We love junk science

[Superman]

From Randi.org

Here in Florida, a number of professors in the Florida State University College of Medicine are saying they will resign if FSU administrators continue to pursue the inclusion of a proposed chiropractic school, for which the legislature has earmarked $9,000,000. As many universities have discovered, there's money in teaching quackery, as well as in the practice.

Dr. Ian Rogers, an assistant professor at FSU's Pensacola campus, in a Dec. 15 e-mail, refers to the plan as "plainly ludicrous." This opinion, shared by other academics at FSU, reflects a belief held by many in the medical establishment that chiropractic is a pseudoscience that leads to unnecessary and sometimes harmful treatments. However, the American Medical Association, badly wounded by the outcomes of various court encounters with the chiropractors, are now very careful in making statements about the efficacy of this system. They have effectively been silenced by their fear of litigation.


If established, such a chiropractic school would be the only one of its kind in the USA. FSU professors are even circulating a parody map of their future campus that places a fictional Department of ESP Studies, a Bigfoot Institute, School of Astrology, and Faith Healing School adjacent to a future Chiropractic School.

The matter will be voted on this month before the FSU board of trustees and the state Board of Governors. Republican Senator Dennis Jones, who led legislative support for the school of chiropractic, said the concerned FSU professors were "overreacting." "If they resign, so be it," he said. Senator Jones is himself a chiropractor....

With the present atmosphere in Washington towards "alternative" modalities and "faith-based" projects — which this would certainly be — the school could also draw lucrative federal grants.

More than 500 faculty members have signed petitions against establishing the chiropractic school, and some of them say they're willing to do more than just sign a petition. They see the move as fatal to the FSU reputation. The faculty as a whole has not yet officially voiced their concerns about the chiropractic school.




Goddam, what the fuck is wrong with this era?

[Admiral Valdemar]

I think this can explain a lot of it.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

Considering that my mother's broken ribs healed suddenly after 2 visits to a chiropractor, I'd consider it not to be quackery.

[Darth Wong]

I suppose it depends on what exactly they're claiming it can do. Physiotherapy is all about moving parts of your body around, so I have no problem imagining that chiropractic would help with certain kinds of pain, particularly back pain. If people start claiming that it can help unrelated ailments, then it starts sliding into the realm of quackery, for sure.

[Mayabird]

I don't call 'em f$u for nothing.

[Alyrium Denryle]

Considering that my mother's broken ribs healed suddenly after 2 visits to a chiropractor, I'd consider it not to be quackery.

Broken ribs have a tendency to heal quickly. ANd yes, it is quackery. If you can point to a mechanism, I will beleive you.

Also, Post hoc

[LadyTevar]

After I started suffering from my herniated disk, I was seeing a chiropracter. While I was seeing him, I was feeling better without resorting to pain pills, and I was moving freer as he gently worked out the kinks in my back. He was also doing some kind of NewAge pressure-point stuff that seemed to work despite my reservations. After all, how could touching certain 'nerve centers' really relive my pain? But it worked, somehow.

Then my insurance company informed me I'd ran out of covered visits. I've not seen him since October. I picked up a refill for my pain pills today, and the first thing I did was ask for enough water to swallow one down.

So... call me a first-person source that yes, Chiropracty isn't all quackry.

[Dark Hellion]

I have worked as a test patient for the American Chiropractors Association at Palmer College. Most Chiropractors do not see themselves as Heal-All physicians, but as specialist physicians who can do things like help with back or joint pain, and as a preventative form of therapy. By general maintanance (god I can't spell today) of joints, ligaments, and muscles, future injuries can be prevented. Both of these make simple sense, and both seem to work.
The junk science chiropractors are obviously doing something different.

[Rye]

Just to add a +1 to all the pro chiropracty stuff here, my mum and auntie have back problems (as have other female members of our family) and chiropracters really have helped them out with their backs. I've seen them come back much more maneuverable and less twingy.

