Debunking Pseudo-Skeptical Arguments Of Paranormal Debunkers
Argument # 19: “Alternative
medical practices such as acupuncture, homeopathy, psychic healing, etc. have
no scientific basis and all work due to the placebo effect or the power of
suggestion.”
This is a very presumptuous
statement and a rush to judgment. It
basically presumes that if we don’t understand how or why something works, then
it must be due to chance, the placebo effect or the person’s own
imagination. Since we don't know
everything there is to know about the body and mind, why should we assume that
only what we understand is real and the rest is superstition? There are already many functions, mechanisms
and processes of the body and mind that we don't fully understand. Some examples of these are photographic
memory, the ability of people with autism to perform lightning mental
calculations, extraordinary and gifted musical aptitude in child prodigies,
certain mental disorders, dreaming, aging, consciousness itself, etc. Now if everything we didn’t understand was
due to superstition, then nothing would have really worked until we understood
how it worked, which is ludicrous and almost anything in nature can prove that
wrong. Likewise, we still don’t
understand why women who live together tend to menstruate in the same cycles
either, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not true. Just because we don’t understand why
something works, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t work. Reality does not conform to what we are able
to understand. There are not two strict
categories where either 1) we understand it, or 2) it’s just a placebo effect.
The important thing is that
if an alternative treatment works, then we should try to understand how and why it works, rather than trying to put it on the same significance
level as placebos. Understanding the
mechanism behind the placebo effect is important, as it teaches us more about
the mind/body connection. Marcello Truzzi, one of the founders of CSICOP (who broke away from it later due to
its rising fanaticism), has emphasized this to me before. Michael Talbot also pointed out in The
Holographic Universe: (page 91)
“We now know that on average 35 percent of all people
who receive a given placebo will experience a significant effect, although this
number can vary greatly from situation to situation. In addition to angina pectoris, conditions
that have proved responsive to placebo treatment include migraine headaches, allergies,
fever, the common cold, acne, asthma, warts, various kinds of pain, nausea and
seasickness, peptic ulcers, psychiatric syndromes such as depression and
anxiety, rheumatoid and degenerative arthritis, diabetes, radiation sickness,
Parkinsonism, multiple sclerosis, and cancer.”
Besides, many alternative
medicine practices are based on the power of thought and visualization. For those, a case can be made for the
validity of the mind over matter theory since labs like Princeton’s PEAR research
labs have pretty much proven that micro-psychokinesis
exist. Even before this, an abundance of
medical research already proved that a mind body connection exists far deeper
than we had thought. In fact, studies
have been done to prove the power of mental visualization techniques over the
body. For example, Dr. O. Carl Simonton,
a radiation oncologist and medical director of the Cancer Counseling and
“In a follow-up study, Simonton and his colleagues
taught their mental imagery techniques to 159 patients with cancers considered
medically incurable. The expected
survival time for such a patient is twelve months. Four years later 63 of the patients were
still alive. Of those, 14 showed no
evidence of disease, the cancers were regressing in 12, and in 17 the disease
was stable. The average survival time of
the group as a whole was 24.4 months, over twice as long as the national norm.
(Footnote 1) ……. Simonton has since conducted a number of similar studies, all
with positive results.
Footnote 1 from back of book:
Stephanie Matthews-Simonton, O. Carl Simonton, and
James L. Creighton, Getting Well Again (New York: Bantam Books, 1980), pp.
6-12.”
Although there are plenty of
quack things in alternative medicine today, the fact is that certain types of
alternative healing practices have already been proven to work. Skeptics are often misinformed on these. One strong example is Acupuncture. When first introduced in the west, it was
thought to be superstition and only due to the placebo effect. However, as it was more and more commonly
practiced, doctors and the public came to realize that there was something to
it after all. In fact, the American
Medical Association now says that acupuncture is an effective form of
treatment. There are also plenty of
studies to support this. Michael Talbot
describes some of them in The
Holographic Universe : (page
113-116)
“Although still controversial, acupuncture is gaining
acceptance in the medical community and has even been used successfully to
treat chronic back pain in racehorses.
In 1957 a French physician and acupuncturist named
Paul Nogier published a book called Treatise of Auriculotherapy,
in which he announced his discovery that in addition to the major acupuncture
system, there are two smaller acupuncture systems on both ears. He dubbed these acupuncture microsystems and noted that when one played a kind of
connect-the-dots game with them, they formed an anatomical map of a miniature
human inverted like a fetus (see fig. 13).
Unbeknownst to Nogier, the Chinese had
discovered the "little man in the ear" nearly 4,000 years earlier,
but a map of the Chinese ear system wasn't published until after Nogier had already laid claim to the idea.
The little man in the ear is not a just a charming
aside in the history of acupuncture. Dr.
