Aug 13 2008
Pro-CAM Wikipedia – Skeptics Need Not Apply
The internet is arguably the ultimate expression of democracy and the free market. For the cost of internet access anyone can pull up a virtual soap box and preach to the world. There are no real gatekeepers, and the public can vote with their search entries, clicks, and links. Every point of view can be catered to and every special interest satisfied. Type in any obscure term or concept into Google and see how many hits you get (“banana farming” yielded 1,470,000 hits).
There is potentially a downside to this as well, however. Because there are websites fashioned for every opinion and perspective no one has to venture far out of their intellectual comfort zone. Virtual communities of like-minded individuals can gather and reinforce their prejudices, and to varying degrees keep out contrary opinions. This is harmless when dealing with aesthetic tastes, but can be stifling to intellectual discourse.
On the other hand defining the mission, scope, and character of a blog, website, or forum is necessary to some degree. Every site does not have to be a free-for-all. If biologists want a forum to politely discuss biological topics in a collegial fashion they have the right to create a virtual space in which to do that, and whoever owns and operates the site has the right to mandate whatever rules they wish. Allowing political activists to overrun the site and hijack the conversation would be counterproductive. Like most things a healthy balance probably works best.
It was with all that in mind that I took a look at the new website, Wiki4CAM, the Complementary and Alternative Medicine Encyclopedia. As the name suggests, this is a wiki-style information resource on all things CAM. Why did the creators think that such a thing was necessary? On their main page they write:
Wiki4CAM has been started to provide the CAM community their own space where they can build their knowledge base without any undue skeptical diversions.
And on a page dedicated to explaining why they are needed, they write:
Wikipedia is undoubtedly the world’s biggest and most read and referenced encyclopedia. The community participation has made it a huge success. But its open architecture has (at times) also led to the use of Wikipedia for gaining political mileage and for spreading biased views by a handful of editors.
The same thing has happened to most complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) therapies on Wikipedia. A handful of wiki editors are going out of their way to discredit and disrepute nearly all alternative medicine as unscientific. Read how most alternative systems are introduced at Wikipedia:
The creators of Wiki4CAM believe that the information on Wikipedia is biased against CAM. So they are not going to play anymore and instead are going to make their own sandbox. This is very different than a blog or forum – an encyclopedia is not a place to present an opinion or point of view (like a blog) or for open discussion (like a forum) but is supposed to be an authoritative source of unbiased information. What Wiki4CAM is designed to be is a source of information that is styled to look authoritative but which is biased consistently in one openly stated direction – pro CAM.
Wikipedia is an excellent resource because it is the product of so many individuals – anyone can add their knowledge to this communal repository. But it does have difficulty dealing with controversy. By now most people are familiar with Wiki wars where people of incompatible opinions fight over Wiki entries. The editors of Wiki have come up with various solutions that work pretty well. They simply create headers for the various opinions. They also will sometimes label certain entries as disputed, to warn the reader that there is controversy over the content.
Many entries will explicitly say – this is what proponents say, and this is what the skeptics say. But it seems that some CAM practitioners are not happy with these solutions. They want to be the only word. Their statement that they do not want any “undue skeptical diversions” is extremely revealing. To them skepticism is a diversion, it detracts from the purity of their message. This is the behavior of a cult, corporation, or belief system, not a scientific or academic discipline.
This attitude contradicts their statement that they do not want CAM to be discredited as “unscientific.” This means they feel it is scientific – but the cornerstone of science is skeptical critical analysis of all claims. Therefore they want the perception of being scientific but want to completely avoid the process of scientific review – that is the very definition of pseudoscience.
Also very revealing are the examples they give of the outrageous anti-CAM bias of Wikipedia. They quote from Wikipedia:
- Applied Kinesiology
-
- With only anecdotal accounts providing positive evidence for the efficacy of the practice, a review of peer-reviewed studies concluded that the “evidence to date does not support the use of [AK] for the diagnosis of organic disease or pre/subclinical conditions.
To me this is a very sedate and no-nonsense review of Applied Kinesiology. It is simply quoting from a review of the literature that shows that AK does not work, and that the only positive evidence for AK is anecdotal. Here is the brief description from Wiki4CAM:
Applied Kinesiology (AK) is a practice of using manual muscle-strength testing for medical diagnosis and a subsequent determination of prescribed therapy. It purportedly gives feedback on the functional status of the body.
The reality is that AK is pure pseudoscience. There is absolutely no biological rationale for this method, and the evidence clearly shows that it is worthless. Practitioners of AK will, for example, place a substance in a subject’s hand and if that arm tests weak they will conclude that the subject is allergic to the substance. Studies have shown, however, that the “weakness” is entirely due to suggestion and the ideomotor effect, not a true physiological effect. Double-blind studies fail to show any reliability.
The authors of the Wiki4CAM are therefore upset that Wikipedia sometimes contains accurate information about the modalities they practice. It also commonly contains the proponents position, but will often link to published evidence that calls into question the claims of CAM practitioners. One can only conclude that the authors do not wish the public to see any skeptical or scientific information about their claims.
The Wiki4CAM is similar in mission and execution to another Wikipedia alternative, the Conservapedia. The promoters of this wiki resource were upset that the Wikipedia was full of “misinformation,” like evolution. They kept trying to correct entries on such topics but those pesky scientists kept putting in their “dogma.” So they too decided to just create their own information resource – free from any interference by scientists.
The Wiki4CAM is likely to be as useful a source of information for the public as the Conservapedia is. The creators essentially are trying to tell the public to “ignore the man behind the curtain, this is the information you are looking for” (sorry to mix my movie references).
Both endeavors are unscientific in the extreme. Science, by necessity, is an open and public endeavor. It requires open analysis and harsh criticism. It is a meritocracy in which competing opinions fight over logic and evidence. It is a messy process, but useful knowledge slowly grinds forward as a result. These specialty-wikis are being promoted by the losers in this public battle of science who are now forming their own game with their own rules that they cannot lose. They created not only their own game, but their own playground. And those pesky skeptics are not allowed.
195 Responses to “Pro-CAM Wikipedia – Skeptics Need Not Apply”
I’m going to go out on a limb here and disagree with you that Wikipedia is an “excellent” resource–at least in areas where there is any controversy. At best in these areas it can be an “OK” resource, but more often it’s pretty mediocre. In particular, it is an unreliable and dubious resource for good information on pseudoscience. Credulous activists are constantly trying to edit entries to make the content agree with them or to be less critical, thus requiring an enormous time commitment from skeptics to undo the damage. The insistence of the Wikipedia culture and its administrators for the “neutral voice” makes serious discussion of some areas of pseudscience all but impossible, and the “solution” of putting “both sides” into articles is nothing more than the “tell both sides” fallacy that drives me nuts in news reporting about CAM.
On the other hand, the very fact that Wikipedia bothers homeopaths so much (Wiki4CAM was set up by the owners of a pro-homeopathy website) does somewhat restore my faith in it.
This is very different than a blog or forum – an encyclopedia is not a place to present an opinion or point of view (like a blog) or for open discussion (like a forum) but is supposed to be an authoritative source of unbiased information.
Anybody who takes anything on the Internet as the gospel truth deserves the consequences.
And yes, that applies to this blog, as well (and Wikipedia).
In all fairness, though, if you want to have a discussion about CAM, you can’t discuss it without understanding what it purports to be about. And for this reason alone, I have to condone the new Wiki (with the reservation that it shouldn’t be used to “pimp” CAM, but just to say “this is what reiki is”). I mean, it’s hard to get reliable information on what constitutes Ayruvedic medicine online, with this site saying X and that site saying Y.
Not that I believe in energy meridians. But not believing in it doesn’t mean you should deliberately cloak yourself in ignorance about it. After all, if I can convince someone in dire need of medical help to see a doctor by couching the argument in terms of CAM, well, I’ll do it.
David – your comments about controversial topic in Wikipedia is correct – that was what I meant to convey but I guess I was not clear.
For non-controversial topics reviews suggest that Wikipedia is almost as accurate as edited encyclopedias, like Brittanica.
It has many problems with controversial subjects, and it has dealt with them in a suboptimal way but perhaps as good as can be expected for a public resource.
The ultimate “problem” with Wikipedia is that it is a democracy – but science is not a democracy. Wikipedia will reflect, to some degree, the spectrum of opinions on a topic – not the best opinions.
For what it is I think it is an excellent resource – you just can’t treat it like something it is not. It does not, for example, necessarily reflect the scientific consensus – because non-scientists or fringe scientists can contaminate entries, which they do on controversial topics.
The idea that this new wiki will not be used to “pimp” CAM, in my opinion, is naive. That is exactly what it is for – to give a patina of legitimacy to CAM by putting into an authoritative form, but deleting all the actual science and skepticism from the entries.
Someone (elswhere) has observed that one could write an article for Wiki4CAM describing heretofore unknown sCAM; such as the diagnosis and treatment of feldspar deficiency.
As for the standard Wiki, there are people who add paragraphs that are pure fiction, on non-controversial subjects, just for fun. I read an early review of it in which the reviewer changed some facts to see how quickly they were corrected; so anyone looking up those subjects before reversion got bad information.
There is a use for the original Wiki when it comes to woo. I once was arguing with a chiro concerning the Innate (life force). I wanted to know what modern chiro literature had to say. The Wiki article cited the papers I wanted.
BTW, modern chiro would like to ignore the Innate; but, if pressed, the most popular response is that it is another name for homeostasis. It has been two years since I asked which homeostatic systems are improved by spinal adjustment, I am still waiting for a response.
“Virtual communities of like-minded individuals can gather and reinforce their prejudices, and to varying degrees keep out contrary opinions. This is harmless when dealing with aesthetic tastes, but can be stifling to intellectual discourse.”
This is pretty ironic. Almost every blogger and commenter at this blog is dead set against CAM, except me. You hate intellectual debate and you’re only happy when commenters say “Yeah, me too, you got it right.”
lf only we could find someone who’d promise to provide a literature review showing the benefits of some CAM. Say, energy therapy, for example. Then maybe we’d have something intellectual to debate.
Alas, even if someone made such a promise, would they ever deliver?
Since when is banana farming obscure? Bananas are on sale in every grocery store I’ve been to so I’d expect that lots and lots of people grow them. It’s the exact opposite of obscure.
“Almost every blogger and commenter at this blog is dead set against CAM”
No, we’re dead set against pseudoscience and fakery. If CAM happens to fall into that category (which the evidence indicates it does), that is hardly our fault.
“lf only we could find someone who’d promise to provide a literature review showing the benefits of some CAM. Say, energy therapy, for example.”
I already have a long list of links, and am in the process of reading whatever I found at the public library. There is a vast amount of energy healing research, and it does not seem possible that you are completely unaware of it.
If I provide any links or references and you find the tiniest thing wrong with any of it, you will fixate on that and discard the whole vast quantity of valid scientific research. That is of course what you’re waiting for, as a militant supporter of mainstream materialist medicine.
I can post isolated links as I find and read them, if you want. Or you can wait for the entire list.
In the meantime, notice that Harriet had only one criticism of Gary Schwartz’s energy experiments — they were not published in mainstream journals. Well yes that is always your last defense when you have no logical criticisms. You realize of course that mainstream materialist medicine does not yet consider energy healing to be very “plausible” and that this research is normally published in journals that do consider it plausible. And those journals are discounted as non-mainstream by you “skeptics.” A perfect catch-22.
