A Fool’s Paradise
The chapter titled “Dubious Diagnostic and Therapeutic Techniques” only scratches the surface of chiropractic’s methodological madness. There are so many different chiropractic techniques — many more than Magner lists — all allegedly comprehensive — that I honestly don’t know how chiropractors decide which ones to learn and use. I have often thought that the best way to reveal chiropractic for what it is would be to send someone undercover to at least a dozen chiropractors and record all of their responses. This has been done several times, and Magner relates three undercover investigations in which the patients were children. The chiropractic “diagnoses” were akin to what one would expect from “psychic” advisors. Magner quotes Prof. Craig Nelson, D.C. of Northwestern College of Chiropractic:
Chiropractic supports dozens of different techniques… The various chiropractic techniques… [have] different theoretical bases… Many… are truly distinct and incompatible with each other…There is no comparable circumstance in any other health care profession.
Magner should have added that in no other healthcare profession do we find so much personality cultism. Barge, Dejarnette, Epstein, Fefferi, Fuhr, Gonstead, Goodheart, Merick, Morter, Nimmo, Pettibone, Pierce, Stillwagon, Thompson, Toftness, Van Rump — these names, and many others, are familiar to every chiropractor in America. They are the names of chiropractic gurus with devoted followings. The word “chiropractic” has become nothing more than a convenient slogan used by competing factions of a manual-therapy subculture with different and conflicting theoretical bases.
This brings me to a very important point about chiropractic research. Magner does a good job picking apart the Meade study, the RAND study, and the Manga report, all of which, according to most chiropractors, proved the effectiveness and superiority of chiropractic treatment. He did not, however, make the following point clearly enough. Considering what a theoretic mess chiropractic is, and how much chiropractors contradict one another in what they say and do, what good is there in trying to measure chiropractic effects? Here’s an analogy: Imagine a study in which physicians prescribe whatever medicines they deem appropriate without identifying their prescriptions. Because of the plethora of medicines available and the lack of medicine identification, all this study could possibly demonstrate is the subjective effect of the belief that one is taking medicine — the placebo effect. Unless one precisely identifies and limits the object of evaluation, a study has no meaning. But this is exactly the case with chiropractic research. In most instances, no attempt is made to define or limit the “adjustive” and ancillary techniques to be evaluated. No one looks into what the chiropractors actually did, so long as they did something that was called “chiropractic.” The results, therefore, are absolutely meaningless, yet chiropractors shout and jump for joy at their “vindication.” It’s a fool’s paradise.
The chapter titled “Nutrition-Related Nonsense” brought to mind another experience I had at chiropractic college. An instructor who loved “muscle testing” a la applied kinesiology claimed not only that he could determine thereby whether a person needed a particular vitamin, but also that he could find out exactly how much the person needed and which brand would be best. A friend of mine and I played a trick on him one day. We emptied a vitamin capsule and filled it with plain sucrose. We produced it during class and told the professor it was vitamin C. Through “muscle testing,” he seemingly determined that a particular student was deficient in table sugar. The “muscle tester” wasn’t happy when he learned of the prank but of course had an explanation. Chiropractors always do.
Thank to great range of cheap, safe generic drugs, you’re likely to find right what you are searching in health medications.
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