Massage Therapy Body of Knowledge

Comment

Comment by Noel Norwick on October 21, 2009 at 6:12pm

Christopher: I accept your logic but question your premise that the outcome of energy work modalities is non-random.

While I believe we agree that ritual magic, placebo response, suggestibility, etc., are all supported by empirical research/studies, it's my understanding that definitive, reproducible causal mechanisms are yet to be scientifically determined for any of them?

Most people fail to acknowledge/publicize/track their history of negative vs. positive outcomes and instead ask all to focus solely on their positive outcomes. My point is that when in the face of consistently negative findings (of reproducibility under controlled conditions) a group of people claims to practice based on an untestable hypothesis, their touted outcomes/results are likely to be random.

Comment by Christopher A. Moyer on October 21, 2009 at 4:24pm

For what it's worth, I think you might enjoy reading: Fooled By Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, 2nd Ed.
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2005, Random House.

This is a good book.

For what it's worth, though, I don't think what we're discussing is a case of randomness being interpreted as a pattern (the theme of that book, and a fascinating and important concept). Rather, I think that practitioners of energy medicine/modalities/techniques/whatever you prefer to call them are misinterpreting an actual pattern. To use my earlier diagram, when they experience:

Person is unwell ----> perform energy modality ----> person is better

they fail to realize that the change in the person may be due to other processes than the activity of putative energy. The person has changed, and most often for the better; that is nonrandom. But the cause is not what the practitioner believes it to be. More plausible explanations include but are not even limited to the healing power of ritual, placebo effect, suggestibility, time, attention, spontaneous recovery, and in some cases a measurement phenomenon known as regression to the mean.

All of these are what are known as validity threats in research, and they are the reasons that scientists use the design known as randomized controlled trials. No other research design addresses (i.e., controls for) those alternate explanations.

Comment by Christopher A. Moyer on October 21, 2009 at 4:17pm

Thanks for your thoughtful response, Stephen.

Comment by Christopher A. Moyer on October 21, 2009 at 4:16pm

"EITHER" the TT's pass this test OR their claim is invalid

By invalidating "A" (the ability of the TT's to pass this test) the conclusion leaps to validating "B" (their claims are groundless). Classic False Dilemma.

I don't agree with you that this is clearly a false dilemma. I actually do think that their inability to pass that test is strong evidence that their claims are groundless. I said this earlier.

Ask one of the professors of logic at your University and I think they will agree.

This strikes me as condescending. I hope I'm wrong about that.

To be considered valid, a conclusion must be logically sound. This conclusion is not.

And I think you're getting unnecessarily hung up on the authors' conclusion. the data are more interesting. You are free to reach other conclusions, as you have.

Let me say that the only reason I spent the time I have with this "study" is

Scare quotes around the word study are unnecessary. It's a study.

because you made it clear you are going to 'weigh in' on the BOK. I welcome input from other professionals, which can be a good thing. It concerns me that you cannot seem to understand that the "study" conclusion was based on fallacious logic regardless of what you believe. We need objective "weigh ins", not subjective "weigh ins"


I'm always careful to back my arguments with evidence. Rest assured I will do this in whatever form of communication I offer to the MTBOK.

To answer your questions:
I cannot say how the original person came to their conclusions about energy work. In fact many forms of energy work seem to have developed in parallel in different places of the world, each without knowledge of the other.

My personal experience depends on the type of energy work I am employing at the time which also varies in degree with the client. My experience however, is not the issue. The issue is the result for the client. Have they experienced an improvement? How about over the following 3 days; what changes has the client observed in themselves? Again, these are subjective observations and I have yet to see a valid way to test them.

It's not only possible, it's not even that difficult. Even though you dodged my question - you didn't indicate at all what you experience - someone who believes they have discovered such a modality or someone who employs such a modality is themselves a detector of this energy. There is no possible way that they could work with something that they cannot sense. Yet I know of no single study in which such practitioners are able to demonstrate that they can sense what they claim to sense. Even though I can now predict that you will say it is no, it's really just that simple.