But do worry, CAM is gaining acceptance despite your militant political efforts.
For new readers: Why We Are No Longer Answering Pec
After many long and fruitless discussions with pec, the blog authors and many of the regular commenters have reluctantly decided to ignore pec’s comments. She gives us unsupported opinions, distorts our words, misrepresents our thoughts and then tries to argue with that misrepresentation, and insults us. She seems not to understand our critiques of her comments. She doesn’t discuss, she argues. She doesn’t listen, she contradicts and provokes. She has contributed nothing of substance and has been a disruptive influence, interfering with our attempts to carry on a rational discussion about science and medicine.
@ Steve:
What’s this with science and waiting for results before jumping to conclusions?
Although you’re probably right, I’m still going to hope that it will be the CAM reference that I want it to be.
Michelle B forgot the rest of it:
“We don’t answer pec because we dislike having our confidence shaken. As long as this blog is dissent-free we can maintain our sense of complete certainty. Therefore, we strongly suggest that you DO NOT READ ANY COMMENTS WRITTEN BY PEC. Unless you’re one of those open-minded independent thinkers that try to undermine the status quo, and if so you are not welcome here. Materialist mainstream medicine CANNOT AFFORD to lose its privileged — and, by the way, quite profitable — position of authority and expertise. Therefore, we repeat: DO NOT READ ANY COMMENTS WRITTEN BY PEC.”
Michelle B
pec
QED
I think we need to pull a Sokol Affair and just make up a new CAM SCAM and plant it on their wiki, something completely nonsensical and impenetrable.
I laugh my evil laugh… buwaahahaha
Sweet! Wookipedia!
I notice that pec’s response consists entirely of conspiracy theory and ridicule. No content.
“I can post isolated links as I find and read them, if you want. Or you can wait for the entire list.”
I do not want a list of links. I want a critical analysis of energy healing. I want you to approach it with the same critical eye you approach science based medicine claims. You are able to do that despite being a militant supporter of woo, aren’t you?
What might be useful and contribute to intellectual debate would be to point out logical fallacies in each other’s posts. It is easier to see errors in someone else’s thinking as opposed to our own. This does require developing a little thicker skin so our feelings won’t be so easily hurt, but I’m game. I think it might lead to greater clarity in our thinking.
“I do not want a list of links. I want a critical analysis of energy healing”
You will give me credits towards another PhD, I assume, when it’s done.
Hey that’s ok, I’ll do it for no money and no credit, just because I’m interested. But not necessarily on your schedule, weing.
“Why We Are No Longer Answering Pec”
Only The Queen should use the we form.
If you do not want to read pec, you dont have to.
If you do not want to reply t pec, you don’t have to.
While your characterization of pec is correct, if you do not want to watch the show, change the channel. Do not ask that I shut off my tv.
Dr. Crislip said “Only The Queen should use the we form.”
But isn’t Dr. Hall the Queen of this blog? She is the one who originally said that and who is presently on a cruise off the coast of South America, and I am very jealous.
“I do not want a list of links. I want a critical analysis of energy healing.”
Oh, I’d settle for a lot less than that.
One decent study that actually supports the veracity of energy healing would be a fabulous start. I’m sure there are plenty to pick from. After all, no self-respecting skeptic would believe in energy healing if they hadn’t first seen compelling evidence, right? Right?
Of course, I can understand that it takes a while to sort through the myriad publications that come up when you search PubMed for the phrase “energy healing.” After all, there are a href=”http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?orig_db=PubMed&db=pubmed&cmd=Search&term=energy%20healing[All%20Fields]“>43 of them. Perfectly understandable that someone might need months to go through so many and find at least one good one.
Apologies for the code error; let’s try again:
After all, there are 43 of them.
[...] methodology for critical thinking) and have decided to follow the
Mark Crislip, Per HCNs comment, those words are Harriet’s and since she is on vacation some of us are cutting and pasting her decision/suggestion for others in her absence. Disruptive Pec is not banned, and you can certainly do whatever you want regarding her comments, read them, ignore them, respond to them. I am more interested in encouraging real debate instead of spoon reading someone who has no interest in learning anything valuable. But, that’s me. The last time I looked in the mirror, I did not see Mark Crislip.
PEC: I understand you.
I used to be a victim of severe CAM brainwash after I finished a course on “Natural Hygiene” through the mail. I believed firmly in the powers of fasting to cure any disease after reading all this miracle cases described in the course books. My best friend mom fasted for 30 days and was still having BM’s on day 30 which proof to me that fasting really cleaned your body of all that toxins accumulated after all those years of using “drugs, meat, cigarette etc”.
An MD friend of my family use to try to convince me of my wrong thinking but I used the attacks and arguments learned in my course to “argue with the materialistic skeptics who feel threatened by us and don’t want to give up their cars and status, and the rich drug companies who rather gain a penny, and will do anything to keep the public from knowing the powers of fasting, etc etc etc”
Fortunately, after starting medical school and reading a couple of Carl Sagan’s books I came to grip with reality again. Unfortunately there were consequences on my health: because “toothpaste was unnatural” I lost a few tooth to cavities and developed severe periodontal disease which is thankfully stable now, but I’m stuck with the Dentist every 3 months and have to floss tid (otherwise I will be leaving half my lunch in between my teeth).
I profoundly regret my lack of skepticism during those times. I do feel better thou, when I remember what my uncle told me one day: “If you are 18 years old and believe in woo, you can still be normal; if you are 40 years old and believe in woo you are an idiot.”
urology-resident,
It sounds like you believe whatever you are taught, and swung from extreme pro-CAM to extreme anti-CAM. That is not a skeptical attitude.
I have explained many times at this blog that I am not a provider of or devote believer in CAM therapies. I practice yoga and believe in some aspects of the philosophy. I have been interested in both mainstream and alternative science for many years and I think each has its pros and cons. I think current mainstream medicine has gone overboard in the direction of extreme materialism, and I think pharmaceuticals are being overused to an insane degree.
I believe in balance and genuine skepticism; I am not a fanatic or an extremist. I think the bloggers here tend to be fanatical anti-CAM extremists who are engaged in political warfare against holistic science.
I am glad that CAM has started to get research funding. The fanatics here are always saying CAM is not supported by mainstream research, and that is their main argument against it. They know that research is expensive and that CAM has not been funded in the past. They are obviously afraid of being proven wrong about at least some aspects of alternative science and medicine.
In spite of a lack of funding, there has been a lot of research on, for example, biological energy, although most of it is not necessarily published in mainstream journals. That is because of the aggressive politics of the “skeptic” organizations. But they are losing ground and CAM is being funded and taught in medical schools.
What is “holistic science”? It’s either science or its not science, ie superstition, fantasy, or sympathetic magic. There is such a thing as opportunity cost. If we waste money on superstitions, we don’t have the money to spend on something worthwhile. The CAM nonsense has been discarded by medicine as just so much nonsense after thousands of years of use. Medicine grew out of CAM and started making progress after abandoning superstition in favor of science. It will continue to make progress as we continue to abandon untested practices and make progress in basic science and apply the knowledge gained into treatment. I like fairy tales and fantasy also but I will not use them to fly across the ocean. Each has its pros and cons.
“It will continue to make progress as we continue to abandon untested practices”
Yeah that is the problem. You want to abandon practices that have not yet been tested scientifically. You assume that everything believed and practiced in pre-modern civilizations must be worthless superstition.
Holistic science is compatible with some ancient beliefs but, like mainstream science, it goes beyond ancient beliefs and explores nature from a modern perspective.
At least you now use the first person singular, so it doesn’t give the appearance that it is a recitation official blog policy but rather a suggestion to others. Its that pesky we.
Me? I’m not inviting pec to my birthday party.
And you do not know lucky you have it, what I have to deal with in the mirror every day….the horror the horror.
“One decent study that actually supports the veracity of energy healing would be a fabulous start.”
Do you automatically dismiss everything published in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, regardless of the quality of the research?
Why is it impossible to post a link on this blog??
I’m trying. This blog is broken. I am trying to post a link to a mainstream news story about energy healing.
Maybe someone can fix the blog and then maybe I can post a link to a Reiki study by a mainstream skeptical biologist. That would be nice. I have tried and tried and tried.
weing, holistic science is science that is full of holes. Same with holistic medicine, medicine that is full of holes.
What does energy healing has to do with this blog entry???..anyway..
Pec, you want to post the link to ONE article, but really one article by itself its worthless no matter how good the article is (even if its coming from JAMA or the NEJM). This is true for mainstream medicine or for CAM or for any other science.
In my field which is Urology, I would probably say that more articles than not that are published every month when carefully scrutinized are found to be of low scientific quality and do not change the way we do urology. Yes, we do critizice our own field just as rigorously as the bloggers here scrutinize CAM ( and this is not done out of “fear” of change like PEC thinks, but of sound scientific thinking)
What we need, and this is basically what Dr Novella has said in multiple ocassions, is data that is reproducible by multiple scientist in different regions and that has some basic science explanation/mechanism/plausibility which cannot be provided by JUST ONE ARTICLE/LINK/NEWS STORY (sorry PEC).
PEC, if you only new how difficult is getting grant money, even for chairmans at respected institutions, to perform research of critical importance, that has being backed by several basic science paper over many years, you would get pissed off at CAM researchers getting money to perform studies with no plausibility. When resources are scarce, they should go where there is a greater chance of success (ie not CAM). If there is anything promising in CAM, believe me, Big Pharma will be the first one to exploit it.
Nope. I expect the average paper in JACM would be much lower in quality than the average paper in, say, NEJM, but I don’t assume everything they print is crap.
If you’ve got a citation that you think is high quality, I look forward to seeing it. If you can’t post the link, just provide the citation info (1st author, pub year, journal name, volume, pg #). If it was published in J Altern Complement Med, I can access through my local university (although only from 1998 up to 3 months ago).
But please, let’s try to focus on scientific publications. I’m not interested in critiquing a mainstream news story.
Urology-resident -
The energy healing thing is based on a claim pec made many weeks ago – that there is evidence to support the validity of energy healing. She cited a study or two that were laughably lame (e.g. a rat study with n = 3; not 3 per group, 3 total). Then she backpedaled and claimed she wasn’t really all that familiar with that literature and was only trying to prove that there was some research on the topic. (But she’s still apparently convinced it’s a valid field of study).
Ultimately she said she was going to review the literature and prove to us that there is high quality research showing that energy healing is at least potentially effective.
We’ve been waiting and chiding her about it ever since.
Of course, you’re right that a single positive study is not compelling by itself. But you can’t have 2 good studies until you first have 1, so let’s see if we can even clear that hurdle.
“If you’ve got a citation that you think is high quality, I look forward to seeing it. If you can’t post the link, just provide the citation info”
I HAVE BEEN TRYING.
