Saturday, February 23, 2008

Eternal Struggles VIII: "Pseudoscience always avoids putting its claims to a meaningful test"

From the Coker article:
"Pseudoscience always avoids putting its claims to a meaningful test.
Pseudoscientists never carry out careful, methodical experiments themselves—and they also generally ignore results of those carried out by scientists. Pseudoscientists also never follow up. If one pseudoscientist claims to have done an experiment (such as the "lost" biorhythm studies of Hermann Swoboda that are alleged basis of the modern pseudoscience of biorhythms), no other pseudoscientist ever tries to duplicate it or to check him, even when the original results are missing or questionable! Further, where a pseudoscientist claims to have done an experiment with a remarkable result, he himself never repeats it to check his results and procedures. This is in extreme contrast with science, where crucial experiments are repeated by scientists all over the world with ever-increasing precision."

From the EIM thread, Davis' next statement:
"The outcomes of some complementary therapies lend themselves for study by way of the randomized controlled trial. Manual therapies often do not, as the bioenergetic aspect of what is happening at the cellular level is impossible to confirm with repetition, or validate without a doubt as we lack the technology so far. But that technology is advancing as we speak, and scientists are using it and writing about it in greater numbers. And I continue to study it, and write about it in an effort to help translate it to the practice of rehabilitation.
So we who practice the manual energy - based therapies have to content ourselves with living in the world of basic science hypotheses right now, as we try to explain what we feel is happening under our hands. This includes, of course, joint mobilization."


I think she is actually suggesting that before PTs even begin to understand or study our hands-on applications, we will have to embrace a "bioenergetic" interpretation of it - then we'll have to wait around for the "technology" supporting it to advance. I think she truly considers herself to be a PT leader, marching toward understanding, followed blindly by multitudes of us ordinary PT human primate social groomers who rely on someone like her to think on our behalf. She will continue to dig deep into the Oschman line of thought, preparing for the day when enlightenment will finally reach the science community also, whereupon we'll be provided with "technology" sufficient to study our rehab methods, what she "feels" under her "hands", and all the Oschman lines of thinking will be shown to have been correct all along.

Of course, lest we forget, she actually has received awards from the APTA. So I guess that proves she is a true leader, right?

Note the complete lack of reference to anything to do with the nervous system or how it functions, or how some of it is a sensitive physical peripheral system. Not a word. Not even one.

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