2012 at 3:01 pm

    Dear Scott,

    None of you should ever feel you are preaching to the choir, though I can appreciate how you could feel that way.

    I come from a background of common sense and pragmatism, but I was also neck deep in woo. Only a couple of short years ago did I even start to question any of it. God, chiropractic, homeopathy etc. It is sites like this and the ongoing refutation by folks like you of unjustified claims that has me out as another voice for reason.

    How does one eat an elephant? One bite at a time. Eat up!

17. # Sastraon 21 Dec 2012 at 5:01 pm

    It is a disproved treatment that cannot be killed with evidence or reason, like the other alternative medicine zombies. Why doesn’t it get dropped? Because to admit AK is nonsense would be tacit agreement that vitalism is bunk.

    … And to admit that vitalism is bunk would be tacit agreement that “spirituality” is nonsense. And now you are stepping on religion’s toes — and going against a general consensus that we use different standards for supernatural claims than we do for ordinary ones. In other words, you’re fighting “faith.”

    Sure, there’s reason and evidence for Applies Kinesiology. It’s just that it’s not very good. This is where the different “paradigms” which divide the skeptic and believer are supposed to come in. The reason and evidence are good enough for the faithful. They realize that we are more than material beings, etc. etc.

    Vitalism is, I think, a form of God. Thus the love/hate relationship with science. Bodytalk sounds like one of those wonderful conjunctions of science-and-religion which fail to stand up to actual science but manage to look like cutting edge to the unwary.

18. # BillyJoeon 23 Dec 2012 at 2:54 am

    “Perhaps not suprisingly, Bodytalk was invented by Australian chiropractor and acupuncturist…”

    Why is it not surprising that this chiropractor and acupuncturist is an Australian?
    Perhaps this also needs a little rewording?