Are you still trying to hyperlink it? Don’t bother. Just type in the citation info. Like this:
Narahari, et al. (2008), Evidence-based approaches for the Ayurvedic traditional herbal formulations: toward an Ayurvedic CONSORT model. J Altern Complement Med. 14(6):769-776.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/08/naughty_skeptics_naughty_bad_skeptics.php
Apparently, some people have been posting at the wiki4cam with evil intent …
Here’s the link that pec’s going on about.
http://www.uchc.edu/ocomm/newsarchive/news08/jul08/healing.html
She posted it over at Neurologica – where she’s also pretending that she can’t post it here. It’s very weird behavior clearly designed to try to make it look like she’s being censored. Is there no depth that pec won’t sink to? How rude considering that the blog authors have allowed her to continue posting here despite such tactics and her ongoing behavior.
pec,
Allow me to clarify. I meant practices in medicine that have not been tested and shown to be worthwhile. Practices like giving antibiotics for sinusitis, etc. The CAM nonsense was found to be useless ages ago and abandoned by medicine.
qetzal,
Of course I tried typing the citation info. I tried everything. I have posted it at neurologica.
Gronowicz, G, A. Jhaveri, L.W. Clarke, M.S. Aronow, T.H. Smith, 2008. Therapeutic Touch stimulates the proliferation of human cells in culture. J Alternative Complementary Medicine; 14(3); in press
Hehehe, and pec claims to be a computer “scientist”…. cut…paste…submit comment….all really rather simple really.
She apparently got a quarter of a million dollars to to this research so let’s hope it wasn’t all wasted on shoddy trials that no quality medical journal would publish. I guess CAM research really is where the easy money is!
pec – your link was not blocked by our filter, it was flagged as spam. I have no control over the spam algorithm, but we do review what gets flagged and can restore it. I think part of the problem is that you tried to post the link 50 times, which just upped its “spamminess”.
In the future if a comment does not appear it is probably waiting for review in the spam folder, which we review every day, although not always immediately (we have day jobs). So be patient. If necessary you can post a single comment to the effect that you posted a link which may be waiting in the spam folder.
Exactly. pec seems to think that we check the spam filters every five minutes.
I can’t do anything about it if my comments are rejected by the blog.
I could not even post the author’s name. I tried many times.
I could not post any part of the citation info. And most of my comments failed to show up, even if they did not contain links or citation info.
“If necessary you can post a single comment to the effect that you posted a link which may be waiting in the spam folder.”
I tried that. I tried everything. I am not a dope.
“It’s very weird behavior clearly designed to try to make it look like she’s being censored.”
Fifi is the dope. After the link failed to show up, nothing else I posted showed up. This is very poorly designed software.
Hmmm, how odd that a computer scientists doesn’t understand a spam filter and tries to post over and over again until her behavior is recognized by the algorithm as that of a spammer. The algorithm did exactly what it’s designed to do, recognize people who behave like spammers.
Of course, pec’s claims that she couldn’t post here after that don’t make much sense since she posted here after that. I guess it’s not so surprising that pec just assumes she’s being oppressed (despite the fact that the blog authors allow her to post here even though she’s so continuously rude and insulting to them).
So what is it “most’ of your posts didn’t show up or “none”…get your story straight at least pec! You confusion and paranoia seem to be running amok.
Fifi,
You complete idiot. I tried to post the link and after that most of my comments failed to show up. I tried to post the author’s name, or part of it, or the name of the university. Every one of my posts were different, since the blog rejects duplicates. So I posted it a neurologica.
After a couple of hours I was able to post a comment, but then my comments were blocked again.
“You confusion and paranoia seem to be running amok”
You are such a complete moron. I explained what happened, and I did absolutely nothing wrong. The point here is the research, which I’m sure you will find a way to ignore or disparate since it doesn’t fit your unbending close-minded ideology.
Pec, you’re quite welcome for the help I gave you by posting your link here after you got yourself all snarled up in the spam filter by acting like a spammer. Life really is hard for you isn’t it?
I was asked by some commenters here to provide at least one reference to research supporting energy healing. I have found many, but the one I tried to post here last night is by a mainstream skeptical biologist. She did not expect the experiment to work, but decided to try it out of scientific curiosity. She could do this because she already has tenure.
I don’t think you will find any stupid mistakes in the experiment. Of course you will try to dismiss it because its claims are implausible, according to your narrow-minded ideology. And then you will say well it’s only one study. And then I will say there are many others, even though it’s a relatively new field of research. And then you will say well there aren’t millions and billions of these studies. And I will say, well CAM needs more funding. And you will say CAM is all pseudoscience and woo and does not deserve funding.
This researcher got a $250 000 grant… The evidence suggests there’s plenty of funding going towards CAM research.
I reviewed the Gronowicz paper. The paper purports to show that bone cells reproduce quicker if they are treated with TT than not, but cancerous bone cells do not show this effect. The study has weaknesses, as do most studies. It does not in any way detect the presence of an energy field, and it does not adequately account for other confounding effects.
But the big limitation is the fact that it is a single study in a single lab and the protocol has not been replicated. Of course I do not find this single study compelling, not because of any ideological bias but because the scientific community does not consider a single study to ever be adequate to establish a new phenomenon. No matter what it is. Replicability is necessary – it is a prerequisite for acceptance of anything new.
Otherwise we would still be talking about N-rays.
What we find with many dubious phenomena is that there are many single studies which claim to show an effect (ESP, homeopathy, cold fusion, etc.) but the results cannot be replicated.
I may comment on both Gronowicz papers next week. (There’s one in the Journal of Orthopedic Research and one in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine; the two papers are very similar and appear to be an example of pushing out papers with the “MPU”–minimal publishable unit–from the same study.)
However, my original plan was to look at the recent vitamin C/cancer paper that’s been getting some press, a topic I find more interesting; so I may delay the TT discussion until the week after next–unless something else new comes along to pique my interest. We’ll see.
There have been many other studies on energy healing besides this one. I chose this one because the researcher is a mainstream skeptical biologist, and you can’t simply accuse her of being a pseudoscientist or gullible. You can’t explain away results like this, but you dismiss them anyway. There is absolutely no doubt that many experiments over the past century have demonstrated phenomena that you dismiss, and here we have one more example.
Interest in and acceptance of energy healing has been increasing, so we are going to see increasing numbers of experiments that try to demonstrate it. Whether you like it or not, truth and reality are what matters and that is what eventually comes out. As desperately as you try to cling to the status quo, you cannot prevent reality from being reality.
There are energies and fields not yet understood by contemporary science. This should go without saying, but at a narrow-minded blog like this I have to say it.
“I may delay the TT discussion until the week after next–unless something else new comes along to pique my interest.”
Yes, you will delay discussing it until you can find something wrong with it. And if you can’t find anything wrong with it, you won’t discuss it. You will just hope your readers forget.
“it does not adequately account for other confounding effects.”
Ok, exactly what confounding effects does it not adequately account for? It’s really easy to say that, and hope everyone just thinks “oh, yeah, the study has confounding effects, we should ignore it.” It’s quite another thing to actually state what you think those confounding effects are.
Do cells in a petri dish/test tube have “life energy”?
“Whether you like it or not, truth and reality are what matters and that is what eventually comes out. ”
Back at you.
This one broke my irony detector.
If only you could accept that that is exactly what we are interested in. We disagree primarily in our assessment of how science best functions and progresses – and yet you seem completely confident in your self-serving assumptions about what we believe and our motive – no matter how many times they are directly disproven.
pec,
I think it needs to be replicated by others. From just a cursory reading, the methodology section didn’t adequately describe how the cultures were assigned to the different treatment groups.
What makes you accept this study? If a single group of unaffiliated researchers came out with a study that prozac treats depression better than exercise and psychotherapy, would you be just as willing to accept it?
“Do cells in a petri dish/test tube have “life energy”?”
As long as the Krebs cycle keeps manufacturing ATP and formation of ADP from ATP continues to drive reactions in the cell, the cells may be said to have “life energy”
“What makes you accept this study?”
I do not accept any conclusion based on a single study. I was asked to provide an example of research demonstrating energy healing, so I did. There are many others. Harriet made a big tremendous deal out of one small negative study by a “skeptic,” and she ignored all the positive studies completely. That is typical.
The difference between me and the “skeptics” here is that I am open minded about the possible existence of energies, fields, substances, etc., not already described and observed by modern science. I don’t discount research merely because I think it’s implausible, or because it demonstrates phenomena that are not already understood.
I have scientific curiosity, and that is something materialists lack. You want to maintain a position of authority and expertise, you want to be revered by the public, and that is only possible if you seem to have the ultimate answers, or at least the means to discover them.
That is dogmatism, not science.
Based on a quick reading of the two papers, yes I can, actually, at least for the latter. (Whenever I hear the old “I was once a skeptic but now I believe” line, like the one Dr. Gronowicz used in the press release, my skeptical antennae start twitching mightily.) Whether she evolves into the former remains to be seen.
You evil materialist reductionist scientist, you.
You have it all wrong, of course. Measurable chemical energy is not what it’s all about. Insubstantial, unmeasurable, mystical energy is what we’re talking about here. Get with the program!
“Insubstantial, unmeasurable, mystical energy”
Any energy can be called “unmeasurable” if you do not have the means to measure it. Are you saying that contemporary science has the means to measure any and all possible forms of energy? And if that is your claim, what is the logic behind it?
Of course not. However, the onus is not on me or any other skeptic or scientist to prove that such energy does not exist. For one thing, you can never completely prove a negative (although you can prove something to be so unlikely that for all intents and purposes it is indistinguishable from a negative). For another thing, described as it is by “alternative” healers, such “life energy” is sufficiently highly implausible from a scientific viewpoint that, barring some compelling evidence, we can safely make the tentative assumption that such energy very likely does not exist. In other words, until compelling evidence is put forward to support its existence, there is no good reason to believe that it exists because postulating its existence has no explanatory power from a scientific viewpoint.
It’s also why the onus is on those who believe such life energy exists does to show (1) that it does, in fact, exist; (2) that it can be reliably measured through scientific means; and (3) that healers can manipulate it for therapeutic results. Until I see all three of these conditions (or, at the very least, #1 and #2), I have no reason to accept the validity of “energy healing” methods.
If #3 is demonstrated scientifically, then #1 follows. And there is a vast amount of work on measuring biological energy, all of which you steadfastly ignore. Your all-purpose argument is that it has to be published in mainstream journals.
You will have to give in to the evidence eventually. Well, actually, representatives of the establishment are usually incredibly resistant to changing their opinions, and they have to die off before the standard accepted beliefs can be modified.
Are you proud to be a stubborn close-minded defender of the status quo?
Why don’t you say exactly what you think is wrong with the research I cited? The fact that you consider it implausible is irrelevant. Why should anyone care about your preconceptions and biases? We are talking about objective experimental evidence.
It would be pretty neat if this study was true/accurate, though how that would actually play out with a person (not some cells in vitro) is a whole other thing. Still, it would mean I was a spiritual giant chock full of ancient amazing healing wisdom and far more enlightened than most and here too teach….or at least that’s what I’ve been told by all kinds of energy healers I’ve met over the years. (Including random people coming up to me in supermarkets to tell me this kind of stuff on occasion!) Sometimes it’s amazing how a bit of common sense or mundane and very earthly qualities can look like ancient, esoteric wisdom to people who don’t understand psychology, perception or science!
No, it does not. There are other hypotheses that could explain such a result other than the existence of some mystical life energy field.
