Reiki invades an operating room

...Then there is shopping on Etsy, where Big Pharma has unveiled a new product for minions:
http://www.etsy.com/listing/115942694/shape-shifting-lizard-skin-cream-…

MESSAGE BEGINS---------------------

Mining Gold? If I had the equipment necessary, I would make that "laugh" sound you all seem to enjoy so much. How charming that someone thought that shapeshifting was accomplished through the use of cosmetics. Believe me, I wish it were that simple, and didn't itch so much. Dr. Minion Bimler, I think you know what to do about this.

I feel a molt coming on . . .

Lord Draconis Zeneca, VH7ihL
Foreward Mavoon of the Great Fleet, Pharmaca Magna of Terra, EZ-Molt™ Gold Level Sales Associate

Glaxxon PharmaCOM Orbital
00101101101

--------------------MESSAGE ENDS

I’m almost afraid to ask if physicians really shop on Ebay while they have a patient on the OR table.

I'm amazed a cellphone can withstand autoclaving. They do sterilize these gadgets, don't they?

The Reiki Master S quoted wrote:

Lyme is a vibrational disease. Everything is

If by "vibrational" she means "psychosomatic", that is probably true of the great majority of mostly self-diagnosed cases of "chronic Lyme" you read about. I fear she doesn't though, I suspect she is referring to the idea of the body, and matter in general, as nothing but vibrating energy, "the body as a matrix of energy and information" as Judith's Toronto Bioenergy Associates refer to it. It says so in quantum physics, so it must be true (it really doesn't).

The idea seems to be that the higher the frequency a person vibrates at the healthier they are, until you get to those who can live on nothing but sunlight and air, and the advanced masters who have developed a body of light. There really are those who believe we are all evolving into light beings (one of my close relatives does, bless her). As Narad has pointed out, Theosophy lives.

It is true that matter and energy are interconvertible, but that doesn't mean that human bodies behave like energy and not matter. The electromagnetic radiation and kinetic energy released by the bomb dropped on Nagasaki was the result of converting one single gram of mass into energy; the energy a human being would release if converted into energy would be tens of thousands of times greater. Luckily that doesn't happen, human bodies remain obstinately solid* and converting energy to mass takes a particle accelerator. Quantum weirdness really only happens at a sub-atomic level, by definition. That doesn't stop this idea of matter as vibrating energy, and non-locality and quantum entanglement occurring at a macro level from being remarkably popular.

*I did once meet a man who claimed to have teleported from one room to another while meditating, in front of witnesses, but even ignoring prior plausibility, neither he nor the witnesses seemed very reliable.

They do sterilize these gadgets, don’t they?

There are sleeves, but I'm kinda thinking the answer is "not necessarily."

Then again, I suppose that the general issue could be worse than Ebay.

I did once meet a man who claimed to have teleported from one room to another while meditating, in front of witnesses, but even ignoring prior plausibility, neither he nor the witnesses seemed very reliable.

"Steve Newell was an entirely different kind of guy. He liked it in the dark and spooky woodlands of Weir, and his 'magic' was unusual and, in a way, admirable because his attitude towards it was completely lacking in the pseudo-scientific double-talk and fantastic ontological categorical speculations which pass for philosophy among most occultists. Steve arrived, naturally, on a pitch-dark, windy, rainy night. After he had settled in he let us all know his idea of a good time was to walk through walls and talk to the dead, or at least to beings that did not conform to the usual restrictions of time and space. Could we buy that? Did we think it was crazy?

"I responded with my standard 'life is a dream' pitch. 'You can go on any kind of trip you like. I don’t think you will learn much by doing that kind of stuff, but maybe that’s what you have to learn,' I concluded."

(Speaking of Twain, the chapters of this work are appropriately the same as in Connecticut Yankee.)

One way I tend to look at it: The macro world is what happens when all the quantum stuff averages out. Weird and improbable things can happen when you're looking at the quantum level, but those small events are generally overwhelmed by the "normal" stuff. Quantum weirdness has always been a part of our world, but probability prevents it from adding up. When we learned about quantum mechanics, it didn't tell us that everything we know is flat wrong, it added another layer of fine detail to the stuff we did know.

Re "raising vibrations"-
Perhaps that's why I'm relatively healthy-
I once experienced high levels of vibration while flying AND I was using the uh... facilities. The stewards- from outside- requested that I did not exit the little room until the increased turbulence ceased- thus I was enclosed in a small space for quite a long while, vibrating at a high rate. I'm sure that this experience has had far-ranging consequences, although I'm not quite sure what they are.

Re "raising vibrations" -

I’m sure that this experience has had far-ranging consequences, although I’m not quite sure what they are.

I note that Mercola sells "A Valuable Exercise Tool for Prevention and Treatment of Fibromyalgia and Brittle Bones", which appears to be a whole body vibrating machine. He calls it whole body vibrational training, or Acceleration Training.

Although he states you can prevent brittle bones with his product, the people commenting on his website mention getting detached retinas and other problems from the equipment. http://fitness.mercola.com/sites/fitness/archive/2012/11/23/power-plate…

@S
Can't say that I've heard of Herxheimer reactions, but thanks to you and Wikipedia, I now know what they are and we can both confidently conclude that Laura's correspondent (not her client) is not having one.

Do you share the opinion that a Reiki treatment can cause a Herxheimer reaction? How would you distinguish this reaction from her patient’s client’s symptoms from their seemingly acute medical condition? Do you think it is appropriate for Laura to be promoting Reiki in this manner? What about her energetically diagnosing vitamin deficiencies? Are these assertions typical or accepted behavior for Reiki Masters?

You conveniently forgot all of S's other questions, Judith.

Everything is a vibrational disease?
Sounds like Rife.
Uh-oh.

@AdamG
I love the way people jump on words like they are shiny baubles -- oh look! Herxheimer reaction! If you look at the definition you will see that it applies to a reaction that "resembles bacterial sepsis and can occur after initiation of antibacterials, such as penicillin or tetracycline, for the treatment of tick-borne relapsing fever." "It manifests as fever, chills, rigor, hypotension, headache, tachycardia, hyperventilation, vasodilation with flushing, myalgia (muscle pain), and exacerbation of skin lesions." It is also "usually self-limiting".

Any Reiki practitioner who does not call an ambulance in response to an acute reaction that seems to be life threatening is an idiot.

Diagnosing vitamin deficiencies energetically is not a typical activity for Reiki practitioners. She also calls herself a "medical intuitive". That's Caroline Myss's bunch, not Reiki.

I wonder how many of you noticed that the commenter said that she could not get a doctor to treat her. A lot of people who end up in the offices of alternative health care practitioners are patients whom doctors either could not or would not treat. So what would you have such a patient do? Suffer for the rest of her life with no hope of treatment?

If Laura has had success with treating Lyme disease, it is appropriate for her to say so, especially since doctors don't seem to be able to do much for it. There seems to be a school of thought that attributes physical suffering to life lessons, and guess what, it makes some people feel better to know that their suffering has some kind of purpose. It gives them the freedom to decide at some point that they no longer need to, whereas if they are told that they are the victim of random physical set of circumstances that will never change, they might as well just give up.

You know, sometimes I think that we look at all of these separate little fumaroles of woo and lose sight of the fact that they all emanate from a vast, bubbling subterranean caldera... the caldera of wishful thinking and self-aggrandisement.

But you are so very wrong, Denice. People would not use alt med to the extent that they do if they did not have the subjective experience of it helping them. And if they are feel they are helped, who are you to say it's all wishful thinking and self-aggrandisement? Isn't there a kind of arrogance in setting oneself up as judge and jury, as everyone here seems to do?

"if they feel they are helped"

If Laura has had success with treating Lyme disease, it is appropriate for her to say so, especially since doctors don’t seem to be able to do much for it.

There are very effective treatments for Lyme disease. Unfortunately there are a lot of people who have developed the belief that they have chronic Lyme disease without any good evidence to support the idea. In situations like this predatory alternative health practitioners circle like buzzards, offering bogus diagnostic tests and treatments, leaving the patient still sick and with a considerably lighter wallet. They just make things worse, while lining their own pockets; whether they believe their own BS or not it's despicable.

There are very real dangers in people feeling they are helped when they either haven't found out what is causing their symptoms or are not getting an effective treatment. The arrogance lies with the people claiming they can diagnose and treat illnesses when the best evidence says they cannot.

@ judith:

Subjective experience isn't the be-all and end-all of existence.
AND none of the regulars set themselves above and beyond what scientific consensus across diverse fields worldwide assert.

Besides, people are VERY bad at self assessment. People feel 'better' after all kinds of nonsense being 'done' to them, including waving a wand around them. Look how much success Mesmer had. And no, it wasn't 'energy healing'. (horrible how many quotes one has to use)

I love the way people jump on words like they are shiny baubles

Why, yes, yes it is. "Quantum," "energy," "geomagnetic," "resonance," "micropulsations," and "matrix" spring to mind in this context.

Judith: why do they do it if they think they feel better?

While I feel hypocritical using a book as a reference rather than a direct link, R. Barker Baussel has a fairly thorough look at that in Snake Oil Science (if I can still link http://www.amazon.com/Snake-Oil-Science-Complementary-Alternative/dp/01… )

It's an interesting read.

Can’t say that I’ve heard of Herxheimer reactions, but thanks to you and Wikipedia, I now know what they are and we can both confidently conclude that Laura’s correspondent (not her client) is not having one.

@Judith, Laura is publishing the statments on her own blog and under the section about how to heal Lyme disease. It seems irrelevant for you to distinguish the other person as a correspondent versus a client. Laura communicated with the person over the same medium as she communicates with her clients, regardless if they are recieving a Reiki or an Intuitive treatment. It was Laura who informed the correspondent that she (based on her energy) was likely suffering a Herx. This seems like a diagnosis to me, done online, based on an energy, without a physical exam, and of a life-threatening condition.

Any Reiki practitioner who does not call an ambulance in response to an acute reaction {Herx} that seems to be life threatening is an idiot.

I'd suggest a correction to your statement, as follows: "Any Reiki practitioner who does not call an ambulance in response to an acute reaction {Herx} that seems to be life threatening is an idiot."

Laura Bruno: Most of those affected are, in this lifetime or certainly in previous ones, highly advanced healers. This awareness (whether conscious or completely subconscious) makes them adept at sidestepping treatments that would bring about healing before the lessons take root.

Judith: There seems to be a school of thought that attributes physical suffering to life lessons, and guess what, it makes some people feel better to know that their suffering has some kind of purpose.