Terry Oleson, a psychobiologist
at the Pain Management Clinic at the
(In the book, a diagram of a fetus shape in the ear
is here)
(Figure 13 The Little Man in the Ear. Acupuncturists have found that the
acupuncture points in the ear form the outline of a miniature human being. Dr. Terry Oleson, a
psychobiologist at UCLA's
Ear examinations can also reveal problems with the
bones and internal organs. Once when Oleson was out boating with an acquaintance he noticed an
abnormally flaky patch of skin in one of the man's ears. From his research Oleson
knew the spot corresponded to the heart, and he suggested to the man that he
might want to get his heart checked. The
man went to his doctor the next day and discovered he had a cardiac problem
which required immediate open-heart surgery. (Footnote 73)
Oleson also uses electrical stimulation of the acupuncture
points in the ear to treat chronic pain, weight problems, hearing loss, and
virtually all kinds of addiction. In one
study of 14 narcotic addicted indiviuals, Oleson and his colleagues used ear acupuncture to eliminate
the drug requirements of 12 of them in an average of 5 days and with only
minimal withdrawal symptoms. (Footnote 74)
Indeed, ear acupuncture has proved so successful in bringing about rapid
narcotic detoxification that clinics in both
Why would the acupuncture points in the ear be
aligned in the shape of a miniature human?
Oleson believes it is because of the
holographic nature of the mind and body. Just as every portion of a hologram contains
the image of the whole, every portion of the body may also contain the image of
the whole. "The ear holograph is,
logically, connected to the brain holograph which itself is conected
to the whole body," he states.
"The way we use the ear to affect the rest of the body is by
working through the brain holograph." (Footnote 75)
Oleson believes there are probably acupuncture microsystems in other parts of the body as well. Dr. Ralph Alan Dale, the director of the
Richard Leviton, a
contributing editor at East West magazine, who has written about the
holographic implications of acupuncture microsystems,
thinks that alternative medical techniques - such as reflexology, a type of
massage therapy that involves accessing all points of the body through stimulation
of the feet, and iridology, a diagnostic technique that involves examining the
iris of the eye in order to determine the condition fo
the body - may also be indications of the body's holographic nature. Leviton concedes
that neither field has been experimentally vindicated (studies of iridology, in
particular, have produced extremely conflicting results) but feels the
holographic idea offers a way of understanding them if their legitimacy is
established.
Corresponding footnotes from back of the book:
72. Terrence
D. Oleson, Richeard J. Kroening, and David E. Bresler,
"An Experimental Evaluation of Auricular Diagnosis: The Somatotopic Mapping of Musculoskeletal Pain at Ear
Acupuncture Points," Pain 8 (1980), pp. 217-29.
73. Private
communication with author, September 24, 1988.
74. Terrence
D. Oleson and Richard J. Kroening,
"Rapid Narcotic Detoxification in Chronic Pain Patients Treated with
Auricular Electroacupuncture and Naloxone,"
International Journal of the Addictions 20, no. 9 (1985), pp. 1347-60.
75. Richard Leviton, "The Holographic Body," East West 18,
no. 8 (August 1988), p. 42.
76. Ibid., p.
45.”
More recently, an experiment
described in Discover magazine
(September 1998 issue) revealed that neurological evidence from MRI scans of
the brain supported Acupuncture. Here
are some excerpts from the magazine, which you can read online at http://www.discover.com/sept_issue/acupunc.html:
“Cho's unexpected relief
prodded his professional curiosity. As a physicist working in radiology, Cho develops ways to image the complex inner workings of
the body; one of his inventions was a prototype PET scanner around 1975. How,
he wondered, could inserting needles into seemingly random points on the body
possibly affect human health? So he decided to take a closer look, and what he
found astounded him. While sticking needles into a few student volunteers, he
took pictures of their brains and discovered that by stimulating an acupuncture
point said to be associated with vision-but that is nowhere near anything known
to be connected to the eyes-he could indeed trigger activity in the very part
of the brain that controls vision. There just might be something to this
acupuncture thing, he figured……………
To test that premise, Cho
strapped student volunteers into an fMRI (functional
magnetic resonance imaging) machine. While standard MRI provides static
cross-sectional pictures of structures in the body, functional MRI goes further
to reveal how those structures are working.
It measures minute changes in the amount of oxygen carried in the blood,
which is presumably a rough measure of glucose uptake by various tissues and
thus a good indicator of which tissues are active; the results can be viewed as
colorful fmri brain activation maps.
Cho first stimulated the eyes of the volunteers through
traditional means: he flashed a light in front of them. The resulting images,
as expected, showed a concentration of color-an increase in activity-in the
visual cortex, the portion of the brain that is known to be involved in eye
function. Then Cho had an acupuncturist stimulate the
acupoint VA1.
In one person after another, the very same region of the brain-the
visual cortex-lit up on the fMRI image.
