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Stop the Insanity!
I hope this gets everyone's attention, and I don't give a rip if anyone replies or not. I am posting this separately from the previous discussions on here that have deteriorated into the most vile insulting and mudslinging bunch of crap I have ever seen in my life.
It is distressing to me that massage therapists, researchers in the field, and anyone else associated with our profession in any way stoop to this kind of behavior. Not only is it not a productive discussion, it is starting to sound like a bunch of politicians on tv with their insulting of each other's credentials, standards, and abilities.
I am not interested in shame and blame, so who started it and who said what is irrelevant. I urge you all to remember that we are ALL in this profession because we have a desire to help people through the awesome power of touch, and that is what it is about.
We don't have to agree. We can all agree to disagree. The personal attacks, the character attacks, the arguing over which country does it better, is ridiculous, petty, and childish. This is not the first time this has happened. It is the main reason I avoid this site most of the time.
I am no better, or no worse than anyone else, and everybody is entitled to an opinion. That's what forums are meant for, so that people with differing opinions have a place to discuss those, but so much of what has gone on here is not a civil discussion. When I see people that I know to be hard-working, caring people, and people that I know to be brilliant minds and hard-working as well get into these mudslinging insulting arguments on here, I personally find that to be a bad reflection of what we are supposed to be about.
I don't have to be bad in order for you to be good. You don't have to be a failure just so someone else can be a success. One country who does things differently is not better or worse, they are just different. People get caught up in national pride, and that's okay, but it does not have to deteriorate into what some of these discussions have deteriorated into. Someone makes a comment, someone takes it the wrong way, or out of context, and it just goes downhill from there.
When you're writing like this, you can't hear people's tone of voice, you can't see their body language, and what might be civil if we were all in a room together comes off as a bunch of superior b*******, and one's just as guilty as the other. When anyone has anything intelligent to say, someone else seizes upon that and uses it as an excuse for the next round of arguing.
I wish everyone of you peace and prosperity, regardless of where you are from, what you do, or how you do it. We are all equal by virtue of the fact that we are all human and it's too bad that people are fighting like a pack of junkyard dogs instead of having a civil disagreement. I can't participate in it and I won't.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Christopher A. Moyer on
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Christopher, what if he said...
"And this is reiki.. the theory behind it is [x]... nobody really knows how it works and some people actually dispute that it works at all.. but I like it, and my family practices it on a daily basis.. it is by no means substitute for medical treatment, but I would like to make it part of today's operation because I have had good experience with it" .
Would you object to that?
Yes, Emmanuel, I would. Specifically, I would object to the assertion "nobody really knows how it works" because that's simply not true. It is reasonable and accurate to say that we know it doesn't work. Now, I know there are folks on here who will object to that and disagree with it, but I am confident that the evidence - or more correctly, the total lack of evidence - supports me on this. Yes, it can appear to some people to be working as part of a clinical observation, but there are very good, well-understood reasons why clinical observations are not useful as evidence for such effects. When reiki and related practices are examined with proper methods, the results are clear - there is nothing there.
So, for a surgeon to say 'we don't know how it works' and to imply that still, it works, is simply a case of that surgeon not knowing what he is talking about.
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No, quantum mechanics do not make sense to me in any intuitive way, but I do know from reading and studying that quantum mechanics makes sense; it is a theory that very precisely captures what happens in nature. It predicts what happens in nature with incredible accuracy. The same can be said for the other examples you give.
There is nothing about "energy work" that does this, even a little bit. There is no phenomena that requires an explanation. That's the difference.
Lee Edelberg said:Many phenomenon don't appear to make sense. Does quantum mechanics make sense to you? String theory? the wave-like behavior of subatomic particles? gravity? Stephen Hawking was criticized when he first postulated, mathematically, that energy was escaping from black holes, but later was vindicated.
If making sense was the primary criterion for judging the viability of a certain view or mechanism, we'd probably still believe that a heavy object falls faster than a small one, and that the sun revolves around the earth.