@Judith, Which life's lessons? Do you believe in past lives? Laura is not saying that there is a purpose for the suffering. Laura attributes the client's suffering to their actions (role as an advanced healer) from either this lifetime or a previous lifetime. She states that since the client was likely an advanced healer, they are unconsciously adept at sidestepping their treatments for the infectious disease. In other words, past actions from one or more lifetimes are the reason they remain ill, and not until their "lessons take root", will they stop unconsciously sidestepping their treatments, and be able to successfully ameliorate their infection. In fewer words, she seems to be blaming the client's unconscious 'awareness' for their infection not healing. Reiki aside, do you subscribe to this school of thought?

@S
Let's put it this way: I wouldn't see Laura as a client.

Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t see Laura as a client.

Oh, please go into detail.

No, Denice is right. She knows this stuff. And we're encountering apparently endless self aggrandizement from judith, marg and their cronies. (Regarding them it's - New Speedway Boogie...)
Narad, for shiny baubles don't forget DNA in general, epigenetics, the immune system, and mangling of any imaginable aspect of human physiology. And now "Herxheimer reactions?? More ado about nothing. 0 x 0 = 0.

holistic, natural... something, something clathrates

I like how there seems to be a hierarchy amongst the energy healers with reiki in the upper echelon of course. Emily Rosa wouldn't go anywhere near a reiki master. The truth being it is the other way around.

And apparently Emily doesn't have to be near them at all.

It seems, people in general want to believe in this stuff even if they aren't hawking it - these are the self aggrandizing ones, selling a puffed up version of healthcare supported by nothing more than narcissism and word salad.

And these snakeoil salesladies make it sound like they are 100 percent effective. So, not only have they learned the secrets of manipulating matter and energy, they are god-like in action.

Puny humans indeed.

You know, folks, I never present it as 100% effective. I offer people the opportunity to try it and make up their own minds. Those who want to try it, do; those who don't, don't. Most of the ones who try it know they benefited.

We keep going around the same mulberry bush. You say you are bored with me; I am also bored with you. You won't convince me, I won't convince you; so why don't we just stop this silly dance and do something more useful (like have breakfast and read the paper).

emily rosa

@Judith - absolutely. Stop posting your crap & we'll stop responding on how wrong you are.

@S

This Master healer states that when the patient’s condition continues to decline despite their Reiki treatments, they are experiencing a Herxheimer reaction. In the case of their Lyme disease patient, discussed below, their infectious disease can not fully heal despite their Reiki and other medical treatments until “all lessons have been learned”.

In other words, they blame the victim.

According to this Reiki Master, the patient may be so highly advanced from being a healer in their own past life, that they have become adept at sidestepping their healing treatments.

And have special snowflake-ness about themselves.

Remember, Lyme is a vibrational disease. Everything is, but Lyme in particular, seems to respond well to raising your vibration completely out of the frequency of Lyme…

and

She provides a sample listing of things anesthesiologists do during their “long stretches of boredom” in the Operating Room. Watch YouTube, do crossword puzzles, talk on the phone, check email…”

Oy...

She seems to think she can diagnose a B12 deficiency from a distance, and for a patient client she has never even met – sight unseen, no tests, just her special energy powers.

So I guess my question - amongst others - to Judith and Marg is... what's the difference between energy healing and being psychic?

@Edith

After months of observation, I have concluded that chronic insomniacs stand the best chance of benefiting from their “treatment.”

As a chronic insomniac: no, not really.

This is indeed beyond the scope of this blog post about ReikiDoc, but nonetheless, it is relevant and certainly important as to the permeation into mainstream medicine of dangerous quackery.

You won’t convince me, I won’t convince you; so why don’t we just stop this silly dance and do something more useful (like have breakfast and read the paper).

No, I won't stop. I may go elsewhere, but I am not going to stop.

Let’s put it this way: I wouldn’t see Laura as a client.

Laura is not asking for your services. Laura is seeing her own clients and, more importantly, she trains people to become Reiki Masters. She teaches people to practice in this manner - teaching them that completely subconscious past-life lessons must be learned before a client's Lyme disease infection can be successfully treated. When the client mentions a continuation of symptoms, it is written off as the vastly exploited and misinterpreted condition called a 'Herx'. Talk about prolonging patient care and encouraging patients to remember something that doesn't exist...

I see a bit of a parallel here between Reiki (and alternative practices in general) and other very damaging psychology practices of the past. There appears to be an increasing number of unqualified alternative practitioners engaging in dangerous pseudo-psychology practices. The belief that a patient's past-life actions (which they can not remember) as being the cause of their treatment resistant illness seems quite similar to the false and repressed memory syndrome practitioners of years past.

In the case of Laura, she was discussing the client's Lyme disease infection. She seems to be telling the clients that until they learn their (completely subconscious) lessons they carried forward from their past life, they will not fully recover, their infection will not heal.

The increasing and insidious introduction of these bogus and potentially devastating pseudo-psychology 'practices' can cause disastrous effects upon the patients. Just as has been shown in the past with the diagnosing of patients with repressed memory syndromes, the current trend of diagnosing patients as suffering due to transgressions from a past life is equally, if not more dangerous. Both attempt to help patients recall memories of events that may have never happened. However, encouraging patients to recall past-life actions can be more dangerous because, unlike most of the false/repressed memories commonly discussed, the past-life wrongs are generally blamed on the patients own actions. The patient is led to believe that they themselves did something horrible and hurtful to others for which they must "learn their lesson". This can have terribly destructive effects upon patients.

I am using Laura as an example for discussion purposes because she boldly advertises her treatment and opinions on her website. This trend of pseudo-psychology, religious type practices among alternative providers is permeating slowly into mainstream medicine. So slowly that most people (not Orac's readers) are not even noticing it's gradual introduction into everyday accepted treatment.

@Judith – absolutely. Stop posting your crap & we’ll stop responding on how wrong you are.

Sorry, Lawrence. I am contributing to dragging this crap out here.

@Judith

So when you do finally pop up, instead of posting evidence, rebuttals, or answers to questions... you ignore them. And then has to be provoked into providing them (well, assertions/answers anyway).

This is why we're bored with you.

Any Reiki practitioner who does not call an ambulance in response to an acute reaction that seems to be life threatening is an idiot.

If energy healing only works for *some* things that are not acute, then how in the world do you get it to work for cancer? How does the energy healing/healer/healee know where to send the healing - if I am in a car crash and have a broken leg and a collapsed lung, does the healing go to the leg only? How do you direct it so that it goes not to the acute problems, but to the less serious ones? Or does the energy just 'know'?

Diagnosing vitamin deficiencies energetically is not a typical activity for Reiki practitioners. She also calls herself a “medical intuitive”. That’s Caroline Myss’s bunch, not Reiki.

This is what gets me the most - you all have such different ideas of how/why/when/where it works, if it works at all, that no one could possibly agree on anything. How can you say energy healing works when you couldn't get one simple definition out of the practitioners in order to test it? Heck, come up with five definitions - but no one can even come up with their own it seems. Even practitioners can't define it for themselves.

So what would you have such a patient do? Suffer for the rest of her life with no hope of treatment?

Does this fall under the "what's the harm" fallacy... or is it something else?

If Laura has had success with treating Lyme disease, it is appropriate for her to say so, especially since doctors don’t seem to be able to do much for it.

In other words, Judith doesn't need evidence for claims, just assertions and belief.

It gives them the freedom to decide at some point that they no longer need to, whereas if they are told that they are the victim of random physical set of circumstances that will never change, they might as well just give up.

Interestingly, the ones with the victim-blaming mentality are always the woo meisters. Personally, I find it more comforting to know that there isn't some malevolent 'higher power' out there who decides that I'm not worth helping on any particular day. And this knowledge provides me with more of an impulse to seek help, change things, or look for ways to manage the issue. Waiting around for karma/god to kick in is a b*tch.

In fact, what you propose very much *is* the concept of wishful thinking. Sometimes, no matter how much you believe, you can't change what is. Being able to accept that is often a good way to let go of a lot of stress. I'd think you'd want people to be less stressed...

People would not use alt med to the extent that they do if they did not have the subjective experience of it helping them

Which is exactly why you and others appeal to emotions instead of facts, data, or studies. (Subjective being the most important word there, and you know why)

And if they are feel they are helped, who are you to say it’s all wishful thinking and self-aggrandisement?

What's the harm fallacy again. Not to mention the fact that just because you 'feel' helped, doesn't mean you are. Or the fact that as many have pointed out, it also strips people of money they could have used in other ways. Like for proper treatments.

Isn’t there a kind of arrogance in setting oneself up as judge and jury, as everyone here seems to do?

Oh, you mean the kind of arrogance that says "hey, I don't need proof, I just need to assert something to be true"? The one that says "I don't need regulation, oversight, or punishment when I screw up"? The one that says "science is wrong because I don't agree with it"? The one that says "get rid of all Big Pharma because I have deemed it to be bad only by looking at the risks and not the benefits as well"? The one that says "let the patient make their own, informed decision, but let's not give them data that shows benefits or risks"?

Yeah, that kind of arrogance does sound familiar...

You know, folks, I never present it as 100% effective. I offer people the opportunity to try it and make up their own minds. Those who want to try it, do; those who don’t, don’t. Most of the ones who try it know they benefited.

What is preventing energy healing from working 100% of the time? Do you only see people with self-limiting conditions? How would you know why it doesn't work, when it doesn't? Do you follow up? Keep records? How do you know it works at all if you don't keep records?

We keep going around the same mulberry bush.

Yes, and that's because you continue to post the same silly things over and over again, instead of doing research or answering questions properly. We keep harping on the same points because you trot around them like it was bog land.

You won’t convince me, I won’t convince you; so why don’t we just stop this silly dance and do something more useful (like have breakfast and read the paper).

F* off - I've already said that if you posted some decent evidence you might be able to change my mind. I quote from above:

Nope, I consider everything under the null hypothesis: show me some decent evidence and I’ll accept it exists. That’s not dismissing it so much as being neutral.

You refuse to post evidence, and then shout "close-minded" (hmm, Marg's techniques again), all the while ignoring the fact that *you're* the one who is preventing anyone from changing their mind. It's not up to me to prove your assertions for you.

Lastly, Judith: any chance you'll actually answer more than one person's questions? I'm still waiting for you to answer mine.

Or, feel free to skip my questions, but only in exchange with some postage of Pubmed studies showing energy healing works.

But really, I expect no more from you than from Marg. More Gish gallop, more avoidance of questions, more vague replies.

... I think I'm bored again. Off to watch TV...

@S

There appears to be an increasing number of unqualified alternative practitioners engaging in dangerous pseudo-psychology practices.