I probably will–in the form of a post.
If I’m going to go through all the work of reading the papers critically and writing up a critique, I’m damned well not going to waste all that effort just to post a really long comment. I’ll use the results of my labor as a post
“No, it does not. There are other hypotheses that could explain such a result other than the existence of some mystical life energy field.”
You can call it mystical but that doesn’t change the fact that it has often been demonstrated. If the only difference between the test and control groups was energy healing, then you are stuck with the fact that some kind of energy and/or field was responsible for the differences.
I can’t wait to see the convoluted arguments you come up with to explain away valid scientific evidence. And of course you will finally fall back on the supposed implausibility of the claim. We don’t want to revise our scientific belief system in any way, after all.
You merely assume that the “only” difference between the test and control groups was energy healing. That is not a good assumption.
“You merely assume that the “only” difference between the test and control groups was energy healing. ”
I’m sure that was the intention of the researcher. If you noticed confounds, why not let us know what they were, instead of hinting and implying. You’re just hoping your readers will take your word for it that the experiment was shoddy and full of confounds, even though you have not stated anything explicitly. Just another tactic in your political war against CAM.
What would be the point of doing research anyway, if people are going to believe what they define as plausible, and ignore the evidence? If you automatically dismiss everything that conflicts with your preconceptions, you are not a scientist.
@pec, This article may help you http://www.apa.org/journals/features/psp7761121.pdf
The article is titled Unskilled and Unaware of It: How Difficulties in Recognizing One’s Own Incompetence Lead to Inflated Self-Assessments.
What makes you think you are competent to write on this subject?
“What makes you think you are competent to write on this subject?”
If you can’t find errors in my reasoning, you can always resort to insults, ridicule, or to questioning my right to have an opinion. And why do you think MDs who have never designed or analyzed an experiment are more qualified than I am to judge research, when I have research experience?
But even if I had no research experience and were just an informed and interested non-expert, I would still be qualified to have an opinion.
Maybe you prefer an authoritarian society where only experts are allowed to think and express opinions.
Pec – “What would be the point of doing research anyway, if people are going to believe what they define as plausible, and ignore the evidence?”
Reasearch is like stats, you can interpret it anyway you want, insert doubt about that which you find “implausable”, redesign it to support your “plausable” explanation, etc, etc, etc.
Pec, you don’t really think these guys are going to consider anything that might actually support your position, do you?
I am surprised any one of them even read the article.
Actually I am prepared to admit that it would take a mountain of studies, and preferably ones I was personally involved in, before I could be convinced that some kind of medically active but otherwise undetectable energy exists. It is so implausible that ubiquitous experimental artefact, contaminants, biased observations by enthusiasts, fakery, data mining, statistical flukes and other matters that can plague even laboratory experiments would be a far more likely explanation for the smettering of “positive” results that supporters like to refer to.
It is difficult to enumerate all the matters that make me feel this way. One is that it this not a technology-dependent activity. If valid, it should have been discovered thousands of years ago and by many cultures (like herbalism) , not through subtle, suspiciously placebo-like clinical activity as observed by a clique of generally science-naive, New Agey, “healers” of the late 20th century.
That does not make sense to me. It does, however fit the well-established pattern of practitioners being easily fooled into thinking they are wielding therapeutic power, when they are actually merely massaging the human mind (in a mostly good way, mind you, until certain scientific pretentions surface).
“Pec, you don’t really think these guys are going to consider anything that might actually support your position, do you?
I am surprised any one of them even read the article.”
They will try their very best to reject the evidence, and will search for the tiniest possible defect in the experiments. They will demonstrate their dogmatic authoritarianism. But if they have the slightest shred of scientific honesty or curiosity, they will finally admit there are things they cannot explain or understand. They will admit that biological energy deserves more research.
I have noticed, however, that they guys who challenged me to find even one experiment supporting energy healing have quietly disappeared.
Most alternative scientists don’t even bother talking to dogmatic, close-minded materialist “skeptics,” because they get tired of the stupid insults and the intentional misunderstanding and dishonesty. But I have some faith in human reason and I think even the most narrow-minded ideologue will give in, even just a little, when faced with clear logic and evidence.
“If valid, it should have been discovered thousands of years ago and by many cultures”
How very ignorant you are. Energy healing has been practiced in all cultures in all times, and still is.
“I am prepared to admit that it would take a mountain of studies”
And how very slammed shut your mind is.
nitwit2007 quoted pec “What would be the point of doing research anyway, if people are going to believe what they define as plausible, and ignore the evidence?”
That’s a perfect description of chiropracty. After 113 years, they cannot figure-out what they mean by subluxation http://www.dynamicchiropractic.com/mpacms/dc/article.php?id=53263 let alone abandon it, and declare their whole cult, as nonsense. Despite all the science against it, they define subluxations as plausible (despite not knowing what they are). They are still trying to rationalize their silly obsessions.
>“If valid, it should have been discovered thousands of years >ago and by many cultures”
>How very ignorant you are. Energy healing has been practiced >in all cultures in all times, and still is.
Yes, of course the energy healers like to claim that. But they try to twist miracle-seeking religious practices such as the “King’s touch” or the laying on of hands into something that resembles what they do and they do not even claim to be able to cure scrofula or any other serious illness. I have never seen anything resembling therapeutic touch practice or concepts in historical or archeological material.
Two quick points on this study:
The methods indicate that the assays were blinded, but never indicates that the selection of which plates were in which group, or the handling of the plates were at all blinded. This opens the door to bias in selection and handling of the plates.
Second – this is from the discussion: “However, once again the
study may have been unpowered to support use of the
conservative, Bonferroni approach to performance of
multiple, pairwise statistical tests.”
Essentially – they looked at many variables and then cherry picked the ones that were positive. They then performed the appropriate statistical analysis to account for looking at multiple variables (the Bonferroni approach) and each time the statistics were negative, which they blamed on their study being “underpowered.”
This is all an elaborate way of saying the data is negative.
“Gronowicz found that cells treated with Therapeutic Touch grew at double the rate of untreated cells.”
“This is all an elaborate way of saying the data is negative.”
Someone is lying.
“Results: TT administered twice a week for 2 weeks significantly stimulated proliferation of fibroblasts, tenocytes, and osteoblasts in culture (p = 0.04, 0.01, and 0.01, respectively) compared to untreated control. These data were confirmed by PCNA immunocytochemistry. In the same experiments, sham healer treatment was not significantly different from the untreated cultures in any group, and was significantly less than TT treatment in fibroblast and tenocyte cultures. In 1-week studies involving the administration of multiple 10-minute TT treatments, four and five applications significantly increased [3H]-thymidine incorporation in fibroblasts and tenocytes, respectively, but not in osteoblasts. With different doses of TT for 2 weeks, two 10-minute TT treatments per week significantly stimulated proliferation in all cell types. Osteoblasts also responded to four treatments per week with a significant increase in proliferation. Additional TT treatments (five per week for 2 weeks) were not effective in eliciting increased proliferation compared to control in any cell type.”
“Design: Fibroblasts, tendon cells (tenocytes), and bone cells (osteoblasts) were treated with TT, sham, or untreated for 2 weeks, and then assessed for [3H]-thymidine incorporation into the DNA, and immunocytochemical staining for proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA). The number of PCNA-stained cells was also quantified. For 1 and 2 weeks, varying numbers of 10-minute TT treatments were administered to each cell type to determine whether there was a dose-dependent effect.”
Where is the cherry picking? There were 3 types of cells and all were affected by the treatment.
I only have the abstract, so maybe you can provide us with the exact context for your accusations.
Joe,
That’s an interesting article you found there. How do you know you don’t fit into that category of thinking you’re way up there when in reality you’re not?
Did you actually read all four of those studies?
Based upon previous experience with you in this blog, I’d say probably not.
It’s a pretty long article and I haven’t even gotten through it all yet but I can see where you might fit into it.
It’s kind of the intellectual version of “he who smelt it, dealt it”, don’t you think?
Novella – “This is all an elaborate way of saying the data is negative.”
Well at least they were honest enough to “sort of” say that, although indirectly. Maybe they will power it up in future studies.
Another one:
“Therapeutic touch affects DNA synthesis and mineralization of human osteoblasts in culture
Ankur Jhaveri 1, Stephen J. Walsh 2, Yatzen Wang 3, MaryBeth McCarthy 1, Gloria Gronowicz 1 *
1Department of Orthopaedics, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut 06030-3105
2Center for Biostatistics, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut 06030-3105
3Department of Statistics, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut 06269
email: Gloria Gronowicz (gronowicz@nso1.uchc.edu)
*Correspondence to Gloria Gronowicz, Department of Orthopaedics, University of Connecticut Health Center, Farmington, Connecticut 06030-3105. Telephone: 860-679-3842; Fax: 860-679-2103
KEYWORDS
therapeutic touch • osteoblast • osteosarcoma • mineralization
ABSTRACT
Complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) techniques are commonly used in hospitals and private medical facilities; however, the effectiveness of many of these practices has not been thoroughly studied in a scientific manner. Developed by Dr. Dolores Krieger and Dora Kunz, Therapeutic Touch is one of these CAM practices and is a highly disciplined five-step process by which a practitioner can generate energy through their hands to promote healing. There are numerous clinical studies on the effects of TT but few in vitro studies. Our purpose was to determine if Therapeutic Touch had any effect on osteoblast proliferation, differentiation, and mineralization in vitro. TT was performed twice a week for 10 min each on human osteoblasts (HOBs) and on an osteosarcoma-derived cell line, SaOs-2. No significant differences were found in DNA synthesis, assayed by [3H]-thymidine incorporation at 1 or 2 weeks for SaOs-2 or 1 week for HOBs. However, after four TT treatments in 2 weeks, TT significantly (p = 0.03) increased HOB DNA synthesis compared to controls. Immunocytochemistry for Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen (PCNA) confirmed these data. At 2 weeks in differentiation medium, TT significantly increased mineralization in HOBs (p = 0.016) and decreased mineralization in SaOs-2 (p = 0.0007), compared to controls. Additionally, Northern blot analysis indicated a TT-induced increase in mRNA expression for Type I collagen, bone sialoprotein, and alkaline phosphatase in HOBs and a decrease of these bone markers in SaOs-2 cells. In conclusion, Therapeutic Touch appears to increase human osteoblast DNA synthesis, differentiation and mineralization, and decrease differentiation and mineralization in a human osteosarcoma-derived cell line. © 2008 Orthopaedic Research Society. Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Orthop Res, 2008″
“In conclusion, Therapeutic Touch appears to increase human osteoblast DNA synthesis, differentiation and mineralization, and decrease differentiation and mineralization in a human osteosarcoma-derived cell line.”
A simple, direct, conclusion. I don’t see any cherry picking or obfuscation, no signs of delusional thinking or unscientific bias. Where is it? What can Novella possibly be talking about?
You have to read the actual study – the abstract is not enough. I gave you a quote from that very study that illustrated what I was talking about. The abstract is only presenting the positive correlations. There were negative ones too. And when you consider them together with accepted statistics the net effect is negative. Negative data. It’s right there in the study itself.