Christopher A. Moyer said:From several posts back:
To put it another way, training in anatomy, physiology, biology, and chemistry, if it's good training, should help one to see that reiki is nonsensical.
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There is no such thing as "western science." Just science.
Lee Edelberg said:
The way I see it, western science doesn't have the equipment or understanding to test for the subtle effects of touch on the human body, just as a few hundred years ago nobody could send up a satellite to take a look at our solar system and our round earth. Give it a few more generations.
But in the meantime, there is a lot of clinical/field evidence that there is more going on than can be explained by your world view, so what are the rest of us to do? Keep doing what we're doing, and let others do as they wish.
As for the energy crisis, I'm sure you remember than N. Tesla had a system that he claimed would derive electricity on the spot from the earth's magnetic field (at least I think that was the gist of it). Given his almost unbelievable genius, and given that pretty much everything else he claimed about electricity and magnetism has been demonstrated to be true, I would think that scientists would be trying hard to duplicate his research.
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Permalink Reply by Ravensara Travillian on
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How would you tell the difference between the effects of a reiki master, and the effects of a warm, clearly caring human being who is dedicating time to listen to you, focus on your concerns, and is clearly pulling for you and encouraging you to feel better?
Humans are wonderfully responsive to other humans; no advocate of evidence-based practice is going to deny that.
The question that interests me is, if someone leaves a session with a reiki master feeling better, how do you tell the difference between what is claimed to be a mechanistic response to something that supposedly violates the laws of the natural world, versus a psychological and physiological response to another warm, caring person, whatever form their presence with the client takes?
So why add on the reiki specifically? If it's just presence of another human being that's having a positive effect, why not recommend that, instead of advocating something that cannot be true *in the way it is described to work*?
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My point about giving it a few more generations is, simply, that it is going to take more time for science to uncover the information.
But Lee, this necessarily implies that there is a phenomenon in need of explanation. If there was, Ravensara and I could easily agree with you. But there IS NO PHENOMENON requiring an explanation. (Please pardon the caps - it's not directed at your specifically, but I want to emphasize this point because some of us have been down this road so many times on this site.)
People are bringing up figures from the history of science, such as Galileo, and Tesla, and Einstein, but the historical figure who is most relevant to this discussion is Mesmer. The phenomena that Mesmer produced did not require any explanation from physics, because experimentation showed, without any doubt, that the "animal magnetism" he claimed to have discovered did not exist. There *were* phenomena taking place at Mesmer's demonstrations, but they were psychological ones. They did not require a revamping of the theories of physics or biology.
This is exactly what is taking place today among proponents of "energy work."
In the meantime, my sense is that people who promote an evidence-based practice think that if something hasn't been demonstrated in lab conditions, then it is likely invalid and shouldn't be done.
I think it makes more sense to come at this from the other direction. What would prevent "energy work" from being demonstrable in a controlled setting? It needn't even be a highly artificial setting, to answer the question, 'can these people do what they claim to do?' So-called energy workers claim to sense a biofield. Can they really do this? It's easy to set up a test, and it's been done plenty of times. The claimants never do better than chance.
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Permalink Reply by Matthew D. Stewart on
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Hi Christopher,
Is there a "total lack of evidence" or the evidence (research studies) that exists does not support the assertion that reiki is effective? Did you mean the latter?
Asprin was patented around 1899. It was popular and had proven efficacy in placebo controlled RCTs. The mechanism of action wasn't elucidated until the 1970's. It continues to be used.Reiki was discovered in 1922. It is popular and has not been proven to efficacy. The mechanism of action has not been elucidated. It continues to be used.
Granted there are difficulties with RCT's for body therapies but they are not insurmountable. As Ravensara and Christopher pointed out there are many explanations (insert content of a paper on research methodology on bias, threats to validity) for an observed clinical effect that are far more rational than breaching the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.
..western science doesn't have the equipment or understanding to test for the subtle effects of touch on the human body....