Comment by Noel Norwick on October 21, 2009 at 12:00pm

Bert: I'm troubled by your statement: "This is the problem with attempting to generally define energy work. It is not objectively quantifiable. I have experienced it subjectively through Shiatsu and other energy modalities, but I know of no test that can conclusively prove or disprove any of it.

In the University of Wisconsin during 1970s, I was taught that:

1. Validity referred to the objectively demonstrable truth or falsehood of a premise upon which an argument/proposition is based. In practice this means a single objective observation that a premise is false is sufficient proof that myriad observations that the premise is true were/are mistaken.

2. Logical consistency refers to an argument's/proposition's presentation of a reasonable cause and effect sequential chain of premises. In practice this means that an argument/proposition can be logically consistent but still be false.

I wonder why you choose to argue/believe that something many accept based on faith and personal experience should be labeled as "knowledge" (or possibly as "evidence-based" practice)? FYI, I find it clinically helpful to clearly distinguish between what can repeatably be objectively proven to be true all around the world and what I and my clients often accomplish through the use of what I consider to be reasonably effective "ritual magic."

For what it's worth, I think you might enjoy reading: Fooled By Randomness – The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, 2nd Ed.
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb, 2005, Random House.

Comment by Stephen Jeffrey on October 21, 2009 at 11:16am

Hi Chris in answere to you questions to bert re energy work.

I'm not sure "energy" work can even be refered to as "specific" "treatment" or "modiality" as it for the moment escapes full earthly explanation.

I assume the "first person" to recognise they were doing something different was when the recipient of the "energy"s health improved without any other "modiality" (herbs, massage ect) being applied?

As for the therapists experience when performing "Reiki" an almost tangable/touchable/physical sense of something flowing/pulsing (moving energy) can be experienced sometimes very mildley sometimes quite strongly.
The intent though is always for the receiver.

The experience described is mine. I do not speak for others as the "experience will vary with every practitioner and every reciprient.

Chris why not post your questions in the Reiki or Energy workers groups.

regards steve

Comment by Bert Davich on October 21, 2009 at 11:04am

Christopher,

What I was trying to point out was not about either one of our perceptions or beliefs. It was about about the validity of the conclusion of the study. It might be better understood by examining the logic of the conclusion.

The conclusion uses a classic fallacious logic technique which is labeled by logicians as the fallacy of the "False Dilemma"

EITHER "A" is valid OR "B" is valid
conversely
EITHER "A" is invalid OR "B" is invalid

Validating A by definition invalidates B; There are no other possibilities
Invalidating A by definition validates B; There are no other possibilities

To apply this to the conclusion of the study:

"EITHER" the TT's pass this test OR their claim is invalid

By invalidating "A" (the ability of the TT's to pass this test) the conclusion leaps to validating "B" (their claims are groundless). Classic False Dilemma.

Ask one of the professors of logic at your University and I think they will agree.

To be considered valid, a conclusion must be logically sound. This conclusion is not.

Let me say that the only reason I spent the time I have with this "study" is because you made it clear you are going to 'weigh in' on the BOK. I welcome input from other professionals, which can be a good thing. It concerns me that you cannot seem to understand that the "study" conclusion was based on fallacious logic regardless of what you believe. We need objective "weigh ins", not subjective "weigh ins"

To answer your questions:
I cannot say how the original person came to their conclusions about energy work. In fact many forms of energy work seem to have developed in parallel in different places of the world, each without knowledge of the other.

My personal experience depends on the type of energy work I am employing at the time which also varies in degree with the client. My experience however, is not the issue. The issue is the result for the client. Have they experienced an improvement? How about over the following 3 days; what changes has the client observed in themselves? Again, these are subjective observations and I have yet to see a valid way to test them.

Comment by Christopher A. Moyer on October 21, 2009 at 10:42am

We have got some interesting lines of dialogue going, but it occurs to me that we might also be getting off track, and I wonder if it is a good idea to reconnect with the original idea that sent us in these directions. Keith and I, in slightly different ways, are making the point that energy medicine related topics and information cannot properly be included in a Body of Knowledge. They could be included in a Body of Traditions, a Body of Theories, or similar, but it seems to me the disagreement in this very discussion is evidence that such material cannot be considered "knowledge."