And to reiterate – one study will not establish a new phenomenon. Only a research program demonstrating a repeatable and replicable effect, looking at it from multiple angles, consistently showing a real effect will be compelling. This is not just our attitude toward CAM – this is the mainstream scientific attitude toward all new claims. This is the one standard that we apply to everything.
pec,
So you accept this study because of dogmatism and not science. Just as you would reject a study showing superiority of prozac to exercise and psychotherapy because of dogmatism and not science. OK. You just read the abstract and consider it sufficient to support your biases? If I find an abstract that is interesting it only means that I need to read the study and analyze it myself. I do that with all medical studies. Are you suggesting that I need to use a different standard for CAM? If after reviewing the methodology you realize that it doesn’t support the conclusions, do you continue to consider the article as evidence for energy healing because it has been published?
I really appreciate the patience of the good Doctors Novella, Gorski, et all but, with all due respect, isn’t arguing with pec just hurting the S/N ratio? It seems to be at odds with Michelle’s attempts to just ignore her.
I mean, the irony-loving part of me is all tingly waiting for all this promised “proof” that pec is going to dump on us any day now, but that joke gets old really fast.
Shouldn’t pec be asked nicely to just go get her own blog somewhere where she can preach to the credulous? My vote would be for ignoring her, as in really ignoring her. Maybe she’ll go away.
Back on topic: I always take Wikipedia with a grain of salt. It’s nice to know it’s been seen as unfriendly by the CAM crowd. Kinda takes my opinion of it up a small notch.
Oh, dear. I do know there’s only one ‘l’ in ‘et al’. I claim fatigue.
Give someone an inch……
“There were negative ones too. And when you consider them together with accepted statistics the net effect is negative.”
That would have to be mentioned in the abstract. You can say whatever you want because we can’t get the article. You did NOT provide the context.
“one study will not establish a new phenomenon. Only a research program demonstrating a repeatable and replicable effect, looking at it from multiple angles, consistently showing a real effect will be compelling.”
I have NEVER said I would accept anything based on one study! I said I was gathering references to research supporting the existence of biological energy or fields. I said it would take time and I did not want to post isolated studies for exactly this reason! Then I was challenged to find even one, because they thought I was lying when I said there were many studies supporting this kind of energy. So I posted just one, which happens to be by a mainstream biologist with many years of research experience. She is not considered an idiot or fake who would use deceptive devious tactics (which is what you accuse her of).
I am NOT accepting energy healing based on one experiment. I have MANY MANY reasons for suspecting it is real.
I said I did not want to post any references until I had a complete lit review — which they wanted to be done in one day — because I knew the kind of devious tactics used here. You are saying the study was negative overall and that is utter BS, and you know it. But you don’t care because this is political warfare.
And you “skeptics” depend on one small unblinded, underpowered, poorly designed, negative study to prove that energy healing is all fake. Just one study is good enough if it confirms your ideological preconceptions about what is plausible.
“No significant differences were found in DNA synthesis, assayed by [3H]-thymidine incorporation at 1 or 2 weeks for SaOs-2 or 1 week for HOBs. However, after four TT treatments in 2 weeks, TT significantly (p = 0.03) increased HOB DNA synthesis compared to controls. Immunocytochemistry for Proliferating Cell Nuclear Antigen (PCNA) confirmed these data. At 2 weeks in differentiation medium, TT significantly increased mineralization in HOBs (p = 0.016) and decreased mineralization in SaOs-2 (p = 0.0007), compared to controls. Additionally, Northern blot analysis indicated a TT-induced increase in mRNA expression for Type I collagen, bone sialoprotein, and alkaline phosphatase in HOBs and a decrease of these bone markers in SaOs-2 cells. ”
The planned comparisons came out supporting energy healing. There is no mention of unplanned ad hoc comparisons for this study — that would have to be stated in the abstract. Novella is lying. And experienced and respected researcher would never resort to that kind of deception and a publisher would not accept it.
And why can’t Novella email me a copy of the article?
And furthermore, there were 2 studies, not one.
And Novella is NOT any kind of expert on statistics. But the “skeptics” here will mindlessly believe whatever he says.
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Sounds like you are rabidly anti-science, and as far as I can see, base your beliefs only on abstracts. Science is self-correcting. You nor I don’t have to accept anyone on authority. Just follow your reason. You do know what that is, don’t you?
I am not anti-science and you know it. I don’t have a subscription. If there were a negative effect that cancelled out the positive effect, this would be reported in the abstract, and you know it. Novella is either deliberately or inadvertently misinforming us. And he is ignoring one of the studies.
I told you many times I do not draw a conclusion based on one experiment. You or qetzel or pretzel or whoever it was challenged me to find even one study supporting energy healing. Well I gave you 2, and there will be many more. And you won’t be able to discount them all, even using deception.
You’re fighting a war against CAM? Well I’m fighting for truth and fairness and objective science. I am fighting against your authoritarian anti-science ideological close-mindedness.
This was not two studies – this was one study published twice – or divided into two papers. Right from the press release: “Her findings were published in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research and The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.”
This has not been replicated.
Someone with an ounce of intellectual honesty would at least read the paper before accusing someone else of lying about it.
It is naive to say that the abstract must be accurate and complete. Why, in this very blog our own Mark Crislip recently wrote: “Seems impressive, especially the conclusion. Chiropractic is not to blame for VBA strokes. But abstracts are like movie trailers. They give a flavor of the movie, but often leave out many important plot devices and characters.”
You know very well that if there were a negative result that cancelled out the positive result IT WOULD BE REPORTED IN THE ABSTRACT. That would not be buried somewhere in the results section. You know it, but you would rather deceive your readers into thinking the experiments found nothing. You are pretending that a respected researcher would try to mislead people into believing something that she is not selling or promoting. Why???
You simply cannot concede that this research looks promising for energy healing. You will say anything at all to avoid admitting that.
But there is so much more evidence for the existence of some kind of life energy. You are desperately fighting a losing war.
And by the way, why would the editors of the Journal of Orthopaedic Research allow a researcher to use deliberate deception and make it sound, in the abstract, as if there were a positive effect when in fact there was no effect? It would never happen, and you know it. You don’t understand statistics well enough to interpret the results.
” The abstract is only presenting the positive correlations. There were negative ones too. And when you consider them together with accepted statistics the net effect is negative.”
Why don’t you post the part of the results section that shows this? Then those of us who know something about statistics can judge for ourselves.
Pec, what are you trying to prove? Even if you find an in vitro study with no obvious defects, it would STILL be outweighed by all the other evidence that leads us to regard TT as a pseudoscience-based placebo treatment. Formulating (or dismissing) a proper scientific hypothesis entails considering all the evidence from all possible sources and it uses other scientific knowledge and experience when weighing one fom of evidence against another. It is a complicated process.
Thus, not all of numerous possible faults in trial design, performance, and interpretation will be obvious from the published material. For example, conscious or unconscious fraud by enthusiasts wanting to broadcast “the truth” will not be obvious from any reading of the papers.
The authors may not even know that there was a problem with the controls: a lab assistant may have left some of the Petri dishes lying around for a while in a different temperature or atmosphere.
Remember also these are still subtle statistical results similar to those found in clinical trials and they have been well shown to be fallible and easily influenced by observer biases.
Perhaps we skeptics need to try and explain to you why we seem so biased against TT. But that might take many years.
It is discouraging when people care more about politics and ideology than about reason and evidence.
Harriet wrote a long negative review of Gary Schwartz’s energy healing book. She never described the experiments, never explained why she does not believe the results. Instead she went on at length about the one negative experiment, which was performed by “skeptics,” was unblinded and under-powered, and lacked ecological validity. Bu Harriet loves that experiment, because it agrees with her ideology. What about all the energy healing studies with positive results? She fails to mention them, intentionally, so people will assume they were meaningless.
I am in the process of learning all I can about scientific research on energy healing. I am appalled at the complete lack of concern for science I see at blogs like this, and I do not intend to ignore it.
I have studied both mainstream and alternative science all my life. I am not ignorant and credulous like most of this blog’s readers. I am not awed by authorities and experts and I do not belong to any ideological group. It makes me angry when reason and evidence are cast aside because of politics and money.
However I do think the authors and readers of this blog are sincere and deeply believe in scientific materialism. I think you are fighting for what you believe, and do not realize how brainwashed you are. I am here to help and to educate.
Steven … So you are saying they did the “experiment” with the bone cells, then analysed many different possible characteristics, threw out the ones that didn’t show a positive result, and then published the positive results?
What characteristics did they examine and reject? Are they intellectually honest enough to list them?
The original TT claim was that the practitioner could detect defects in the subjects’ energy fields and correct them. These claims were made without any attempt to show that the defects in the energy field could be reliably detected by different practitioners, or that anything at all was being felt, or that the fields were improved by their “unruffling”, or that the defects and their undoing was correlated with the presence or absence of any clinical state. On top of this the main clinical claims (relief of anxiety and pain) were adequately explained by placebo influences.
And you are here now complaining that we don’t take therapeutic touch seriously– that we don’t regard them as serious and trustworthy scientists? For Heaven’s sake, you claim to have a PhD! That should indicate some capacity for critical thought..
“Perhaps we skeptics need to try and explain to you why we seem so biased against TT”
Oh pmoran, you wish I were an ignoramus but I hate to disappoint you, I am not. I designed and analyzed experiments for 4 years while getting a PhD, so you don’t have to explain the scientific process to me.
There is one experiment that I know of that “disproves” TT, and of course that’s the one experiment you “skeptics” know about and constantly cite. In that experiment the TT practitioners did not practice healing but tried to sense an energy field when their hands were not moving. They failed, but that does not mean they would have failed in a normal healing context. Furthermore, this was an unblinded experiment with low power — but I never hear you “skeptics” complain about that.
There have been many studies showing that TT can be effective. Of course the quality of the studies must vary widely and I would not accept TT based on only one of them. And I am not saying I do accept TT — I am saying there is evidence for it, and it would be unscientific to discard and ignore evidence.
You materialist “skeptics” think TT is implausible because you do not believe in what is variously referred to as life energy, qi, chi, prana, bioenergy, biofields, etc., etc. And you do not believe in this because vitalism is not the current fashion in biology. There were no scientific experiments that disproved vitalism; it simply faded out of fashion.
You are taught in biology classes that vitalism is wrong, and you obediently accept whatever you were taught. No amount of evidence can change your mind, because the authorities and the experts all agree, and you trust them.
Rejecting vitalism helped modern scientific medicine to distance itself from all sorts of folk medicine, which helped to elevate the status of the medical profession, to differentiate it from ancient “superstition” and “magic.”
Never mind that energy healing and belief in life energy is common to all cultures at all times and places — with the exception of modern materialist science. All the others were wrong, ignorant, superstitious. Only the materialists are right.
So that is where we are today. Mainstream materialist medical science has run up against some brick walls and interest in CAM is increasing. Scientific research is very expensive, but CAM is being funded now, researching theories that mainstream medicine despises. No wonder you’re so angry, no wonder your minds are slammed shut — your exalted pedestal is getting shaky.
And I am NOT saying all alternative therapies have value, or that every ancient belief is true. Or that every mainstream idea is wrong. I am saying that materialist science is dead set against certain ideas and will not even consider the evidence, even when the researchers are highly qualified, respected, experienced scientists.