Whenever I think of this, I wonder about 'life coaches'. To me this new phenomenon seems to be allowing for untrained people to act like psychologists or counselors for money, under the guise of some new job title or development in medicine. I often wonder just how many secular people are going for this instead of New Age/religious/spiritual healing things, or the stigma/expense of seeing a shrink. (Is there training for it? I haven't looked into it, I just assume it's untrained people giving themselves the guise of helpfulness, much like people who offer "self empowerment" and "become a millionaire" workshops)

No doubt DW will have some thoughts...

(Is there training for it? I haven’t looked into it, I just assume it’s untrained people...

Laura will train you. :-)

Judith, you can convince us by posting citations of peer reviewed scientific articles that show a clear effect for Reiki. Your problem is that you're censoring yourself by choosing tactics we've already told you are ineffective and why they're ineffective. You refuse to listen and adapt your tactics for an audience that isn't indoctrinated into epistemological shortcuts.

You aren't interested in learning our position, only in repeating the demonization you've been taught, hence you can't empathize with us as human beings.

Alternatively, I suspect you're not here to convince us, but to convince yourself. You're willing to settle for the weakest sorts of evidence and distractions that are mostly effective for fleecing the gullible (that's why they're textbook con tactics, and why con artists drill such tropes into their victims), but get frustrated when we won't lower our standards.

Essentially, you're complaining about the fact that we're trying to be reasonable, cautious, and humble because we realize we're mere humans. We have high standards precisely because we know how easily deceived we can be. Science is how we make deception, especially self-deception, harder. You're asking us to give into irrationality and arrogance by asking us to accept that your experiences and your interpretations of those experiences are objective, absolutely accurate, and unbiased. You're asking us for a free pass from your humanity, as if you think you're inherently better than the rest of us. You're angry because we're treating you like just another human.

You know, folks, I never present it as 100% effective.

But you do present it as effective to some extent, even if less than 100%. Correct?

Which brings us right back to a critical question you and marg have failed to address here or elsewhere on RI: what credible evidence demonstrates that reiki or other forms of energy healing are to any degree effective at all at treating injury or illness?

Believe it or not, one of the idiots I survey would like to inaugerate his own university-based life coaching programm and train likely mark... I mean *prospective students* in the fine art of counselling..using his own theory of personality based on energy dynamics.

Another commenter ( Tufted Titmouse/ Dr Benway) has remarked in the past how this development has been infiltrating mental hospitals such as those in which she works as a psychiatrist..

From what I understand, there are a plethora of LC applications throughout the world; many derive from motivational speakers, like Tony Robbins and others are purely vocationally -related for mentoring specific work-skills- as well as health-coaching ( like nutritionists) and athletically based systems and weight loss schemes.

I would be wary because- like nutritionists- people can easily grasp beyond their intellectual/ educational reach. And seriously, even if there is training, do you think that this is equivalent to the many years it takes to become a psychiatrist or a psychologist?

However in alt media world, that's a GOOD thing: because they believe that the aforementioned professions are intrinsically corrupt and in league with Big Pharma as well as being , in their parlance, rather 'soul-less'.

Most of the clients I 've seen - in the past 10 years or so- might be prime targets for a life coach since no one is SMI or has chemical dependencies- however I think that what I offer includes much more that the simplistic style of thinking that goes into coaching AND I can recognise more serious issues that might require the services of a doctor. And I do know something about testing and it doesn't come from University of Google.

More on this later if I can.

I assume from that the lack of response to my thermodynamic calculations by either Marg or Judith that they have conceded that his "cloudbusting" is fictional.

@Judith - how do the clients know they benefited?

Just a little aside: ( this has actually been useful for me and a few of my non-clients who are miserable recently):

In many sitautions, we can't know the future and what is most likely- despite our hopes, dreams and fears. How will this surgery turn out? Will I get better? Is this condition serious? Do I have a REAL problem?

Often, despite our research we find that the various outcomes may be nearly equi-probable- the most uncertain state of all. At such times, our feelings may run wild, perhaps fearing the worst and building up a format for doom or wishing the worries away- saying that 'Everything is all right'. As Feynman said- you are the easiest person to fool. And emptions fool us all.

At these times, rather than playing expert, consulting with a spurious one or becoming a google scholar- step back, take a deep breath and go beyond your own self and ask REAL experts- admit that you can't predict, find out what the real variables and liklihoods are. You'll feel better for real.

EMOTIONS fool us all

There's a lot of woo in self-help, so this life coach stuff doesn't really surprise me.

I can imagine some people would benefit from having a friendly voice giving them the extra little push they need to get through the day, though I can just as easily imagine it backfiring in certain cases or if it's done badly. I suspect a lot of the less scrupulous ones try to make their clients feel dependent on the coach, since it's probably paid by the hour or something. I'd most certainly want someone with a degree to be involved if it's not the coach himself.

And now I just remembered the life coach from The Visioneers. Creepy.

Oh @MIlitant Agnostic, I am so glad you asked. One imagined that her knee improved so much that she no longer needed a cane to walk and did not have the knee replacement operation that she was scheduled to have. I treated her in 2007 and she still hasn't had the operation. Another imagined that her injured shoulder, for which she has been having physiotherapy for years, returned to 100% mobility and stayed there. A girl who hurt her back in a karate class and went to a physiotherapist doubled over only to be told that she would need 8 physiotherapy treatments and be off karate for a month (and came out still doubled over) imagined that she could stand up straight and pain free after a 20-minute treatment. She also imagined, quite successfully, that she could go back to karate in a week, and not see the physiotherapist again. Then there was the girl who imagined that her poison oak rash disappeared during the treatment; the oncologist with severe back pain who, according to his wife, was amazed to be still pain free three weeks later. All these people (and many others) showed amazing (and lasting) abilities to harness the placebo effect and my self-delusion that I can actually make a difference. Imagine that.

Oh, and, @Militant Agnostic, and all those of you accuse us of fleecing the unsuspecting public, not one of these people paid me a cent for the treatment. I treated each one out of a) curiosity, b) not liking to see them in pain, and c) because I could.

@ judith,

Here's the studies I found on pubmed, read them, pick & choose the ones you like and report back here using these studies:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=%22Therapeutic%20Touch%22[Mesh]

Alain

Then there was the girl who imagined that her poison oak rash disappeared during the treatment;

@Judith, Are you seriously saying that you had a client's poison oak rash disappear as a result of and during her Reiki treatment? How do you know the rash was from poison oak? What if it was a bacterial infection and your Reiki treatment only prolonged her seeking appropriate medical care, and the infection spread, and ...

I can have a rash which will come and go in a matter of minutes. If some unsuspecting person was convinced it was from poison oak, then they might be rather impressed as to how quickly it disappears.

You seem to be using Reiki for much more than just a means of relaxation similar to knitting.

Kreboizen: ...whether they believe their own BS or not it’s despicable.

There are very real dangers in people feeling they are helped when they either haven’t found out what is causing their symptoms or are not getting an effective treatment. The arrogance lies with the people claiming they can diagnose and treat illnesses when the best evidence says they cannot.

The problem with anecdotes instead of a clinical trials: How can I be sure you're not remembering them incorrectly? Given your attitude so far, Judith, I'd be more inclined to suspect you unconsciously exaggerated and/or cherry picked the lucky ones.

Also, you're horribly misunderstanding what the placebo effect is. It's pretty much an 'everything else' category, which includes subjective perception of improvement, spontaneous natural recovery, regression to the mean, and so on. It's stuff that happens independent of the treatment actually having a physiological effect. It's all the stuff that happens even when you give someone an ineffective treatment, and why we can be deceived into thinking that useless treatment is effective. Testing a proposed treatment against placebo is necessary because we, as mere human beings, don't have a superhuman ability to determine causation just by looking at a sequence of uncontrolled events. To just mark down placebo as a mechanism misses the point that placebo is what happens regardless of the presence or absence of mechanisms.

Banking on the placebo effect is going backwards for another reason: It's a return to the old paternalistic "doctor knows best" relationship, since it requires the doctor to deceive his patients instead of empower their decisions by informing them of the treatment's real nature. It's an authoritarian mindset to lie to someone as the sole determiner of what's best for him, even if the original intent is good. Would you trust someone who endorses that sort of mentality?

Judith "Most of those who try it know they benefited."

I asked you to do this back in June, Judith:

Have you ever asked someone else to check back in with them later, and document their opinion then?

If not, you don't know whether or not they "benefited."

I often find it comic but rather disarming that some alt med folks think of themselves as the final authority on particular subjects: we've all heard diets, supplements or treatments recommended that have NO outside data that display their merits. Then, they opine that other data- like that originating from so-called orthodox medicine, professional organisations, governmental agencies and media reports are ALL suspect. Done totally WRONG!
Thus it's "MY way or the highway". A collegium of one.

OTOH, I find it comforting that my judgments are not guided by myself alone: I do rest assured on consensus- the work of many others OVER time, tested and re-tested..PUBLICLY in journals and universities.
Who are ANY of us to 'go it alone" when others' health and lives are concerned? If you have a serious issue- do you want the opinion of ONE person- no matter how brilliant- or a person supported by an entire CONSORTIUM?

Judith & Marg - I take it then that we are in agreement that the claims of Bengston's cloud busting are preposterous on the basis of the energy required.

Judith - I would up "doubled over in pain" after sustaining a back injury in a martial arts class, I think I would be leaving the premises on a backboard rather than schlepping over to physiotherapist and then a Reiki practitioner.

marg, why do you keep offering anecdotal accounts in lieu of evidence to support your assertions regarding reiki's effectiveness? Surely by now you're aware that anecdote does not equal evidence, and that the plural of anecdote isn't data.

We're really not asking for much--if reikireally works. Just the same kind of evidence which demonstrates things like statins antibiotics or antifungals , or NSAIDS are effective at treating teh indications they're prescribed for.

Consider that last, something as pedestrian as ibuprofen amelioriating menstrual cramping. If asked to defend its efficacy we wouldn't be reduced to offering personal stories along the lines of "My sister was having cramps, took some ibuprofen and went dancing that week end. We'd be able to offer real evidence that it works (e.g., Primary dysmenorrhea: advances in pathogenesis and management.,Dawood MY, Obstet Gynecol. 2006 Aug;108(2):428-41.)

Surely if reiki does all you say it does it would be a trivial matter to generate similar evidence supporting your claim. If you can't--if anecdote is the best you can do--then clearly either it doesn't work, or at the least no understands it well enough for it to be useful therapeutically.

One of the points that can't be stressed enough: We're humble enough to doubt our perceptions and our ability to infer accurate conclusions from anecdotes. That's why we ask for some basic science: to prevent mistakes born of hubris. We know that the world often isn't as it seems to be at first glance.