[phongn]

There are quacks in the field and then there are people who really try to relieve the pain. Hopefully FSU's school will be training the latter rather than the former.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I suppose it depends on what exactly they're claiming it can do. Physiotherapy is all about moving parts of your body around, so I have no problem imagining that chiropractic would help with certain kinds of pain, particularly back pain. If people start claiming that it can help unrelated ailments, then it starts sliding into the realm of quackery, for sure.

The whole "school" of chiropractic is quackery. They, like classic osteopaths, think you can cure gallstones by manipulating bones. If they can incidentally treat some pain by manipulation, it isn't due to their scientific rigor. Not to mention since there's no use of the scientific method God knows where the actual healing begins and chiropracters charging for a Placebo effect ends.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I have worked as a test patient for the American Chiropractors Association at Palmer College. Most Chiropractors do not see themselves as Heal-All physicians, but as specialist physicians who can do things like help with back or joint pain, and as a preventative form of therapy. By general maintanance (god I can't spell today) of joints, ligaments, and muscles, future injuries can be prevented. Both of these make simple sense, and both seem to work.
The junk science chiropractors are obviously doing something different.

Yeah, but since they won't officially abandon their quackery nonsense and subscribe themselves to earnest scientific rigor, how can you really know any of that? It seems disingenous to charge people for what could quite possibly be in many cases just an example of the Placebo effect.

[Darth Wong]

Not having taken any courses in the field or observed its classes or students in action, I can't comment on how rigorous their justifications for their methods are, or whether the entire field is quackery as opposed to certain parts of it. However, from the standpoint of general principle, the use of physical manipulation to alleviate pain is known to work. That's all I'm saying here.

Besides, "conventional" medicine has so many skeletons in its past (and present) that many people have lost faith in it, which is probably one of the biggest reasons why people have become fed up and started looking at alternatives. Take the gallstones you mentioned; what's the conventional solution to gallstones? Take out the whole fucking gallbladder with $15000 surgery; there, no more gallstones! Is it that surprising that people start thinking: "are these guys necessarily researching every possible avenue of remedy, or just settling on one that happens to be profitable for them"?

[Illuminatus Primus]

Not having taken any courses in the field or observed its classes or students in action, I can't comment on how rigorous their justifications for their methods are, or whether the entire field is quackery as opposed to certain parts of it. However, from the standpoint of general principle, the use of physical manipulation to alleviate pain is known to work. That's all I'm saying here.

I know, and I concede that physiotherapy (as any licensed physical therapist knows) can help cope with joint pain and injury.

However, there is little scientific rigor in coming to their conclusions. It is purely incidental - from a scientifically analytical point of view - that the joint and bone manipulation that was originally theorized to cure any ailment actually does function in some cases.

The point being that chiropracters do not really know what really works, how, or why. There's a plethora of scientifically unjustified treatment and assumptions. Treatment that costs a patient money, and treatment which carries potential risk to the health of the patient. And we're talking about often forceful movements of the spinal column. They subject patients to rotary neck movements which can in some cases, lead to strokes, paralysis, other trauma or even death. Admittably in terms of raw procedures these are few, but since the science is not understood chiropracters could be subjecting people with particular injuries or conditions to rotrary movements which for them is highly dangerous. They also tend to overuse x-rays, which even many chiropracters state is not causally related in most instances to the manipulations they perform anyhow. There's the risk of radiation exposure due to excessive x-rays of a patient's trunk, and also the simple unnecessary overcharging of patients for this procedure.

Besides, "conventional" medicine has so many skeletons in its past (and present) that many people have lost faith in it, which is probably one of the biggest reasons why people have become fed up and started looking at alternatives.

Ok. The Tuskegee incident and others aside, medical doctors and their professional organizations do enforce scientific rigor and establish wherever possible causal relation treatments to healing of particular diseases, aiming to remove risk and harm wherever possible. This simply is not possible in a school of practice where quakery is not seperated from real world treatment. The curious situation is one really does not know how or what is going on and more research is needed to eliminate unnecessary, risky, and superfluous procedures.

Take the gallstones you mentioned; what's the conventional solution to gallstones? Take out the whole fucking gallbladder with $15000 surgery; there, no more gallstones! Is it that surprising that people start thinking: "are these guys necessarily researching every possible avenue of remedy, or just settling on one that happens to be profitable for them"?