Because there are some scientists whose curiosity about nature is stronger than their need to conform.
“And you are here now complaining that we don’t take therapeutic touch seriously– that we don’t regard them as serious and trustworthy scientists? ”
There was no placebo effect in this study, because the subjects were cells. This was a controlled experiment. Novella’s claim that there was no effect is untrue. There was a positive effect that clearly supported the hypothesis.
If you don’t give a damn about scientific evidence, then what is the point of doing research? Why go to all that trouble if the results mean nothing at all?
Pec. “There was no placebo effect in this study, because the subjects were cells. This was a controlled experiment.”
I don’t believe that you have designed or participated in such experiements, as you don’t seem to even understand what you are being told here. Let’s see your name on some published papers.
We should not be needing to explain to any experienced scientist how easily contaminants, artefact and loss of effective controls can creep into nearly all kinds of biological experimentation. Researchers can also easily unconsciously manipulate results by disregarding results that “don’t look right”. This goes on all the time as the result of pressure to publish and to get the “right” results.
And don’t manipulate my words. My reference to placebo was clearly to the supposed effects upon anxiety and pain that TT practitioners were claiming. The resemblance of TT to placebo is enhanced by some of the studies for example the well-known burn study which was supposed to “finally prove TT”. In that the patients said that the procedure made them less anxious and in less pain, but they did not get out of hospital earlier or use less pain mediciation.
So the hypothesis that TT may confer some limited benefits for patients is not seriously disputed (by me, at least). What is disputed is that unique processes or forces lie behind it, that it can help in any major clinical capacity, and that it can perform better than any other other kindly-intended hands-on placebo treatment..
I will be travelling for five weeks and may have little ability to participate for a while.
I won’t have access to the study again until Monday when I am at work.
There was no deception or discarding of results. They presented all the results. They even admit in their discussion that for some things they measured there was a difference for others there were not – and when they analyze all the results together there is no statistically significant effect. They concluded that this was because that statistical analysis was too conservative and their study was underpowered to see an effect with this conservative analysis.
So – they presented everything. It was just their abstract and their ultimate conclusions that were misleading – which is extremely common. I see this all the time in non-controversial studies. It simply makes this data very weak. It certainly is not enough to warrant rewriting the physics books.
Given it’s claims, energy therapy would easily be verifiable with a double blind study. The intent here is obfuscation of the fundamental issue that this hocus pocus energy has never been demonstrated in a scientifically sound manner. It probably has not as the practitioners would be fools to participate.
People here are wasting their time chasing down papers with fundamentally flawed assumptions. I can see why Michelle B reposted HCN’s comments. The troll’s bait has been swallowed hook, line, and sinker.
” for some things they measured there was a difference for others there were not – and when they analyze all the results together there is no statistically significant effect.”
It doesn’t make any sense that this would not be mentioned in the abstract. I would like to see the results section. I have never seen an article that claimed to have an overall effect in the abstract, but really had none. I think you misunderstood.
If the overall planned comparison showed no difference, this would be stated in the abstract.
And there were 2 studies, both claiming the predicted effect — so which one are you talking about?
“We should not be needing to explain to any experienced scientist how easily contaminants, artefact and loss of effective controls can creep into nearly all kinds of biological experimentation.”
I have never said otherwise! I also said, repeatedly, that I would not accept a hypothesis based on a small number of studies. Of course there can be all kinds of fraud and error in any experiment — that is exactly why I thought Harriet, and many other “skeptics,” were wrong for accepting the anti-TT study with no hesitation.
The anti-TT study was by a complete novice, a 9-year-old, while the ones I cited here were by a highly qualified, experienced biologist. You automatically assume the pro-TT study is full of errors and bias, but I have not seen any “skeptic” make those accusations about the anti-TT study.
And, as I keep saying over and over and over, I did not intend to cite one or 2 studies. I am doing whatever lit review I can without being a subscriber to medical journals. I was challenged to provide even one quality reference, because some of the “skeptics” here were absolutely certain I could not find even one.
” the study may have been unpowered to support use of the
conservative, Bonferroni approach to performance of
multiple, pairwise statistical tests.”
“when they analyze all the results together there is no statistically significant effect. They concluded that this was because that statistical analysis was too conservative and their study was underpowered to see an effect with this conservative analysis.”
You don’t understand what the Bonferroni test is. In no way does their statement imply that there was no overall effect.
Since Bonferroni is overly-conservative or inappropriate for many analyses, it would not be considered important enough to mention in the abstract. But publishers may require it as a formality. You were wrong to conclude from that statement that there were opposing effects that cancelled each other out. I will have to see more of the results section.
Let me get this straight. You were conditioned to believe in energy healing and find confirmation in your reading of abstracts that it is real. You do not read the studies themselves and analyze them critically? I assume you also believe in cold fusion. Boy have I got a bridge to sell you in Brooklyn.
PEC –
Unless something can be reliably repeated – if not 100%, at least with better than chance odds – by anyone who has the tools and follows the procedure, it’s useless in a medicalsetting.
Instead of multiple experiments, each claiming to show something is happening … you need to pick one that had a decent protocol and REPLICATE it in another lab with different staff, following the published procedure.
1 – How do you select the TT practicioners for a study? What is the screening test for this ability? How is the energy adjusting ability acertained? How do you know they aren’t just faking it?
2 – Without seeing the experimental protocol, I can’t tell if the staff caring for the cultures knew which were the “TT” cells, which were the “sham”, and which were the “ignored” containers. Cell cultures are, in their own way, as sensitive to handling as lab rats.
3 – If I were designing this, if possible, I would have a “jukebox” cell culture handler that would select the appropriate cell culture/s when the human entered their code number, present it to be therapied or shammed or ignored inside a climate-controlled area for X minutes and put it back.
*********
Also, and we’ll have to wait for Steve on this, did the TT make any parameters worse?
Name that logical fallacy in PECs comments…
Argument from authority:
“I am saying that materialist science is dead set against certain ideas and will not even consider the evidence, even when the researchers are highly qualified, respected, experienced scientists.”
Ad hominem attacks:
“No wonder you’re so angry, no wonder your minds are slammed shut — your exalted pedestal is getting shaky. You complete idiot. You are such a complete moron.”
Appeal to ancient cultures:
“Never mind that energy healing and belief in life energy is common to all cultures at all times and places”
Argument from Personal Incredulity:
“It doesn’t make any sense that this would not be mentioned in the abstract. I would like to see the results section. I have never seen an article that claimed to have an overall effect in the abstract, but really had none.”
I bet someone else can find some of the other 20 logical fallacies mentioned here: http://www.theskepticsguide.org/logicalfallacies.asp.
That’s ridiculous. We have absolutely no reason to think an article published in a mainstream journal by a respected researcher is completely worthless. It is NOT a logical fallacy to mention that this researcher is qualified to do experiments. It is NOT a logical fallacy to say it’s a mainstream journal. If it were not a mainstream journal you would say it’s worthless for that reason.
I don’t have access to the journal and I am not thinking about spending a fortune subscribing to medical journals. This is only a hobby for me. Dr. Novella can post the results section if he likes — I would appreciate that.
Meanwhile, I can guarantee that there were no negative effects that cancelled out the positive effects. That would be mentioned in the abstract, because that would be extremely relevant. Novella is mistaken. The test he mentioned would lower the cutoff for p values when a large number of comparisons are being made. You could have extremely reliable effects for the important comparisons, and less reliable effects for unimportant comparisons, and this test would not account for that. For example, cancer cells did not respond to TT — well that actually confirms the hypothesis, although it was not predicted.
The abstract should explain the relevant and important findings. Statistics done merely as a formality would be omitted from the abstract. If, as Novella claimed, it was a complete wash out, that would absolutely be reported in the abstract.
Assuming that all relevant information is in the abstract is not always true.
I just reviewed a paper from one of the Urology Journals for our monthly Journal Club in which they claim that Alfuzosin (a drug that blocks the muscle in the ureter) decreases time to expulsion of a distal ureteral stone (with p<0.05 and so forth) in the abstract.
Then you read the results section and the confidence intervals for the time to expulsion in the placebo and the drug were very similar, although the group in the drug was in average “statistically better”.
The study would have convinced me if the confidence intervals were not as similar, for example: 1-4 days compared to 5-10 days, as opposed what they found on the study: 0.8-12 days in the placebo versus 1-15 days in the drug (I don’t remeber the exact numbers at the moment).
This is just to say that its hard to make any conclusions out of an abstract and is naive to assume that all people are 100% completely honest and will never omit information from an abstract.
“Meanwhile, I can guarantee that there were no negative effects that cancelled out the positive effects. That would be mentioned in the abstract, because that would be extremely relevant.” Only guarantee if you yourself verify it. I have read enough articles to know better. You would think an increased risk of MIs in patients on vioxx would be extremely relevant, wouldn’t you?
“This is just to say that its hard to make any conclusions out of an abstract and is naive to assume that all people are 100% completely honest and will never omit information from an abstract.”
I never said I had complete faith that the abstract is accurate and honest. I said that I think Novella’s claim must be false. I do not think he read the results carefully and I think he jumped to a wrong conclusion because that is what he wants to believe — that energy healing is all fake or delusion.
All we’re doing now is speculating since we don’t have the article. I will bet you, though, that Novella was wrong in implying that the abstract was utterly misleading. As long as I don’t have the article, he can say anything at all and the “skeptics” here will believe it. Because you don’t want to think that an energy healing experiment can have meaningful positive results.
weing,
What Novella is claiming — that these experiments had no overall effect — would always be reported in the abstract. It would be crazy to leave out something that important. He obviously misunderstood the statistics. If he were right, the “skeptics” would be all over it. I can pretty much guarantee that he is mistaken. But we’ll see.
That has not been my experience. Sorry.
Any relationship to Antoni Gronowicz?
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C00E5DE1F39F93AA25753C1A963948260
“That has not been my experience. Sorry.”
Well maybe we will find out. But there are plenty of other energy experiments. I’m sure you will assume all are the result of fakery, incompetence and self-deception. We could make that assumption about any research though — and then what is the point of doing research?
Would you say all research published on the existence of the Easter Bunny are the results of fakery, incompetence, and self-deception?
Hiya, pec.
You wrote:
pec’s quote ends with the word “disappeared” above. The rest of the words are mine.
Sorry for the missed tag and any resulting confusion.
Below are the paragraphs from the paper on the statistics used. Orac has also written on these two papers (http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/08/maybe_we_should_use_therapeutic_touch.php)
and came to the same conclusion as me.
He also noted that the JACM version of the paper did not have the more elaborate statistical analysis that the JOR version did. The methods below are from JOR.
Essentially, the Bonferroni method is used to adjust for the fact that multiple comparisons are being made. This is to avoid cherry picking positive results out of the negative ones. When this was done the results were generally not statistically significant. This was not reflected in the abstract.
Again from the discussion:
“However, once again the study may have been unpowered to support use of the conservative, Bonferroni approach to performance of multiple, pairwise statistical tests. The p-values at 4 and 6 weeks were both equal to 0.029. Although these pvalues fell below the nominal 0.05 cutoff for significance, they did not reach the more extreme threshold of 0.0167 required by use of the Bonferroni method.”