Judith and Marg are too arrogant to consider that they might have jumped to the wrong conclusion. They instead demand that we take their word at face value instead of looking at them as normal humans prone to self-deception. They're preaching that the world is as it seems at their first glance, and that all the people from all over the world, from all sorts of backgrounds, who've looked at these questions, using greater care and nuance in their methodology are the ones who have it all wrong.

We're asking for them to show at least as much effort if they're going to change our minds. Instead they complain about the "arrogance" of acknowledging our shared flaws as human beings.

"I would up " should "If I wound up"

I will reply to the numerous responses later when I have more time, but I see Judith has popped back and yet again ignored my questions.

I get this a lot in comparison with other regulars here. Am I too acerbic for the pop-in cranks? Or do I have some sort of woo repellant hidden away in my energy fields?

Or maybe she just doesn't have any answers to give. She's avoiding me *because* I've been asking for her to post evidence. (No wait, you all do that and get some modicum of reply...)

@flip

She’s avoiding me *because* I’ve been asking for her to post evidence. (No wait, you all do that and get some modicum of reply…)

If by modicum of reply you mean a link to a completely off topic youtube video or a podcast about reducing medical errors.

It is true that matter and energy are interconvertible

Oh, silly person, Judith knows better than that:

Einstein's famous equation E equals MC squared in fact means that matter is frozen light -- or frozen thought.

Of course, right before this she trots out the same old frozen shoulder/knee surgery routine. Might want to freshen that up, Judith.

The contortions you people get into to explain this away are funny beyond belief.

@S
We were in the woods. The child walked into the trees with her arm clear and came out with a rash. Someone looked where she had been and said "oh dear, poison oak". I treated her arm, the rash went away.

@Chemmomo
I keep track wherever I can. Yes, they were fine later. Several of them gave me testimonials months to years after their treatment.

We keep going around and around the same bush. Let's hope it's not poison anything.

Judith, you do realize there is a difference between "I treated her arm, the rash went away." and "The rash went away because I treated her arm," right?

How did you reach the conclusion that the treatment itself fixed the rash?

(One might further note that invocation of E = mc² leads directly to the conclusion that E = 0. It's E² = p²c² + m₀²c⁴, something that seems to be routinely overlooked in such circles.)

The contortions you people get into to explain this away are funny beyond belief.

Yah, whereas making up laughably stupid sh*t like "matter is frozen light" isn't a contortion at all, nosirree Bob.

@S
We were in the woods. The child walked into the trees with her arm clear and came out with a rash. Someone looked where she had been and said “oh dear, poison oak”. I treated her arm, the rash went away.

A similar thing happens to me all the time. I get a rash while in the woods, and it disappears when I leave. It's an allergic reaction to something, perhaps pine.

@Judith, A repeat question for you. Do you teach or ever introduce to your clients that they need to learn their lessons from their past-life transgressions before they can fully heal, as did Laura to the person with Lyme disease?

Laura Bruno: Most of those affected are, in this lifetime or certainly in previous ones, highly advanced healers. This awareness (whether conscious or completely subconscious) makes them adept at sidestepping treatments that would bring about healing before the lessons take root.

The contortions you people get into to explain this away are funny beyond belief.

What contortions? Your inability to understand how easily humans deceive themselves is just sad. See also confirmation bias, third-cause fallacy, regression fallacy, superstition and magical thinking.

Judith - After several exposures to poison ivy and poison oak, it's my experience that the rash does not appear so quickly that one can look at what one just touched and be able to see the rash form. It can take several hours for the rash to appear. Based on that, it's easier to believe that the rash you, er, treated was unrelated to poison oak.

It can take several hours for the rash to appear.

If not days. Depending on the severity of the allergy, it may disappear on its own rather quickly, or it may linger for quite some time.

Based on that, it’s easier to believe that the rash you, er, treated was unrelated to poison oak.

I doubt that it's all that difficult to procure urushiol from a chemical supply house, so it would seem to be rather simple for Judith to replicate this incident. Oh, wait, but then nobody would be willing to publish the spectacular success that is bound to ensue.

Judith is living up there among the gods, laughing down on us mortals who have to toil in the dirt of noisy data in an uncertain universe and engineer intricate error-correction mechanisms to sort the wheat from the chaff while she gets a pass to instant, free enlightenment because she's a superior being, inherently above such mortal failings like self-deception, cognitive biases, and logical fallacies.

How many elephants had to die to make that ivory tower, by the way?

Here's an article about magical thinking and how to some extent it is hard-wired into all of us (and even into pigeons).

A small amount of magical thinking may even be a good thing, though not to the extent of believing that waving your hands over a sick person can make them well which is bordering on pathology, in my contorted opinion.

Judith,
Yes. We keep going around and around. Why can't you comprehend that "I try to keep track whenever I can" just is not convincing?

Another big problem Judith probably doesn't see: She's the advocate, we're the skeptics. We tentatively support the null hypothesis (that Reiki doesn't work) until it's been falsified by good scientific evidence that filters out causes of human bias and other confounding factors. We aren't interested in actively disproving Reiki since she's supposed to be active in proving it as the advocate.

If the conversation's going in circles, it's because she's not giving us any new directions to go. Judith insists on going in circles because she won't accept our premise that she is subject to all the flaws that being human entails.

Re Magical thinking/ participation mystique:

I always felt that reading Frazer ( The Golden Bough) prepared me for serious study in psychology. Of course, most would say that the study of magic, superstition and mythology is about primitive people NOT US. But I go along with near moderns like Kohler- and Jung- who said that even we "become savages" very quickly when we are exposed to the harsh conditions of nature- being lost in the outdoors, being caught in a storm- as well as other conditions of life and death that strip away the thin veneer of post-industrial complacency. They were right and I venture that usually it takes a whole lot less to get the magic going.

Here's an attributional study that I always liked: students were given free 'lottery tickets' - each worth a set amount ( i.e. equi-likely to win a contest with 1000 tickets total- therefore 1000:1 odds). Some were given tickets at random by an experimenter while others were asked to choose their own. Later all were asked if they would "sell" their ticket back: the students who chose their own valued them more highly than the others- even though all were worth exactly the same. I guess their own actions somehow * transformed* the value of the tickets- at least in their own imaginations.

We see emotional aspects in sunsets and faces in clouds. Rock formations look like ships and random markings in the sky are the workings of some malevolent will. A perceptual study showed subjects several moving random dots ( black circles) -subjects tended to impart human or animal-like qualities to the circles, one is "chasing" the other, one "runs away" etc.

I'm sure that thought like this once served a purpose in human survival.

Judith: I keep track wherever I can. Yes, they were fine later. Several of them gave me testimonials months to years after their treatment.

@Judith,Most people would likely be too polite, and simply thank you again for helping them, rather than say directly to you that your treatments were a failure and waste of time. Especially if you are otherwise a pleasant, and enjoyable person to be around, they would not want to offend you and hurt your feelings. Most people would simply stop seeing you as a practitioner once they realized the treatments weren't really helping their condition.

@S
You really are very funny and very insistent on hanging on to your view of the world. No, when the treatment doesn't work, people usually very politely tell me so. When it works, they tell me that too. There is no hemming and hawing. Usually they say something along the lines of "I wouldn't have believed it, but ..."

I've been doing this since 1999. I would have given up a long time ago without seeing clear results.

@S
I don't clients they have to learn lessons from past life lessons like Laura. Why do you ask?

@S
"I don't ask clients"

Also, if my previous response sounded snippy, I apologize.

@S
I clearly spent too much time today staring at a computer screen. Let me try again: I don't tell clients that they need to learn past life lessons to heal like Laura. How is that?

I’ve been doing this since 1999. I would have given up a long time ago without seeing clear results.

Don't you think most alt med practitioners feel this way? Homeopaths, acupuncturists, chelation therapists, chiropractors, etc....they'd all say the same thing. Does that mean all of them are true?

I bet Laura would also say the same about her experience diagnosing vitamin deficiencies 'energetically,' yet you reject her ability to do so.

Given that she claims to be able to diagnose such deficiencies, what is your basis for your negative opinion of her abilities?

As evidence, she's only made claims and given anecdotes, just like you did. How, then, did you form your opinion of her ability?

If only we had some sort of system that could sort out the truthful claims from the false ones...

@AdamG
I don't reject Laura's claim of her ability to diagnose vitamin deficiencies energetically nor do I have a negative opinion of her abilities. I just said that she was a medical intuitive and that was not the same as being a Reiki practitioner. I also said I wouldn't be her client -- I don't have Lyme's disease and I don't particularly (yet) buy into the notion that learning past life lessons is necessary for healing.

Most alt med practitioners get a large chunk of their business through word of mouth. If they don't have happy clients, they don't get to eat. I've tried a chiropractor who didn't do a thing for me, but I also had a fabulous shiatsu therapist and a great osteopath. I've had a lousy psychiatrist with all the requisite medical degrees and certifications and I've also had a mind-blowing experience with a practicing shaman that showed me things about myself I didn't know a lot faster than therapy did. BTW the doctor who barely passes medicine and can just about diagnose his way out of a paper bag also gets to be a doctor. Doctors also make mistakes, and yet we are fully prepared to trust them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUbfRzxNy20&feature=player_embedded

@Judith, It's so sweet that you think I'm funny. I really don't find much humor in your total denialism given the amount of information that has been given to you here. I continue to think that some people get swept up into these alternative medicine delusions simply due to ignorance. For whatever reasons, they have not been afforded the opportunities in education, home/family environment or elsewhere to learn critical thinking, logic and other necessary life skills. Frankly, I am at a loss to understand how someone can continue to believe these things after they are given a bit of education. Humm, maybe after a "mind-blowing experience with a practicing shaman" friend of Judith's, I'd feel the vibrations and see the light. (I can't tell if some of these are jokes, or serious.)

That's the same YouTube video already posted. You're talking in circles again, Judith.

How many elephants had to die to make that ivory tower, by the way?

@Judith, Did that comment go over your head?

Amazing...

I don’t reject Laura’s claim of her ability to diagnose vitamin deficiencies energetically

Yes, the quack code of honor is well understood.

I don’t particularly (yet) buy into the notion that learning past life lessons is necessary for healing

Yes, but my question is why. Wouldn't she also claim to have many years of experience with the technique, and "would have given up a long time ago without seeing clear results"?

What sets what you do apart from what she does, given that you have the same amount of evidence?

Why are we supposed to accept that what you're claiming is true when you yourself don't accept as true what someone else with the very same amount of evidence claims?

@ Judith, I trust MD/PhD, so far, I only had that as medical doctor except my primary care doctor who's an MD and still, equally trustworthy.

Alain

So, Judith and Marg, I take it that you accept my thermodynamic proof that Bengston's "cloud busting" claims are absurd..

@Narad - "Code of Honour" indeed - ti even applies when the modalities are plainly contradictory.

