Dec 12 2012
Energy Medicine – Noise-Based Pseudoscience
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7 Responses to “Energy Medicine – Noise-Based Pseudoscience”
For energy medicine (chi-based, chakra-based, reiki, therapeutic/Tellington touch) to be valid
the energy must first exist. If not, it’s already disproven.
My layman’s understanding of medicine is that there is NO human energy field other than
the brain’s alpha waves, which are too weak to be detected more than an inch or so outside the skull.
EVEN IF there were such energy, it would have to be a) detectable AND b) manipulable AND
c) the practicioner would have to know how to manipulate it for good, not harm.
Fail, fail, and fail
Steve, thanks for a heads up on claims for another machine. Look for it as new addition to services offered by hospitals, wellness clinics, and MD’s along with laser healing therapy ,and vibrational sensing. I found the latter offered by an MD practicing in North Carolina. Considering the general lack of science education and critical thinking it is impossible for even a college educated consumer to resist the hi-jacking of scientific terms, juxtaposed with diagrams of waves .
Eugenie Mielczarek
There’s lots of energy radiating from the body – heat, electrical, noise, radioactive decay, motion, light, etc. Energy medicine is essentially positing a new form of energy, hitherto unnoticed by instruments that can detect the motion of sub-atomic particles or the 14 billion year old echos of the Big Bang.
Mmmmm…that’s some good nit-pick.
This is the best post I ever read about philosophy of science and CAM !
Feyman was really a great guy, trying to simplify in order to understand how the universe really works
As I sated above, there are multiple sources of “noise” in data, including simple random variation and interference from effects other than the effect of interest. The pulse waves above are not correlated with an EKG (at least not in the material provided), but it would certainly be interesting to see the heart rhythm that accompanies the above pressure waves. The assumption being made is that the top pressure wave (during frustration) is real and not due to technical interference, but that would be the most probable cause. It is common to measure pulse waves in the hospital, so I am used to looking at them displayed on a monitor. The top tracing looks to me like technical interference, such as from moving or tensing the muscles. In other words – this is likely literal noise, not a true measure of anything physiological. This is the equivalent of interpreting pigeons nesting on the radio dish as alien signals.
I am not sure about your reference to “pressure” or why the top tracing is necessarily being affected by technical interference. I encountered this dubious product previously, and understood the machine to be measuring the time difference between successive heart beats, probably using an EKG. Hence HRV — “heart rate variability”.
There may well be correlations between this and certain states of mind, but most of the claims remain dubious.
It looks to me like this particular form of energy medicine is implicitly trading on a resemblance between two different meanings of the term “heart,” confusing the body organ with the metaphorical “seat of the emotions.” If so, then like most alternative medicine claims we’re once again dealing with a Mind over Matter view of reality, one where the health and functioning of the body directly depend on our memories and emotions. Good thoughts and feelings: health. Bad thoughts and feelings: sick. They know their audience. The experiments and charts are for show.
Despite all the talk about “holism,” proponents of energy medicine don’t seem to be concerned that physicists and chemists and engineers aren’t interested in a ‘new’ form of energy. That’s because they’re not concerned about the scientific version of holism which knits together all areas of study into a single model of reality. No, they’re only interested in the form of holism which brings in our spiritual side.
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