How is that different than any other Appeal to Motive? Besides, if this was true than one would expect stuff like arthoscopy's broad usage to have been suppressed, as well as such treatments as alternatives to open-heart by-pass surgery. Doctors are liable for invasive, life-threatening procedures and there is no such thing as a "routine" operation.

A better question is why the chiropracters do not adopt scientific rigor; I suspect finding that a handsome percentage of their procedures are nothing but Placebo effects and cutting into their tradecraft might have something to do with it.

[Darth Wong]

I know, and I concede that physiotherapy (as any licensed physical therapist knows) can help cope with joint pain and injury.

However, there is little scientific rigor in coming to their conclusions. It is purely incidental - from a scientifically analytical point of view - that the joint and bone manipulation that was originally theorized to cure any ailment actually does function in some cases.

The point being that chiropracters do not really know what really works, how, or why.

That, to me, is why it would be good to set up a research centre to actually study this, rather than leaving practitioners to futz about while mainstream medicine figures it's not worth even bothering to investigate.

Ok. The Tuskegee incident and others aside, medical doctors and their professional organizations do enforce scientific rigor and establish wherever possible causal relation treatments to healing of particular diseases, aiming to remove risk and harm wherever possible.

Are you aware that until the 1970s, many medical professionals believed that infants do not feel pain, hence there is no ethical problem with unaesthetized circumcision at birth? While medical science ideally practices the scientific method, in practice there has been too much bullfuckery. Too many dangerous drugs have been released for public use only to be recalled later, after they have already done their damage. Even the liver damage caused by excess use of over-the-counter Tylenol, for which "alarmists" were complaining for literally decades, was not recognized as a serious problem until the last few years.

How is that different than any other Appeal to Motive?

It's not an Appeal to Motive, dumb-ass. I hate it when people abuse the names of logical fallacies just because they know them and think they can just hurl them at anything which remotely looks like a fallacy in their minds. Did I say that the motives of the people charging $15000 to cut out your gallbladder disproved any argument of any kind? No, I said that their motives make them not bother to investigate any other way of dealing with gallstones.

Besides, if this was true than one would expect stuff like arthoscopy's broad usage to have been suppressed, as well as such treatments as alternatives to open-heart by-pass surgery. Doctors are liable for invasive, life-threatening procedures and there is no such thing as a "routine" operation.

The fact that these other treatments also put money in their pockets hardly substantiates your reasoning. People are not totally irresponsible, but there is generally zero effort made to investigate anything which cannot either be charged on a case-by-case procedural basis or patented for long-term royalty returns.

A better question is why the chiropracters do not adopt scientific rigor; I suspect finding that a handsome percentage of their procedures are nothing but Placebo effects and cutting into their tradecraft might have something to do with it.

It's because there is no incentive to do so; unlike pharmaceutical companies, they can't produce a patent on whatever they discover. Any individual chiropractic organization which did this would burn up a ton of money with no reasonable assurance of self-interest. That is why government funding should be used in this direction.

[Fire Fly]

I could care less what people say about chiropractry. I've been there on several visits and each time I go, I always feel better. No more sharp pinching pains between the shoulder blades, no more pain in the hips and lower back, no more hitting-the-funny-bone feelings in the arms, no more sore necks and headaches. I always recommened my chiropracter to people who have really painful backs and sore necks because I know I get instant results. That's why people actually go to chhiropracters; 2 visits will get just about all the kinks out. No medicine to take, no injections, no prescriptions. And that's what people want now a days, instant results and that's what chiropracters can offer and on top of that, it will usually work. That's what I've experienced, at least.

[BoredShirtless]

That's what I've experienced, at least.

Me too. And their solutions usually lasts, if you do the follow up exercises they tell you to do at home.

[The Yosemite Bear]

I'll put my vote besides Tevar, I have a fucked up back&neck in the past.

actually I first visited a chriopracter when I was in grade school..

note to others do not jump off tall structures.

if failling try not to land on one's back...