@Judith - many financial cons, especially MLMs do quite well with word of mouth advertising. The people who have lost money either keep quite or all too often delude themselves into thinking they are the verge of maiking the big money.

"I keep track whenever I can..."

Not good enough for medicine, but fits flim-flam to a tee.

Howcum medicine can say with fair certainty that this thing here works %50 of the time and when it doesn't, blames itself for not having anything better to offer (except when it does, wahoooo), not the patient for their attitude or past lives.

Flim-flam sounds like you, Judith.

As for attitude, mine was praised as was that of Mrs. K, for getting me through the treatment. Also a puppy helped, the funny wee bairn.

Because of these atitudinal factors, I was convinced by GP/specialist/mindwalker to suffer it again. I'm glad I listened to the experts, who've had training beyond clapping, rubbing your hands together and gettin yur gruve on with yur spirit guide.

Oh and Einstein, Judith there's no evidence for relativity, none. A good authority, a lawyer no less says so. So another epic fail for you.

MLM, buddy was just finagled into one for all natural vitamin supplements. He literally LOL'd at the fear tactics to the embarrassment of the friend who hoodwinked him into being there. The huckster actually pointed to a carrot with deformities as a reason for needing the pills LOL

As I remember, the Naturoquacks claimed to be mindwalkers of some merit even as they threw homeoquackery under the bus...

Okay, guys, you can quit wasting my time.

wasting your precious ego filled time, Judith are we?

Then stop posting

we're not the ones making fantastical claims without any basis in reality or evidence to support them

But I go along with near moderns like Kohler- and Jung- who said that even we “become savages” very quickly when we are exposed to the harsh conditions of nature- being lost in the outdoors, being caught in a storm- as well as other conditions of life and death that strip away the thin veneer of post-industrial complacency.

Black Friday sales?

@S
I don’t [tell] clients they have to learn lessons from past life lessons like Laura. Why do you ask?

Because it goes to falsifiability.

If an actual scientist, someone who intends to abide by the principles of science, proposes a hypothesis, they need that hypothesis to be falsifiable - there must be a way for the evidence to show them they are wrong, if they are indeed wrong.

A hypothesis which has a built-in excuse for any evidence that doesn't match the hypothesis - like Laura's "energy healing works! Except if the client is a past-life healer themselves and actively avoiding the healing in order to process the life lesson, and that explains any failures to heal!" - may seem like it is very strong because it always matches the evidence. But it isn't. The evidence for the hypothesis has not met a high bar, as advocates pretend; the bar has instead been lowered so that no matter how wrong the hypothesis is, it seems to have passed the tests.

Marg has already admitted that energy healing is an unfalsifiable hypothesis: no matter what the evidence is, advocates of energy healing can always find some rationale by which energy healing is responsible for all successes and other factors are responsible for any failures. Do you disagree with that? If so, please detail how energy healing may be falsified.

Judith,

I’ve been doing this since 1999. I would have given up a long time ago without seeing clear results.

You remind me again of Benjamin Rush, Founding Father of the USA, but not in a good way. You appear to be stuck in an early 19th century mentality. It's worth reading Rush's 'A Defence of Blood-letting, as a Remedy for Certain Diseases'. He writes, for example:

"If ever bleeding kills," says Bottallus, either directly or indirectly, through the instrumentality of other diseases, "it is not from its excess, but because it is not drawn in a sufficient quantity, or at a proper time." (Cap. viii S 4) And, again, says this excellent writer, "One hundred thousand men perish from the want of blood-letting, or from its being used out of time, to one who perishes from too much bleeding, prescribed by a physician."

I found his advice to ignore anemia and continue bloodletting particularly alarming - "crassamentum" is the coagulated portion of clotted blood. Normally the amount of crassamentum (in other words the hematocrit) is about 50%, a lower percentage indicates anemia:

An undue proportion of serum to crassamentum in the blood. This predominance of water in the blood has often checked sufficient blood-letting. But it should be constantly disregarded, while it is attended with those states of pulse (to be mentioned hereafter) which require bleeding.

His defence of bloodletting is an interesting study in cognitive bias, full of baseless theories and anecdotes.
William Cobbett, a journalist, published a pamphlet accusing Rush of killing most of his patients, having carefully documented the increase in mortality that occurred after doctors followed Rush's advice to bleed patients liberally. Rush's response was to defend his practices robustly and to sue Cobbett for defamation, successfully. The verdict was delivered on the same day George Washington died, probably as a result of being drained of half his blood by his physicians in the course of less than a day.

It wasn't until crude clinical trials of bloodletting were carried out, for example in 1809 by Alexander Hamilton and Pierre Louis in 1828, that it was realized that bloodletting dramatically increased mortality. Hamilton reported a ten-fold increase in mortality and Louis almost twice the mortality in patients subjected to bloodletting. Louis described this as "startling and apparently absurd", which reminds me of the reactions of dowsers who fail a double-blind test, except Louis had the humility to believe the science.

I'll give the last words in this comment to Pierre Louis, quoted in Ernst and Singh's 'Trick or Treatment' (p.23). This was written over 150 years ago but it seems it still requires repetition today:

A therapeutic agent cannot be employed with any discrimination or probability of success in a given case, unless its general efficacy, in analogous cases, has been previously ascertained.. .without the aid of statistics nothing like real medicine is possible.'

It's interesting, to me anyway, that you can date the origins of modern scientific medicine back to the early 18th century. In this chapter of 'Body Counts: Medical Quantification In Historical And Sociological Perspective' Ulrich Tröhler notes that in 1731 Francis Clinton, "emphasized the unreliability of memory as a basis for the evaluation of experience". He advocated, "regular and frank recording of all cases, compiling the data in tables, and emphasized periodic analysis and publication". In 1731.

Bloodletters were causing grievous harm and yet were capable of deceiving themselves into thinking they were helping their patients. The actual risk/benefit ratio was heavily stacked against bloodletting's favor, and yet, being humans, their power of self-deception through confirmation bias, anecdotes, and so forth overpowered them and allowed them to think there was a benefit when there was none, and in the face of horribly high risks.

Reiki practitioners have it easier since waving their hands generally does no direct harm that risks offsetting natural improvement. And yet we're supposed to believe that they're less prone to self-deception than bloodletters, so we should just trust them when they say there's a benefit. Hint: Absence of risk is not evidence of benefit.

Of course, there is indirect harm from Reiki: For problems that won't fix themselves, Reiki might discourage patients from seeking treatments with real benefits. And, of course, there's the matter of the practitioner's fee.

Yes, the unreliability of memory ( see eyewitness testimony) and problems with subjective evaluations. Obviously anyone who delves into anti-vacciniana realises that a great deal of the connections between vaccines and autism rests upon a temporal link as observed by parents -which might expand and contract over time to fit theoretical considerations ( especially by the researchers, like AJW); certain vaccines coincide with particular social/ communicative developmental milestones-
but enough on that.

Unfortunately, while surveying alt media, I have listened to and read many testimonials about alt med cures- as told by both promoters and sufferers: temporal contiguity is a very important factor. Studies of memory show that the time factor can influence how we recall- for example by the law of prior entry, we place more emphasis on what we hear/ see first and often, we can recall what we've heard/ seen most recently better. Similarly what we know earlier ( or later) influences what we learn ( PI, RI, respectively).

Interestingly, if you listen to testimonials for alt med, time seems to influence how they imagine what occured- as Orac has mentioned many times- if a person has cancer surgery then tries woo later, they may attribute the cure to the woo- not the SBM.

There is also self-selection, people who feel that nothing happened ( or die) may just not ever report back whilst those who feel they've been helped are more eager to make contact. I've just thrown out a few considerations that could influence testimonies- there are many more. Real research has to account for all of these propensities systematically. Human nature can interfere with accuracy in research- that's why we need to research human nature.

@DW

Re: life coaches, what I wonder the most is that I can see where services would be useful, whether it's in businesses, motivational speakers, etc - but don't see why 'life coaching' would be necessary vs hiring a legitimate psychiatrist/psychologist/trained counselor. My impression is that it's just yet another 'out' for people who want to offer those services but can't be bothered getting the degree. And/or want to give the impression that they have 'life experience' or 'guru' status where training isn't necessary. In other words, it smacks of snake oil to me.

As an example, plenty of acting groups offer 'motivational' or 'improvisational' workshops to businesses. These are usually about team building, creativity, etc. But they don't promote it as 'life coaching', 'counselling' or anything like that. There's nothing wrong with offering such services, but as soon as you overlay 'life coach' onto it, it gives an impression of authority that seems unwarranted.

And seriously, even if there is training, do you think that this is equivalent to the many years it takes to become a psychiatrist or a psychologist?

No, which is why I worry. Life coaching could easily go wrong because the person doing it is feeling around in the dark, rather than knowing what they're doing based on studies, and/or they miss something because they don't know what to look for. (Hmm, I see I agree with Bronze Dog)

It also smacks of self-limiting emotional issues, such as people simply wanting advice or motivation, much like having a trainer at a gym to keep yourself on track and not get lazy. The problem is when life coaching is applied to more serious issues...

(This is just my impression and I really would like to set aside some time to look into the issue properly)

@S

You seem to be using Reiki for much more than just a means of relaxation similar to knitting.

Great point. I'd forgotten that she initially insisted that reiki is just a means of relaxing - now she's back to saying that it's more powerful and cures stuff.

@Militant Agnostic

If by modicum of reply you mean a link to a completely off topic youtube video or a podcast about reducing medical errors.

Hey, at least you get that. I just get ignored completely.

But yes, any response to our comments usually comes with a complete distraction and direction to something irrelevant.

many financial cons, especially MLMs do quite well with word of mouth advertising. The people who have lost money either keep quite or all too often delude themselves into thinking they are the verge of maiking the big money.

I'm seeing so many parallels with Twain's 'The Gilded Age' here.

@Bronze Dog

Another big problem Judith probably doesn’t see: She’s the advocate, we’re the skeptics. We tentatively support the null hypothesis (that Reiki doesn’t work) until it’s been falsified by good scientific evidence that filters out causes of human bias and other confounding factors.

Nah, I said that above. She still doesn't get it.

The actual risk/benefit ratio was heavily stacked against bloodletting’s favor, and yet, being humans, their power of self-deception through confirmation bias, anecdotes, and so forth overpowered them and allowed them to think there was a benefit when there was none, and in the face of horribly high risks.

Not to mention beginning with a conclusion instead of starting with a hypothesis.

@Judith

All these people (and many others) showed amazing (and lasting) abilities to harness the placebo effect and my self-delusion that I can actually make a difference. Imagine that.

Mmm, yummy, more anecdotes. These petit fours are pretty bland - got any hardy evidence to fill the void?