If that conclusion does not satisfy you, I ask you to consider this - proponents of such energy practices have stated unambiguously that they believe objective substantiation of such energy is not possible! How could it be possible to "know" something that cannot be substantiated, other than on some kind of individual and private level that meets no standards for evidence? (What if someone else's private and individual knowledge contradicts your own?)

Comment by Christopher A. Moyer on October 21, 2009 at 10:31am

There is also perception that is neither rational nor irrational just different. When you look at a person’s face you do not check the color of their eyes, skin, heart, measure the size of their nose, the width of their mouth, etc. No you recognize the person directly without a conscience rational decoding of the face.

Some of what you say we don't do, we must be doing. How else could you tell one face apart from another, if not by assessing differences in the features? Further, just because our conscious experience is one of intuition - "aha, I recognize that face" - that does not mean that there isn't a very reductive process that underlies it and that takes place outside of conscious awareness.

The advantage of rational thought is that we can take what we know and use that knowledge deductively, inductively or whatever to reach certain conclusions. We do that by a serial step by step process using our left brain rational thinking. But is doing so we must limit ourselves to a finite amount of quantifiable data.

Sure, I can agree with that more or less. But, not just rational though (perhaps we should say "reason"), but any mental process is limited to a finite amount of data or information.

Extra rational, intuitive, right brained thinking works with directly perceived very complex issues.

You are simplifying and conflating some things. The human brain is not so neatly divided into a rational half and an irrational half. Further, even though the hemispheres are specialized, they are connected and work together in all persons except split-brain patients. Remarkably, split-brain patients (persons who have had the corpus callosum severed as a treatment for severe seizures) are still able to do most activities just fine, too, with a few interesting exceptions.

The problem is that you cannot process it like rational thought. The problem that I see with energy systems is that it violates the basic tenets of right-brained perception in that one cannot systemize it or process it or derive and conclusions from the perceptions.

And now I'm not sure what you meant to say, though I am trying. You are saying that energy medicine or energy systems cannot be perceived? Are you saying that the human mind is not equipped to understand them, or to work with them? If so, why would that be?

Comment by Keith Eric Grant on October 21, 2009 at 10:21am

Carl has said:

Extra rational, intuitive, right brained thinking works with directly perceived very complex issues. The problem is that you cannot process it like rational thought. The problem that I see with energy systems is that it violates the basic tenets of right-brained perception in that one cannot systemize it or process it or derive and conclusions from the perceptions.

The idea that more complex interactions and perceptions arise from experience and are handled unconsciously in the brain is definitely consistent with Partricia Benner's work on nursing expertise, Gary Klein's field research on expertise, and Hubert and Stuart Dreyfus's model of the progression from novice to expert. Klein notes that both the evaluation/response happen unconsciously and that there are also perceptive changes that allow the brain to filter irrelevant data and bring to conscious attention only the unexpected. Trying to do such filtering sequentially at the conscious/rational level (i.e. explicit rule based filtering) is unworkable and the human level and difficult and time-consuming at the computer level.

That said, there is no reason simply because work is "energy work" that elementary applications and perceptions (i.e. rule-based application) could not be done at the rule-based level just as it is done by novice musicians, artists, nurses, physicists, ... The problem is more that statements about the work are in direct conflict with known physics and have no known means of objective measurement consistent with their stated model. That is not to say that something could not potentially be occurring at a level of electromagnetic fields. That concept, however is not what most people teaching and using "energy" are considering. Nor do I rule out perceptions, given that some people perceive certain words or numbers or days of the week in different colors (synesthesia). However, what we actually have as "knowledge" in this area today is quite limited. It would be interesting to see research on localized brain activity relevant to potential synesthesia related to bio-electromagnetic fields. But that, again, is not what current inclusion in a BOK is likely to contain.

I also know, after a decade of writing on the lactic acid myth and despite a couple of decades of exercise physiology in contradiction to that myth, that it is nearly impossible to remove misinformation from even an informal BOK once it has been disseminated. One needs to do the questioning and filtering upfront before it becomes common misinformation that has been promulgated with a formal stamp of approval as "knowledge".

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