Actually, reading through again I see that there was one result that was significant even after Bonferroni: calcium content in TT compared to placebo at 2 and 4 weeks. What is odd, though, is that this was not significant when compared to control, which overall showed a smaller effect that placebo. The pattern is not consistent. There is also no clear dose-response effect.
So most of the effects vanished with proper statistical analysis, and there was no pattern in the results that makes sense if there were a real effect at play. You see the kind of scatter that is evident with studies of null effects.
And there were problems with the methods – such as no mention of how the handling of any of the plates were blinded.
Here is the statistics section of the methods:
Statistics
Generally, most replications of an experiment involved three sets of six-well plates. DNA synthesis, mineralization, and a
Northern blots were performed in one experiment. HOBs and SaOs-2 cells were plated in different dishes, treated separately,
but in the same TT session. Both HOBs and SaOs-2 were analyzed from one experiment in a blinded, nonbiased manner with coding and with the same biochemical assay at the same time.
Data analysis focused on comparing the distribution of levels of proliferation and mineralization across study conditions, for
example, ‘‘therapeutic touch versus control’’ or ‘‘therapeutic touch versus control versus placebo.’’ All comparisons used
‘‘exact’’ nonparametric statistical tests. Nonparametric tests were selected because study measures typically did not follow
normal distributions and sometimes exhibited clear evidence of heterogeneity of variance between groups. ‘‘Exact’’ versions of the tests were performed to avoid reliance on ‘‘large-sample’’ approximations in the calculation of p-values.
For two-group comparisons (therapeutic touch versus control) that involved combination of observations across replicated
experiments, the stratified Wilcoxon rank sum test proposed by Lehmann was used.21 This technique involves ranking observations within experiments to account for ‘‘block effects’’ that may vary from one experiment to the next. The
significance level for these comparisons was set at 5%. For three-group comparisons (therapeutic touch vs. control versus
placebo) that involved combination of observations across replicated experiments, the Lehmann technique was applied
to each of the three possible pairwise comparisons of groups, and the Bonferroni method was used to account for potential
inflation of the Type I error through multiple testing.22 Thus, in these circumstances, a 1.67% significance level was applied to
each pairwise comparison to keep the overall probability of a Type I error in any comparison at or below 5%.
The Bonferroni method is known to be ‘‘conservative’’ in that the ‘‘effective’’ probability of any Type I error is often less than the nominal, desired level of 5%.22 In one case, a three-group comparison was conducted that did not involve combination of data from different experiments. In this circumstance, the Kruskal-Wallis method provided the basis for initial testing. When that test provided a statistically significant result, the Wilcoxon rank sum test was used in conjunction with the Bonferroni correction to evaluate all pairwise comparisons. In another case, two groups (therapeutic touch vs. control) were compared at three time points (2, 4, and 6 weeks) using data from a single experiment. The difference in distribution between groups was assessed at each individual time point using the Wilcoxon test and the Bonferroni correction was applied to account for multiple testing across time points.
You left out the actual results. Thanks a lot.
If all the results were in the predicted directions, and all p values were below .05, than what you are saying is bs. But I need to actually see the results, obviously.
“The p-values at 4 and 6 weeks were both equal to 0.029. Although these pvalues fell below the nominal 0.05 cutoff for significance, they did not reach the more extreme threshold of 0.0167 required by use of the Bonferroni method.”
This does NOT mean researchers would generally consider this to be a chance result! You know that very well, or you should.
And I can’t imagine why you posted selectively so I can’t see any of the data.
“The p-values at 4 and 6 weeks were both equal to 0.029″
For the overall comparison? And how many comparisons were there? One in twenty are expected to be chance. If there were 20 comparisons and all were significant at p < .05 then anyone would agree the results were positive.
But you left all that out, so readers here will assume there was no overall effect.
Well Orac sure is desperate to discredit this study.
Anyway, now I know that Novella was hoping we would mindlessly accept his untruthful statement, that the positive effects were cancelled out by negative effects, amounting to nothing overall. There were p values well below .05 for the overall comparisons. Any reasonable researcher would acknowledge that being a tiny bit over some arbitrary — and in this case, high conservative and not necessarily appropriate — cutoff does not mean there was no difference between experimental and control groups. There were p values well under the usual .05 cutoff.
So Orac goes on and on and on about how this can’t be real, this can’t be valid research, TT is woo, it can’t be true, oh no what will we do, what if science gets overrun by woo.
Dangerous comments must be moderated. Our materialist worldview must not be threatened.
So uh maybe my comments will show up some day.
I always thought the Bonferroni approach meant you have to divide the alpha ie 0.05 by the number of variables you are comparing to determine significance. Otherwise you’ll see connections where none exist. Am I wrong?
Weing – you are correct.
I cannot post the entire study for copyright reasons. Also – I have it in pdf, which takes considerable time to copy and then fix the formatting to make it readable. Register and get the full study if you want. Or take a look at the link I provided to Orac’s discussion – he reproduces some of the data with graphs.
The bottom line is that this data is WEAK. This study is not convincing at all and is entirely compatible with there being no real effect.
“The bottom line is that this data is WEAK.”
And, very conveniently, you can’t show it to us!!
Wait wait wait for moderation. Dangerous comment.
If all the planned comparisons were in the expected direction, and most of them had p values well below .05, then the data is NOT WEAK.
Is it legitimate to treat a single plate of 6 wells as six independent experiments? If there are minor differences in temperature, atmosphere composition, light exposure, plating technique, etc, each group of 6 wells that is treated “the same” is going to be more similar to themselves than to a separate group of 6 wells that is necessarily treated slightly differently.
Any differential treatment of different plates requires that they be separated in space for some period of time.
I would really like to see multiple control plates go through the protocol to see how much variation there is between plates.
pec, if you want to see the whole paper, you can purchase access for $39.00 here.
Or, you can go to your local university biomed library if they have a subscription. (That’s what I’m planning to do, BTW. I don’t have on-line access to the most recent pubs for this journal, and I’m not about to spend $39 on it.)
If you’re not willing to do either of those, then that’s your problem. No one here can legally send you a copy, nor can they legally transcribe all the results and post them here. That’s due to copyright laws, not to any nefarious intent of anyone on this blog.
In other words, you should probably shut up and stop accusing people of arbitrarily withholding things from you. And maybe see someone about that persecution complex you’ve developed.
“If you’re not willing to do either of those, then that’s your problem”
I am studying the subject of energy healing, as a hobby, partly out of interest and partly to show that you are uninformed and misinformed on the subject. If I paid for every article, or drove to the university library, it would become a major sacrifice of money and time. And you know that, so I should not have to say it.
What you are saying, essentially, is that people who are outside the profession and do not have subscriptions at work should have blind trust in the authorities and experts. We should just shut up and let you lead the way.
Novella, and Orac, deliberately left out most of the data we needed to see. And they did this because the results were not weak or ambiguous or doubtful. If the data had been weak, they would have displayed it proudly.
This article is a serious threat to your worldview. But there are many others, and now they are starting to become mainstream. I am studying the subject as well as I can without access to medical journals — there is a lot of free information and I am making use of it.
If Novella wanted to be honest and straightforward he would have posted the relevant data. Instead, he told us, untruthfully, that the results were a wash out. If that were true, Orac would have said it also, but he didn’t. Orac did his damnedest to point out faults, but he never claimed a flat or negative result — just not quite up to some exceedingly conservative and unrealistic probability level.
So Novella showed himself to be either extremely careless or deliberately dishonest. And I am supposed to blindly trust his evaluation of this research?
Ah, wait wait wait for moderation. Dangerous comment warning.
If my comments ever make it past censorship, you will see them.
[...] at least a couple of my readers have taken to heart my suggestion that, if the pro-CAM, “no skeptics need apply” new wikipedia known as Wiki4CAM won’t allow any scientific evidence to be posted [...]
I answered you qetzal, but it still has to get past the authorities.
And I don’t see why these results would be considered surprising, since electromagnetism can accelerate bone healing, and organisms generate electromagnetic fields. W
I took out the swear word, but it’s still in the censor trap. Too bad, can’t answer you qetzal. So much for scientific debate.
“I am studying the subject of energy healing, as a hobby, partly out of interest and partly to show that you are uninformed and misinformed on the subject. If I paid for every article, or drove to the university library, it would become a major sacrifice of money and time. ”
No pain, no gain.
Sorry, pec, don’t know what to tell you.
From the sounds of it, perhaps your IP has been flagged by the blog’s spam filter for some reason. I assume it wasn’t by intent of any of the blog authors.
(If it was an intentional action, I think it was misguided. OTOH, you’ve established a long history of misquoting, mischaracterizing, and miscontruing what the blog authors and others say, so I don’t exactly hold you blameless.)
That aside, I’ve looked over the J Orthopaed Res paper (Jhaveri et al., 2008, Therapeutic Touch Affects DNA Synthesis and Mineralization of Human Osteoblasts in Culture). That one I could access on line. (The other I can only get in person at the library. That will have to wait a few days.)
Here are my thoughts on Jhaveri et al.
They did quite a few comparisons of TT-treated & control cells. Most showed no significant effect. For example, they say they tried treating HOB and SaOs-2 cells with a range of different TT doses (1/wk – 5/wk) over a 1-week period & saw no specific effect.
But they also reported significant effects for a few conditions. For example, HOB treated twice per wk for 2 wks showed apparently significant increases in 3H-thymidine uptake (a measure of DNA synthesis). Interestingly, the same treatment regimen had no significant effect on SaOs-2 cells.
They did PCNA staining of the affected HOB cells, & also reported a significant effect. If those HOB cells really did have increased DNA synthesis, you’d expect to see increased 3H-thy uptake and increased PCNA staining. In other words, those two observations suggest the HOB cells really were showing a difference from control, but if so, they’re really only describing a single effect. (Meaning that increased 3H-thy and increased PCNA are two aspects of the same effect; they’re not independent examples of the purported effect of TT.)
They also report that TT significantly increases</i. mineralization in HOB cells, but decreases it in SaOs-2 cells. That’s rather odd.
Finally, they report differences in certain mRNA levels.
Based on everything they report, I think it’s reasonable to conclude there were some real differences in some of the treated cultures. The question is whether those differences are due to the TT treatment, or some uncontrolled variable. Frankly, I can’t tell. They talk about their efforts to avoid bias, and some of the steps are good. But it’s hard to tell if they covered all their bases. It doesn’t help that the paper reads as if written by someone for whom English is not a first language. (Not meant as a slight to anyone, BTW.)
Key things that aren’t clear to me:
1) Were control and TT-treated cultures always processed in parallel? I think so, but it’s not made clear.
2) Were possible environmental differences adequately controlled? The authors talk about clamping treated and control dishes at opposite ends of an L-shaped lab. Did they test whether temperatures might differ in the two locations? If so, they don’t say. That alone could be more than enough to cause significant differences. For example, if a TT-treated culture was clamped at one end of the lab, and the matched control culture was clamped at the other end, if the control side was cooler, DNA synthesis in those cells would likely be inhibited.
3) Were the reported significant results shown to be reproducible? This is a big one, and it’s fairly maddening that you can’t tell. The authors frequently note that results represent 3 or 4 or sometimes more experiments. But they also make clear that in some cases, at least, they combined all the data from multiple experiments before testing for statistical significance.