Oh, and, @Militant Agnostic, and all those of you accuse us of fleecing the unsuspecting public, not one of these people paid me a cent for the treatment. I treated each one out of a) curiosity, b) not liking to see them in pain, and c) because I could.

Ah yes... and that proves that energy healing works how?

@Judith

The contortions you people get into to explain this away are funny beyond belief.

We're not 'explaining things away'. We're asking you to 'prove something exists'. In order to 'explain something away' it first has to be proven to exist; since we don't believe energy healing exists it's not being explained away. You must expel all mundane explanations - ie. you must prove that the healing does not occur because of alternative hypotheses (placebo for example) - before we can accept it exists.

Basic high school science you seem to be ignoring here.

I keep track wherever I can. Yes, they were fine later. Several of them gave me testimonials months to years after their treatment.

I’ve been doing this since 1999. I would have given up a long time ago without seeing clear results.

What does these records constitute? Do you make measurements using appropriate methods? Ie. for the rash, did you measure the size/location? For the broken leg, did you take X-rays? Etc. Or did you just rely on subjective surveys, such as 'why yes, I do feel better'? Also, what AdamG said.

We keep going around and around the same bush. Let’s hope it’s not poison anything.

Yeah, and I told you why above. Hmmm... now I see why you're not replying to my questions. You don't seem to be reading my comments. Or at least, comprehending them.

I don’t reject Laura’s claim of her ability to diagnose vitamin deficiencies energetically nor do I have a negative opinion of her abilities.

AKA I accept all assertions without evidence first, then worry about evidence.

Doctors also make mistakes, and yet we are fully prepared to trust them.

The difference is that doctors rely on evidence, that doctors are regulated, that most skeptics here would also probably say that doctors/evidence is seen in a tentative light.

Okay, guys, you can quit wasting my time

... And at the end of this long list of comments - I still see no links to any evidence at all. Who is wasting whose time?

Yet another tour of distractions away from the fact that MARG nor JUDITH, the contemptible purse-snatchers of science, HAVE NO EVIDENCE THAT ENERGY HEALING WORKS

Come on 600! Just 7 more posts. Marg? Judy? Anyone? Don't make me do this all by myself. That would be sad . . .

There once was woman called Judith
Who from her sleek hip she did shooteth
As her fallacies flew
And citations were few
Made our brainy DW broodeth.

A reiki practition'r named marg
Came a-stompin' into Orac's blarg
As she couldn't provide
Any proof for her side
We all went about our business 'cause we ran out of words that rhyme with her name . . .

An itinerant grifter named Marg
Into science blog postings would barge
Though her qualifications
Were pure fabrications
She continued to blather at large.

(Sorry. Not enough caffeine this morning but it's the best I can do right now).

Yes, the quack code of honor is well understood.

Professional courtesy -- like sharks not eating lawyers.

"Quack code of honor" is a good way to describe the mutual back-patting environment. The whole culture pretty much exists to maintain profitability for the in-group as a whole. Add up the memes and related fallacies:

1) "Try it yourself!" (anecdotal evidence)
2) "I kept trying different things until I found something that worked for me." (+ regressive fallacy + natural improvement)
3) The various "blame the victim" arguments for those who don't improve,
4) The conspiracy theories thrown out when someone suggests relying on clinical trials for efficacy instead of anecdotes.

The end result I see is a wealth of consumers who will try anything at least once, paying money as they do. They have cultural discouragement that discourages them from saying anything bad about any failed treatment (you didn't want to be healed, you negative, negative person!), so consumers won't punish failure. The "snowflake" argument seems designed to discourage objective comparisons so they don't have to compete with scientific medicine to show real, quantifiable effects, since they'd lose on that ground.

Science is one of those things that reverses an old saying: Divided we stand, united we fall. The reason we've been making steady progress against a lot of diseases is because scientists don't coddle ideas. Only the best survive the crucible. If you've got a new idea for a medical treatment, you'd better have done your homework and kept an eye out for any tiny mistake, because if not, the peer reviewers will tear your magnum opus to shreds. If scientists did nothing but pat each other's backs and let sloppy work slide, we'd make no progress.

( If no one got in after Bronze... slow machine today)
All in the valley of death rode the 600...

Do I win someting?

SOMETHING... at comment # 601...

I'll repost mine from the other thread...

Marg was a quack here at R.I.
on a thread that just wouldn’t die.
She loves mystical forces
but won’t cite any sources
for her claims which no one can falsify.

‘Healing’ is her occupation
But oh no, she won’t ask for compensation
but if you feel grand
after she waves her hand
she’ll be happy to ‘accept your donation!’

May as well shoot for 666. I'm still shaking my head over the fact that nearly 300 years ago scientists were aware of "the unreliability of memory as a basis for the evaluation of experience", yet some people today still don't get it, at all.

Since we "may as well shoot for 666", here's some additions to Bronze Dog's list:

5.) Doctor-Healer says to patient, "Of course those herbs are safe! I take them myself, and I even have my wife/husband taking them. I would never give them anything that could possibly hurt them.

6.) Of course those herbs are safe, I've never seen a patient that has had an adverse reaction to them.

7.) It's all up to you if you want to get better. We must continue the treatments until you remember (fill in the blank for a repressed memory or past-life trauma) else your health will continue to worsen.

Human memory is associative- so you are more likely to remember things that 'go together' even if they aren't.
If you show subjects combinations of 4 phrases that describe a situation ( that can be imagined visually) so that they only see displays of 1, 2, or 3 phrase combinations, when they are asked later if they had ever seen the stimuli before and how certain they were of that, they tend to MISidentify 4 phrase combinations ( which they never saw) and are most CONFIDENT of those stimuli compared to the ones they ACTUALLY saw.
It's hard to dis-embed them from the context. Similarly, you may not 'see' things that don't fit in.

Are you people still chattering amongst yourselves? Is life getting monotonous in Orac land or do you just enjoy typing?

If Mikey likes it, it must be good for you. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYEXzx-TINc

@ S:

I notice that woo-meisters give such complicated, multifarious instructions that even a devoted follower is bound to do something wrong- giving the prevaricator a way out- " You didn't follow directions" .
Also having a long list of necessary supplements, exercises etc creates a much longer product list to place in your website's store.
Those who can't follow emulate their guru's sterling example can purchase their way towards relative sanctity as well.

" Oh what a tangled web we weave...."

@DW, Sadly I think I now know most of their tricks. I'm working on the 'de-programming' part now. It's called PTSD, post-treatment stress disorder.

@ Denice,

Regarding the memory thing, could you email me at: alain.toussaint@securivm.ca

I have a few question to ask you about memory and PTSD.

Thanks
Alain

@ Alain:

Why not here? Ask anyway, I don't think that Marg'll mind.

I am more a student of memory/ cognitive generically alhough I do have a few little niche areas ( not PTSD, unfortunately) with metacognition, verbal learning, abstraction.
I have recently heard of studies about people subject to PTSD having anomalies in particular neurotransmitters, perhaps it was NE. Not entirely sure. Rather recent, I think.

But seriously, ask and you shall receive: perhaps I can lead you towards better information, maybe not.

If the comments amount to 700, Orac get free airline miles!

@ Denice,

I don't want to go public with the cause of my PTSD, it's really too horrible and there's police investigation ongoing.

Alain

Furthermore, I will likely blog about it in time.

Alain

@Marg,

Are you people still chattering amongst yourselves? Is life getting monotonous in Orac land or do you just enjoy typing?

They didn't say it for you.

I just need a cookie.

@Marg

Are you people still chattering amongst yourselves? Is life getting monotonous in Orac land or do you just enjoy typing?

Yet another tour of distractions away from the fact that MARG, the contemptible purse-snatcher of science, HAS NO EVIDENCE THAT ENERGY HEALING WORKS.

If you're bored, feel free to leave.

If the comments amount to 700, Orac get free airline miles!

Really?

We're chatting amongst ourselves because we enjoy each other's company. We share jokes and ideas, expand on them, and refine them. We're humans. We're social creatures.

Marg, did you mean to suggest you didn't know we do stuff other than poke altie trolls?

@ Alain:

Little by little, we'll get to it. One step at a time.

I do know ( personally) several people who witnessed/ endured terrible events- especially two who had to identify the body of a close family member ( a bombing; a death associated with robbery)- the latter lived for more than 75 years with memory of the event. The former is living with it now.

The constant theme of re-living the tragedy and haunting visual memories are what most concerns me. I always worry about therapies that have people continually re-immerse themselves in the experience because memories are strengthened by continued processing and memory is reconstructive itself- it's not as though you have a tape that is replayed- in the old days, they believed in catharsis, I'm not so sure about that. ( This goes for other events than witnessing death as well, maybe even more so)

I might think instead of ways of actively transforming the memory in imagination ( of course, you ALSO need to discuss the issues that surround the event with a counsellor/ therapist and integrate them into your life; meds might help also ).

For example, those people I mentioned re-imagine the dead person as continuing somehow ( one is religious, the other was not)- visualising the bombing victim as an older man- what would F look like at 60? - or imagining the victim somehow seeing what happened to the witness- see how well they did, how they would get on with family members born after his death ( like me).

If somehow terrible happened to you, it's not because of YOU- it is entirely dependent upon the perpetrator- you did nothing wrong. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and chance can be a b!tch. You should be congratulated for being strong enough to discuss it AT ALL and going on with your life as a student and defender of SBM**. You can help others who have suffered crimes and tragedies.

**And brewer of fine products.

@ S:

I was joking: they used to say that if we got to 500, Orac would win a pony- but I doubt that a computer would have much use for one and his "friend" is much too tall for one.

Everyone likes airline miles.

If we get to 700, I promise I will knit Orac a pony to go with his bunny rabbit.

If somehow terrible happened to you, it’s not because of YOU- it is entirely dependent upon the perpetrator- you did nothing wrong. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time and chance can be a b!tch.

I don't have any experience with PTSD, but that's one thing I think a lot of people in general need to learn. There are safety measures and such you can take, but even if you do everything right, shit can still happen. We live in an uncertain world, and we can't control everything. It's a hard, painful idea for a lot of people to accept, but I think the illusion of control is generally more painful because it adds unnecessary guilt and confusion when tragedy strikes.

@Alain, I'm in a similar position. What happened to me is happening to a lot of people, but not enough people seem to understand the severity of the impact of the 'happenings'. I want to publish a book, and just put it all out there so everyone can know the sorts of things that are really happening. On the other hand, the memories...

On the other hand, if anyone has been terrorized, traumatized and pillaged by the quacks, perhaps poked by one too many acupuncturists to no avail, here's what not to do:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9711408/Female-doc…

On the other hand, if anyone has been terrorized, traumatized and pillaged by the quacks, perhaps poked by one too many acupuncturists to no avail, here's what not to do:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/9711408/Female-doc…

@ S,

perhaps we could write a collective book of individual stories?