To say that equipment hasn't been developed that can measure 'energy fields' is untrue. EEG's can monitor electrical fields of the brain and ECG's can likewise pick up the electrical field of the heart. The magnetic fields of brain activity can be monitored with magnetoencephalography and the heart likewise with magnetocardiography which can be used to detect the magnetic field of the heart for diagnosis. This is true "energy medicine". And yes you can ascertain the magnitude of the magnetic field of the hand.
What hasn't been proven is that someone performing reiki can influence human magnetic or electrical fields in a way that is therapeutic. And if there is an effect it's always thought to be therapeutic, isn't it?
So just to finish, if their is still not evidence of efficacy of reiki why would we devote 70 years (or several generations) to find a mechanism of action when reiki hasn't passed the first test?
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Permalink Reply by Alexei Levine on
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What if energy work is a great way to take advantage of and utilize the placebo effect, which is a verifiable phenomenon. Also, quantum physics has been shown experimentally to violate the first law of thermodynamics http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5705317/quantum_entanglement_and_tele... , and although it hasn't been shown experimentally yet, experiments are being developed to test the popular hypothesis that it also violates the second law of thermodynamics http://books.google.com/books?id=-nWyk7jH5_EC&pg=PA135&lpg=... Certainly quantum entanglement ("spooky action at a distance" according to Einstein) would by definition violate the inverse square rule.
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So just to finish, if their is still not evidence of efficacy of reiki why would we devote 70 years (or several generations) to find a mechanism of action when reiki hasn't passed the first test?
I think you've hit the nail on the head here, Matthew. We are tiptoeing around the 800-pound gorilla in the room.
Having worked in Harborview Medical Center's Refugee Clinic from 1991-1998, over the years, I observed many cases of somatization--the translation of psychological pain into physical symptoms, such as someone who lost all their children to the Khmer Rouge and who denies any psychological suffering from that loss, but complains of massive headaches and stomach aches. However, in modern American culture, it has become shameful to say that someone suffers from something psychological; as a result, the word "somatization" is disparaged.
If we say that reiki sessions meet a psychological need for some people, that is considered a bad thing in modern US society. If we invent a mechanistic explanation, even an explanation that does not makes sense in terms of how the natural world operates, then it is more acceptable.
I think that is a flaw in our culture, and it ought to be ok to say that some people report that reiki meets a psychological need on their part--without shame--rather than our all having to pretend that the physical laws of space and time have somehow magically been suspended.
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I agree Ravensara. The placebo effect is a wonderful thing. I think we should lose the old baggage of negativity attached to the word placebo, or maybe just invent a new name for it.
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Is there any evidence for any connection between the placebo effect and energy work?
And if you can show it actually violates the 2nd law, then that is the solution to our energy crisis. Why would people who can actually get around that withhold their assistance from the rest of us sentient beings?
Quantum entanglement has been shown to work at the subatomic level; what would it actually look like at our level of perception?
Alexei Levine said:What if energy work is a great way to take advantage of and utilize the placebo effect, which is a verifiable phenomenon. Also, quantum physics has been shown experimentally to violate the first law of thermodynamics http://www.metacafe.com/watch/5705317/quantum_entanglement_and_tele... , and although it hasn't been shown experimentally yet, experiments are being developed to test the popular hypothesis that it also violates the second law of thermodynamics http://books.google.com/books?id=-nWyk7jH5_EC&pg=PA135&lpg=... Certainly quantum entanglement ("spooky action at a distance" according to Einstein) would by definition violate the inverse square rule.
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I think we are partially in agreement here.
I certainly agree on losing the negativity, but I don't think that all psychological effects fall under the category of placebo. I think there are real and replicable psychological effects that attach from our evolutionary history of descending from--and being--social apes.
Recognizing those effects, rather than attaching blame for them and inventing mechanistic explanations that contradict our empirical understanding of the natural world, I think, would go a long way to resolving the problems in the way we talk about these issues.
Alexei Levine said:I agree Ravensara. The placebo effect is a wonderful thing. I think we should lose the old baggage of negativity attached to the word placebo, or maybe just invent a new name for it.
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Ravensara, maybe it would look like the placebo effect :)
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