So, for example, they say:
and,
Did 3 independent experiments with HOB all showed significant effects? If so, that increases confidence in their reported results. But their wording suggests to me that they pooled the results of 3 HOB experiments and then analyzed for significant, and similarly pooled 5 experiments for SaOs-2. (If that’s not what they did, why would they cite a single p value for multiple experiments?)
If the latter is the case, then they’re really reporting a single, unverified results that could be simply due to chance.
There are a few other bothersome inconsistencies. For example, at least twice they cite p values in the text that don’t appear to be consistent with the relevant graphs. Referring to their figure 2C, they state in the text that:
Yet visual inspection of Fig 2C shows that the difference between placebo and TT is less than the difference between control and TT, while the error bar for placebo appears larger than for control. If that’s correct, the p value for TT versus placebo should be higher than for TT versus control, not lower (as stated in the text). Perhaps that’s just a simple misstatement or mislabeling in the figure, but there are at least a couple of things like that, which is disturbing.
Bottom line, if they repeatedly observed that a certain treatment regimen gave a reproducibly significant effect in certain cells, that would be interesting. Obviously, it would need to be repeated by other investigators to really rule out any confounding factors the authors may have missed, just like any other interesting result.
But as best I can tell, they have NOT reported a reproducible effect. They seem to have seen a true difference between certain groups, but they apparently haven’t shown that those differences are reproducible across experiments. They made quite a few comparisons, most of which even they admit were not significantly different. If they haven’t reproduced the supposedly significant ones, there’s no reason to think they weren’t significant just by chance. And of course, that’s exactly what the Bonferroni-corrected analysis suggests.
pec wrote:
Novella, and Orac, deliberately left out most of the data we needed to see. And they did this because the results were not weak or ambiguous or doubtful.
and
In other words, you’re saying Novella and Orac deliberately lied about what the article says, even though you admit you haven’t read it!
That’s low, even for you pec. It’s contemptible. You should be ashamed, but I doubt you have that capacity.
“you’re saying Novella and Orac deliberately lied about what the article says,”
NO, I said Novella either lied or was mistaken — he said negative effects cancelled out the positive effects, and the overall result was nothing. That was not true. Orac didn’t say that, and he certainly would have said it if it were true!
Darn it, I can’t even answer you Qetzal, it’s censored again.
Orac seemed to give accurate, but incomplete, data.
This is too frustrating. Qetzal you said I said something I did not. But I can’t answer!!!!
One of the bloggers said something that was not true. Only one of them.
Dr. N misrepresented the data. Dr. O did not. Although neither gave us enough.
Maybe that’s the secret! I can’t include their names!
“you’re saying N and O deliberately lied about what the article says,”
NO, I said N either lied or was mistaken — he said negative effects cancelled out the positive effects, and the overall result was nothing. That was not true. O didn’t say that, and he certainly would have said it if it were true!
Ok, the above is my comment. I took out the blogger’s names and it went.
Damned stupid blog software.
“They made quite a few comparisons, most of which even they admit were not significantly different.”
Ok, but were they in the predicted direction? And were they significant by normal criteria? And do not count the cancer cell treatments — those should not be positive anyway.
” if a TT-treated culture was clamped at one end of the lab, and the matched control culture was clamped at the other end, if the control side was cooler, DNA synthesis in those cells would likely be inhibited.”
A researcher would have to be brain-dead to not think of something like that.
I did not post this study as proof of energy healing. This one suggests that there is something going on, and there are many others.
I am reading Gary Schwartz’s energy healing book right now. Harriet reviewed it and said nothing about the many experiments he did for over a decade. Nothing at all. But she went on and on about the one “skeptic” energy experiment that supposedly proved energy fields can’t be detected by healers. Only one study was enough for her. But Gary Schwartz has done many, as have other researchers. None of that counts. You try to poke little holes in any positive experiment, but a negative experiment, just one, disproves them all.
This study is not perfect — none ever are.
Wow, I popped by and apparently it’s all pec all the time now! No wonder the spam filter thinks she’s a spambot!
pec whines:
The interested reader (assuming there are any!) is invited to judge for themselves:
That is an unambiguous accusation that Novella and Orac of lied by omission.
Two paragraphs later from the same comment:
Again, an unambiguous claim of deliberate dishonesty.
pec, you’re a liar, a punk, and a troll. P!ss off.
Pec,
You really have to stop flooding SBM comments threads with so many comments. It’s not fair to other commenters and gives the distinct impression that you’re trying to filibuster and in essence drown out those who disagree with you using a tsunami of verbiage in the form of multiple short comments. Please consolidate your observations into far fewer comments.
Don’t think that we bloggers at SBM haven’t noticed your behavior and that we don’t consider your behavior at present to be incredibly obnoxious and annoying. We do. We have tolerated it thus far because our dedication to free speech and letting anyone have their say has (so far) won out over the need to keep the discussion forums from degenerating into mindless free-for-alls. Behind the scenes, however, even the normally very mild-mannered Steve Novella is starting to become exasperated with your antics, and it takes a lot to annoy him–far more than it takes to annoy me. In fact, if the decision were up to me alone I wouldn’t hesistate to ban you for a month for flooding comment threads with your nonsense over the last few days and then, after the ban is ultimately lifted, put you on probation with a very low threshold for banning you again. It has nothing to do with “suppressing” your free speech and everything to do with keeping you from harming the community that has developed on this blog and destroying the value of the discussions here.
Certainly waking up this morning, perusing the blog, and finding “all pec all the time” (as Fifi put it) in the comments made me think even more that you are not contributing anything but irritation to our regular commenters (and us), not to mention that you’re dampening their enthusiasm for substantive discussion by hijacking discussions. Your casting aspersions on people’s honesty is also most definitely unjustified and unappreciated. Stop it. Now.
pec,
If you are reading his book, then do it. Don’t just take his word for it. Review his actual experiments and the methodology and then make up your mind regarding the validity of his claims, not now. Then come back armed with the relevant data to back up your claims.
I was challenged to find even one positive study on energy healing. I have found many, but of course have not read them all. I posted one that is mainstream and suggests that there is something real going on.
I had an extremely hard time posting, and that is the main reason there are so many short comments from me. I would be accused of something and try to reply only to have most of my replies blocked. So I posted a lot of short comments. It is extremely frustrating to be accused and not able to defend yourself.
I think the main reason Dr. G is so annoyed with me now is that I am obviously right about some important things. No one could honestly say that experiment is a pile of trash — of course Dr. N tried (can’t post their names for some reason).
What you hate most about me is that I am logical and scientific, yet open-minded about CAM. You have convinced yourself that anyone who is open-minded about CAM has to be a self-deceiving, gullible idiot. Well you are wrong.
Actually, pec was challenged to find one well conducted study on energy healing that supports her beliefs (not one “positive” study that she hasn’t even bothered looking over).
I for one don’t “hate” you pec. I actually feel pity for you since you’re so desperate about posting here, paranoid enough to think a spam filter (you know, an algorithm aka a mathematical equation!) is personally out to get you because you’re unable to grasp even rudimentary aspects of how algorithmic programs work (which kind of points to the fact that you lie about your education in an attempt at false authority), and you clearly feel lonely and victimized by life, the universe and everything from your family, to doctors to strangers on the internet. Since you’ve made this blog all about you all the time it seems only fair to discuss you and why you act so irrationally and so much like a troll. (I think it’s quite possible you’re not a professional troll but just a rather sad, lonely, old lady who life has passed by and who is looking for someone to blame for her misery. I suspect this is the most social interact and connection to others you get, which is why you’re so attached and need constant attention.)
Well then prove it. Do the work that’s required to prove you are not self-deceived and gullible by critically evaluating studies and by approaching CAM skeptically and not accepting its claims at face value.
Not a single comment of yours has been “blocked” by me. I check the spam filters periodically, and I have personally approved many of your comments. I’m sure our fearless leader Steve has done the same. Your comments are approved as soon as one of us gets around to moderating them. You are simply too impatient to wait for that to happen. Also, it wouldn’t surprise me if your recent flooding of the comments has led to the spam filter to view your behavior (flooding) in the comments as sufficiently spam-like that it doesn’t take much in addition in the content of your comments for it to flag them as spam.
Now, back to the actual blog topic….
It’s worth mentioning that while the internet is set up in quite a democratic manner it’s the way it’s not innately “free” or democratic for a number of reasons (access to technology being one, the other being that it can be easily controlled by changing structures and implementing various kinds of structures – which is why huge corporations throw so much money at the legal battles around controlling the internet and how people use it).
It’s pretty clear that pec’s short on personal responsibility and understanding of cause and effect, and long on blame.
“just a rather sad, lonely, old lady who life has passed by and who is looking for someone to blame for her misery”
Shove it Fifi you are an ugly asshole. I don’t care if I get banned for this. You are sick and disgusting and evil and brainless.
You’re an asshole Fifi. Crawl back in your ugly cave.
You are a hideous brainless asshole. I have never had to insult anyone on a blog before. You are intolerable.
oh fifififif you are so brilliant. I am sure your understanding of algorithms, and everything else in the universe, is profound. I just know that everyone here is deeply impressed by your wisdom and understanding. I’m sure no one thinks you are an ugly evil brain-damaged pathetic insulting no-nothing.
I am sorry, censors, I have never tried to insult anyone else on a blog in my entire life.
Forgive me if someone has already cited this elsewhere, but here is an article that discusses, in detail, what’s wrong with some of Gary Schwartz’s research:
“How Not to Test Mediums
Critiquing the Afterlife Experiments”
Ray Hyman
Abstract:
“Professor Gary Schwartz makes revolutionary claims that he has provided competent scientific evidence for survival of consciousness and–even more extraordinary–that mediums can actually communicate with the dead. He is badly mistaken. The research he presents is flawed, and in numerous ways. Probably no other extended program in psychical research deviates so much from accepted norms of scientific methodology as this one.”
Available at:
http://www.csicop.org/si/2003-01/medium.html
What did I just say about ad hominem attacks and insults, pec? I’ll tell you. I said: Stop it. Now.
I don’t want to hear who started it. I no longer even care. Just stop it, and stop acting like a four year old child seeing how much she can get away with.
While I’m at it, I would point out that my admonitions to remain civil go for everyone else who has indulged in nastiness, not just pec, although only pec has recently reached such a consistent level of obnoxiousness as to warrant a stern ultimatum. I understand that pec makes it easy to sink to her level, but, please, please, please, do try to avoid the temptation.
Editors Note: pec has been banned from commenting on this blog for 30 days for unacceptable behavior including over-posting, harassment of other commenters, and rude behavior. She was given what we consider to be more than fair warning but continued to behave in a way that was disruptive to productive discussion on the issues raised in this blog.
In the name of open discussion we have had an extremely high threshold for banning readers from commenting. We regret having to take this action, but we reserve the right to maintain the integrity and functionality of this blog.
Also note that any attempt to subvert this temporary banning will result in a permanent ban.
Thanks for the link Dr Atwood.
And a general apology for addressing pec and her accusations/assumptions and speculating. It’s just a bit hard not to view someone as a specimen and want to poke them to see what they are when they’ve totally dominated the comments section with lies and slander and are such tenacious believers in and promoters of CAM on a science-based medicine blog.