@ Bronze dog,

In my case, it involved a gradual loss of control over a year.

@ Denice,

Thanks for the comments and wish me reparation. I decided to press charges this week and the process is ongoing :)

Alain

@Alain, I know you don't want to go into any details, but is your trauma related to one or more quacks?

no. I lived with a roommate who fit the criteria of psychopathic personality disorder (which I verified no later than last week with a prof who did some forensic psychology research work).

Alain

Alain,
You have my sympathy. Some years ago I had a traumatic relationship with someone with a personality disorder who was both emotionally and physically abusive, and who managed to convince me that I was somehow to blame. It was horrible. I wish you well with getting justice, though in my experience people like that will never take responsibility for their actions.

Thanks you very much Krebiozen. It mean a lot to me.

Alain

Alain, you have my sympathy as well. It takes time to work things out, and it may be hard to trust people again. I wish you luck in getting justice, and a speedy recovery.

Alain, the details inform me much better, mon ami :
this issue has been exacerbated by de-institutionalisation across the western world. People who had more serious problems were generally isolated from the general population to a greater degree over the past century until the last 25-30 years or so..

Since this trend, we haven't really developed the social solutions that probably were more prevalent in older traditional societies. Also our culture has new and intricate methods that enable people to harass others effectively- telephone, internet, miniature spy devices.

While I have only briefly worked with SMI students, I have some experience with families who were coping with a family member with SM problems.

Allthough it might be worse if actual violence was involved or threatened, even verbal and interactions marked by aggressive and unpredictable actions is quite horrible as well. Kreb says something very relevant: you might believe that it was somehow YOUR fault or that you provoked it. As S notes, you are in good company.: this is unfortunately quite common.

Because you have experienced interaction with a very troubled person who harmed you - physically or otherwise- it takes time to recover and regain confidence in human relations. This can stymie personal development and taking chances relevant to education and career.

There's a great deal more I can add but need to attend to something right now.

If the comments amount to 700, Orac get free airline miles!

On second thought, I wouldn't want anyone to joke about us being the 700 Club. Quacks and 666 sound like a more appropriate combination.

Encultured adults who live in a particular society usually adhere to certain standards of conduct with others: there are barriers and codes, limits and ground rules : you give someone 'space', you don't ask for too much - there are things you don't do or say to another person. Various species of intimacy or proximity may relax these rules- making it easier to transgress boundaries.

As a child develops, they acquire more insight into others' mental processes and modes of functioning in the world. Person perception and understanding the perspective of the other are developed during adolescence. So are self-control and understanding motivation of self and others..

Sometimes these aspects of social cognition fail to develop - because of learning disability, intellectual deficiency and mental illness- if a person has a personality or other psychological disorder, they often function on a lower level than an average adult does- although they MAY have relatively normal cognition in other areas. In other words, some have enough skills to hold a job but can't deal well with people.

If you are dealing with someone you ASSUME is an average adult, you might also assume that they will maintain limits ON THEIR OWN when interacting with you. When you learn- through experience- that not everyone is up to this task, you will also have to find ways to create barriers and limits for them SINCE THEY CAN'T DO IT ON THEIR OWN.

How do you recognise who is at 'risk'? Trial and error but occasionally there are warning signs- inability to wait, lack of control of emotions, disregard for others' needs, over-estimation of their own abilities, intolerance of others' differences...
However this might not be very apparent: it's only when you see the person close-up for longer periods of time: anyone can put up a good front for a short time.

It's important to remember that many of these people cannot really control themselves.. however, they can still do a great deal of damage.

Krebiozen, Alain,
My heart goes out to you (and anyone else) who has ever been in an abusive relationship, be it family, work, cult, school, etc.). An ex partner of mine suffered from Borderline Personality Disorder. In the span of 12 years he went from very high functioning when we got together in 1989 to a sudden decompensation in 1999 leading to violence and my breaking free in 2002. The abuse was primarily emotional and verbal though and built up over the years. I have no shame about it now, and though I don't know the details of either of your experiences, I can say one thing about dealing with people who suffer from personality disorders (and man, do they suffer): it's not your fault. Denice, you are a marvel and I hope we can meet in the analog world someday.

As a coda, I'll also let you know that this person was an altie practitioner (no longer in practice) and none of his very wealthy clients of his would be able to believe that he was capable of such rage and violence. He was the very model of a saint in session and seemed to see inside you. Actually he was just very observant and people believed he was psychic and a healer because of that. I learned that many people think Borderlines are psychic because of their hypervigilance, a survival skill born out of trauma. He had a Borderline mother who visited terror on him as a child and learning to "read" a person instantly saved him and his brother from his mother who could be loving and kind one moment and a raging monster the next. It's a topic for another thread perhaps, but I believe many "psychics" and alties like Mike Adams, Mercola and others suffer from some kind of trauma that pushes them into that line of "work." I don't know if they're all Boderlines, but Narcissistic? Well, I don't even play a doctor on T.V., so I'll leave that to the professionals . . .

@ Pareidolius:

Well, thanks but I'm nothing special, I just study things.

While I would never attempt diagnosis, someone else has speculated: Kalichman ventures that NPD might be in the cards ( unlike me, he has observed quite a few hiv/aids denialists when he socialised amongst them).

I would wonder what makes ANYONE become a prevaricator and no-holds-barred con artist: I've always been fascinated by crime for this reason. I think that there's something missing- that they don't understand how they can make another person suffer and never feel any empathy: I suppose it's something like being blind or deaf. I imagine that some might be related to life experience but something tells me that it may have deep physiological roots.

This is one of the reasons I study concepts like formal operational thought, executive function and social cognition and how they develop over a lifespan. These are abilities that vary over a population and have important consequences. Interestingly enough, the person who introduced me to these ideas in developmental psych went on to run an international institute that trains therapists.

About those alites and psychics: perhaps they have enough understanding of others to 'read' them but have no empathy or emotional connection. Gives new meaning to the term "cold reading".

ALTIES and psychics...

Denice, Pareidolius et al.,

At first sight this seems way off topic, but it is still exploring those liminal areas where unusual beliefs and behavior extend into pathology.

Anyway, you are right on the money as usual. In my case I ignored plenty of warning signs because I was smitten, and because I was a country boy in the big city and did not want to appear gauche. I thought I was dealing with a cool (in both senses) persona shielding a charming vulnerability, which immediately triggered my protective instincts. In retrospect I should have run, not walked, away; instead I jumped in with both feet.

When you learn- through experience- that not everyone is up to this task, you will also have to find ways to create barriers and limits for them SINCE THEY CAN’T DO IT ON THEIR OWN.

I'm not convinced that is always possible. I used to think I had a strong personality, but my nemesis ran over me like a steamroller (metaphorically). She had (presumably still has) extreme black and white thinking in some areas, but could function well in most situations and was highly intelligent - I met her at university where she did very well. When I finally stood up for myself and tried to extricate myself from the relationship, explaining that I see life as infinite shades of grey, she pushed me down a flight of stairs and displayed symptoms of psychosis that lasted for weeks (a psychiatrist friend described it as a depressive psychosis), complete with delusions about people talking to her telepathically and putting black magic curses on her. She also claimed she was having an affair with one of my best friends, and that he was about to leave his wife for her, none of which was true, though you can imagine the problems that caused. Sometimes, I think, what appear to be symptoms are coping strategies, and if you challenge them it's like dropping a mint into a bottle of soda. Since then I try to leave such things to the professionals, whenever possible.

she pushed me down a flight of stairs and displayed symptoms of psychosis that lasted for weeks

I am so sorry this happened to you, Krebiozen. In a non-professional role, I work with victims of abuse and violence, and the trauma some people have been put through is horrible. Oftentimes, no one around them, not their friends, family or neighbors are aware that these things are happening.

It is hard for people to walk away from a relationship , but sometimes that is necessary in order to ensure your own safety. Many times people keep returning into the abusive relationship and fail to make a clean break and get away. There are all sorts of guilt trips an abusive person can play on another that keeps the abused partner returning. It's really amazing how so many victim's stories share identical qualities, yet the people, their backgrounds, income levels, etc., are so vastly different. Good for you that you were able to distance yourself.

There's a lot I could write on this matter, and relate it to quackery. I may write more later.

Unfortunately, sometimes relationships like those described by my three fellow commenters include marriage ( or long term partnerships) and children. Then, 15-20 years later, the child has a serious break with reality often involving the authorities and hospitals. SMI has a genetic component- so the children of such a union are more likely to be affected than are those in the general population; when the parents are a mix- one relatively normal and one SMI, care and planning for the affected child are severely impacted. I can't go into details but let's just say that a common scenario involves virulent *disagreement* about treatment.

Long ago, marriages were sanctioned by families and usually involved people from a specific locale- thus problems may have been averted because of a particular family's history which was apparent. More mobile and anonymous societies may provide a greater freedom for individuals but observations of patterns within families are missed. De-institutionalisation has added to the mix. Because of stigma, people may not discuss familial patterns of SMI. Sometimes these factors all coalesce against a person.

A person from a family that is relatively free of mental illness may not pick up the warning signs or create barriers because this had never been an issue at home. This is also true for friendships and work/ school relationships: you might meet a person during a 'quiet' period or when they are taking their meds faithfully.

What's most important to remember is that life goes on and you have already made strides by walking away. We build up skills through experience- some parts of it harder than others- the skills that enable you to understand this NOW are also applicable to other interpersonal tasks that don't include troubled relationships and aggression but on the contrary, may encompass friendship, understanding, perseverence, mutual respect and teamwork.

Denice,
Painfully true, and closer to my current situation than I would like.

Nothing to say: just posting to overcome the "Recent Insolence Returned" bug.

@ Krebiozen:

I'm sorry to hear that. One of the tennis cronies, in his twenties, was briefly married to a woman who had very serious problems- their child had a plethora of school difficulties and was diagnosed as having schizophrenia at age 24- it seems that the guy married into a family from overseas ( therefore EFL/ESL) and wasn't told about how his wife's father died ( in a mental hospital) and didn't realise how ill his MIL was; his wifes' sister married another guy ( third culture, also EFL/ESL) and has a son with schizophrenia, as she has also. So my friend has a 30-something SMI son who is on meds but isn't involved in any therapeutic day hospital activities- which were recommended after his hospital stay; his lifestyle obviously engenders serious health issues, CV and diabetes amongst them. It just seems an endless battle for the father who maintains contact and provides some monetary support. Actually BOTH fathers: his BIL didn't divorce his wife.

On a lighter note:
I like your fox. It's apropo.
A few months ago I visited a gallery where an older man was in charge. "Want to see my baby?' he asked. I said I did, imagining that it would be.. a baby. So he took out his phone to show a photo.
It was a little fox, lying down on a door mat outside his door like a cat or dog would. He told me how he beckoned the fox with food over a period of a year: she came closer and closer, often lying on the mat in the morning and not getting bothered if he walked right past her.
He didn't see her for about a month then further off in the bushes, she appeared with her babies.
Foxes living in close proximity to hipsters.

Denice,

Perhaps insisting on seeing a pedigree before marriage should make a comeback. It might save a lot of heartache.

The gravatar is a photo I took of an urban London fox, one of many that we feed in our back yard. I like to think I'm more of a fox than a hedgehog.

I suffer stage 4 renal carcinoma and will hopefully be having a kidney taken out if the sutent shrinks it.
If not my oncologist will try to prolong my life as long as possible in her words to my primary care physician.. On that table if I make it if the or nurse wants to dance around the table with a decapitated chicken I could give a crap if it may help. a little reiki never hurt anyone as long as it doesn't show up on my hospital bill. By the way the problem with you so called scientists is you don't think outside the box and your not willing to accept any ideas that you didn't learn in med school. There are many forms of healing and some are not completely and scientifically proven but many are valid for scientific reasons not yet understood yet.

By the way Dr Tulios fungus theory doesn't hold water though fungus may be involved.He may have studled on to something that requires more research, The mechanism for his successes may have to do with oxygen or ph changes that are destroying cancers cells. He may have found a solution but may not understand fully why. But I commend you for researching him as much as you did,every dr i have talked to hasn't even heard of him. Can you investigate more as to why the glowing testimonials may have taken place and find a scientific explanation for that ? When the DRs throw up the hands and scientifically condemn my excistence,I will be visiting the quack out of desperation.

@Thomas Preston

I know there are a lot of comments and all, but you should have bothered to read them. We've gone over the "what's the harm" fallacy, the "not yet proven" fallacy, the "different ways of knowing" fallacy, the tu quoque and the "open mindedness", the anecdotes and the conspiracy to keep people quiet.

And most of all, we've already been through the proponents of reiki having no evidence to post with their above fallacies.

Judith, Marg, Thomas, they're all singing the same boring old tune.

Thomas Preston,

MR. Simonicini is NOT a doctor. He was stripped of his medical license and has been convicted of manslaughter.

He has no "successes" nor any mechanisms for such. He is one of the worst forms of criminal quacks on the face of the earth. I wish you luck with your health issues but there's nothing that's going to help with you with reiki or Simoncini. Please do not waste your time nor your money.

Thomas Preston,
Please take a look at this website before you make any decision about seeing Simoncini. Not only is cancer not a fungus, but sodium bicarbonate does not kill cancer, and at least some of Simoncini's testimonials are suspect.

To all scientific minds, I would suggest reading the book Proof of Heaven, by Eben Alexander, M.D. The Author is a neurosurgeon. Great read. To above statement, "It would require extraordinary evidence" - take all science back further and further and further. Back long ago, we would describe the same physical world under a different paradigm, all else was wrong or blasphemy, then we discovered something new and the paradigm shifts and we realize we werent actually seeing the full picture. Major paradigm shifts like flat earth to round earth; geo centric to helio centric to galaxies and beyond; macroscopic to microscopic to atomic to quantum; all of these paradigm shifts changed the face of what we knew to be true.. They absolutely *believed* they knew it was true! Because it was observable, repeatable, so and their model actually described what they observed. Something new is added, the model needs to be changed.

Study metaphysics for a few years, practice reiki or qi gong for a few months, meditate in nature for part of an afternoon. I know it works and how it works through direct personal experience, study, questioning, and even skepticism.

Even though some of these forum goers did not give examples, there are literally thousands of books on these topics, if you want to find them out, go google things like "studies, metaphysics, reiki, healing, consciousness, thoughts affecting reality, etc." Do some real investigating, try it out. There are numerous studies on benefits of meditation, many on Qi Gong, and more being done with Reik. Here are a few:

http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2012/11/meditations-positive-resi…

(longer than above)
http://www.hms.harvard.edu/hmni/On_The_Brain/Volume12/OTB_Vol12No3_Fall…

http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1143148

(same as above, different link)
http://reikiinmedicine.org/clinical-practice/reiki-heart-attack-reik/

People use Reiki, and get personalized subjective and observable benefits. As in, their brain chemistry changes.

Ryan,

If you'd care to point out the randomized, double blinded, placebo controlled study that shows a significant physical benefit to Reiki that exceeds placebo, please share.

Ryan,

Did you bother to read any of the 650 comments already posted here, or on any of the other tedious reiki comment page populated by frauds like Judith and Marg?

We've already been through the "paradigm shifts". It is not our duty to do any investigating; you prove to us that handwaving does anything aside from a limited placebo effect in some self-limiting situations. Marg and Judith were challenged here for months and the best they could give us was anecdotes.

Do you really think you have anything new to contribute that we haven't already torn to shreds? You're going to open up the debate with us? Can reiki cure cancer? Can energy healing be done long-distance?

Reiki is nonsense; energy healing is nonsense; and if you sell it you're a fraud.

Good grief, more Pamela Miles webpages. Who's next, Dr. Quacket Oz?

One more--I couldn't resist.

Ryan says there are "numerous studies" and then posts links to "a few."

What Ryan really did was post two links, but made it look like four. Pamela Miles' webpage is not a study, it's an advertisement designed to sell her services. Posting two links to the same article doesn't make it twice as persuasive.

(This is so much more fun than Didymus...)

They absolutely *believed* they knew it was true!

You mean, like you absolutely *believe* you know that reiki is true?

then we discovered something new

Something new is added, the model needs to be changed.

What is this new thing that has been added? Can you show us evidence that 'something new' has been discovered?

I know it works and how it works through direct personal experience, study, questioning, and even skepticism.

Oh, look, another person who thinks they are greater than human. Your "direct personal experience" is not sufficient to upend the laws of physics.

Ryan,

To all scientific minds, I would suggest reading the book Proof of Heaven, by Eben Alexander, M.D. The Author is a neurosurgeon. Great read.

There was a great review of this book by Paul Raeburn in HuffPo (of all places). I especially appreciated this, about Dr. Alexander's "near death experience":

Alexander has made much of the supposed "fact" that his "entire neocortex -- the outer surface of the brain, the part that makes us human -- was entirely shut down, inoperative." Dr. Martin Samuels, chairman of the neurology department at Brigham and Women's Hospital, told the Times that "there is no way to know, in fact, that his neocortex was shut down." Samuels also dismissed the notion that Alexander's medical background gives him some authoritative edge on near-death experiences. "The fact that he is a neurosurgeon is no more relevant than if he was a plumber."

You also wrote:

Back long ago, we would describe the same physical world under a different paradigm, all else was wrong or blasphemy, then we discovered something new and the paradigm shifts and we realize we werent actually seeing the full picture. Major paradigm shifts like flat earth to round earth; geo centric to helio centric to galaxies and beyond; macroscopic to microscopic to atomic to quantum; all of these paradigm shifts changed the face of what we knew to be true..

One of those paradigm shifts was away from old concepts like vitalism, which was popular before people understood how respiration and the ciculation of the blood worked. New discoveries in physiology, biochemistry and cell biology made it clear that the full picture did not require a mystical life force. Reiki is a form of vitalism, and it would require a backwards paradigm shift for it to become something accepted in science. We would have to "undiscover" a whole raft of things in physics and biology that are inconsistent with the idea of reiki.

Even though some of these forum goers did not give examples, there are literally thousands of books on these topics, if you want to find them out, go google things like “studies, metaphysics, reiki, healing, consciousness, thoughts affecting reality, etc.” Do some real investigating, try it out.

I've been there and done that, thanks. Some of those ideas may be useful if you need a way to relax, but that's about it. Despite years of searching I never found anything at all convincing about "thoughts affecting reality". I think these topics (and the thousands of books written about them) say much more about human suggestibility and gullibility than they do about mysterious energies that science cannot measure.

go google things [...] Do some real investigating

Repeated for hilarity.

Oh, Herr Doktor -- on another forum I was informed by a poster that my insistence on source documents* was silly and that Google was the single most useful research tool ever discovered in the whole history of da Universe#

(military history is big on primary sources, many of which are not online yet).

Lord** almighty! Oddly enough a woo-centric acquaintance related tales from the very same book to me a few months back as "proof" fo life after death..

My response, as it was to Marg, was that stories, feelings and beliefs about the Great Beyond are the stuff of religion, not science..

I cannot fathom a way that we could scientifially investigate the veracity of tales from the Other Side because no one returns from that Far Country. What people experience when awakening from a coma or when their heart stopped and was re-started is contaminated with folktale, myth and religious stories in their memories prior to the experience.
Also resurrection would make you quite a celebrity, I'd think: folks might exaggerate to get a piece of that..

** non-existent

The thing about tales from the afterlife is that they don't bring back information we could verify independently. I'm sure mathematicians would love it if someone could come back with detailed proofs of certain theorems or even something as simple as "Is 2^(some big n)-1 a prime number?" The prime number ones would be relatively easy to check since you'd just need a high-end computer to chug at it long enough. It'd probably take several potential primes with very accurate answers to verify it's not luck, but it'd certainly suggest something weird is going on.

Instead of concrete stuff like that, which could be approached scientifically to establish fundamental questions, we get the usual boring happy wish fulfillment fluffery or dire warnings to repent.

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Oh, and Ryan, you're human. So are the people giving the anecdotes. Sincerity is not a measure of accuracy. People can sincerely believe false things because of several known cognitive failings inherent to human beings. The real problem with anecdotalism is that not only does it demand that we throw out the well-established scientific theories, it also means throwing away the humility that comes with accepting our humanity and replacing it with hubris. The fact that we are human is exactly the reason why things aren't always as they seem. Anecdotalism demands that we assume things are exactly as they seem.

What exactly are we supposed to be learning from "the afterlife" anyway? Seems to me it would just be a tremendous waste of energy to continue existing after your physical body has ceased to function. I think the notion of an afterlife is just a product of our egos - we don't want believe that the world will keep on functioning without us in it.

we don’t want believe that the world will keep on functioning without us in it.

That is exactly why I am building this device to BLOW UP THE UNIVERSE when I die.

@Ryan

Your points and more have been covered in this thread and many others on this site. I won't bother replying to you in detail, since a reading of said comments would provide ample response to your points. Including and especially the one about your own personal experiences, anecdotes and data. Oh, and how books aren't good evidence.

At any rate, I *have* tried qigong, and found it nothing but a waste of time. How does that compare with your 'experience'?