As odd as it seemed, sticking a needle into someone's
foot had the very same effect as shining a light in someone's eyes. And this
was not the generalized analgesic effect, produced by the primitive limbic
system, that was seen in the pain studies; this was a function-specific
response occurring in the brain's cortex, the area responsible for such
sophisticated functions as speech and hearing, memory and intellect. Moreover, the magnitude of brain activity
seen on acupuncture stimulation was nearly as strong as that elicited by the
flash of light.
"It was very exciting," recalls Cho. "I never thought anything would happen, but it's
very clear that stimulating the acupuncture point triggers activity in the
visual cortex." To eliminate the possibility of a placebo effect, Cho also stimulated a nonacupoint,
in the big toe. There was no response in
the visual cortex.
Next, Cho tried each form
of stimulation over time, twisting the needle for a moment or flashing the
light, resting, then repeating. As before, the fMRI
images were remarkably similar for acupuncture and for light stimulation. The
time-course study was also done using the three other vision acupoints on the foot. The results were again consistent:
except in the case of VA2, each acupoint lit up the
visual cortex exactly as the light stimulation had done. This time, however, Cho noticed something else. When the activation data were
graphed to show the intensity of the response over time, he saw that there were
two distinct reactions among the dozen volunteers. During the acupuncture
phase, some showed an increase in activity, while others showed a decrease. In
other words, in some people, oxygen consumption in that brain region increased,
while in others, it decreased.
"I figured we must have made a mistake,"
says Cho. Repeating the experiment, however, he saw
the same results every time. "Finally one of the acupuncturists mentioned,
'Oh, yes, it's yin and yang.'" Cho asked him
which subjects were yin and which were yang, and without seeing the data, the
practitioner correctly pointed out who had shown an increase in activity (yang)
and who had had a decrease (yin) in 11 of 12 cases. "I don't know how to
explain it," Cho says.
Like many preliminary scientific reports, Cho's small study raises more questions than it answers.
Still, he has demonstrated new functional effects of acupuncture.
"Classically, acupuncture was the ultimate in experimentation; people
collected data for thousands of years," says Joie Jones, professor of
radiological sciences at the
Yet even if it does go through the brain, how does
stimulating a specific point on the foot trigger activity in the part of the
brain that controls vision? There is no explanation for that either, says Cho, although he suspects that the path is along the
nervous system. If that proves to be true, it's probably not the same pathway
by which acupuncture causes the release of endorphins, says Pomeranz.
"That endorphins are released by stimulating certain types of nerves in
fibers anywhere in the body, that's understood. But that there is a specific
connection between your toe and your visual system is really bizarre. That's really mind-boggling."
Despite the absence of clear-cut explanations,
acupuncture's clinical results are attracting interest from mainstream
medicine. A panel of independent experts convened last year by the National
Institutes of Health concluded that acupuncture is indeed effective in treating
nausea due to anesthesia and chemotherapy drugs. It is also helpful in treating
post-surgical and other forms of pain. Moreover, the panel noted, despite the
pervasive belief in the superior clinical effects of Western medicine, plenty of
conventional treatments for chronic pain show the same success rate as
acupuncture-and often with harmful side effects.
One of the more provocative acupuncture studies used
SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) to record images of the
brains of patients with chronic pain. That study, by Abass
Alavi, chief of nuclear medicine at the University of
Pennsylvania Hospital, measured blood flow to the brain structures that are
suspected of releasing endorphins in
response to acupuncture stimulus-the thalamus,
hypothalamus, and brain stem. Comparing baseline images of people who were in
pain with images taken after they received acupuncture treatment, Alavi found clear evidence of increased blood flow in the
thalamus and the brain stem. He also found that treated patients felt less
pain.
Like Cho, Alavi was not a believer in acupuncture or other forms of
Chinese medicine before doing this study. "I thought acupuncture was more
or less psychological, not an objective effect," he says. "I did this
study just for fun. I figured nothing would show up."”
Some skeptics have agreed
that Acupuncture may be effective for some things, but they maintain that the
theory of chi and meridians on which acupuncture is based, has no merit. Skeptic Bob Carroll of The
Skeptic's Dictionary (www.skepdic.com) emphasized
this in his entry on Acupuncture. What
they don’t understand about chi though is that it not only works and gets
results, but those using it also feel its effects too, the same way you would
feel heat from a fire. In fact, this was
shown on one episode of Bill Moyers’ Healing and the Mind series. Moyers himself
experienced this firsthand. A chi gong
healer put his finger near Moyer’s arm and Moyer smiled and said he definitely
felt the heat go into his arm. (I too
have had this experience when I was in
Chi practitioners can see
and test chi at work just like we see gravity at work. Chi has been used by martial artists, tai chi
practitioners, and quigong practitioners, to heal,
move objects/people without touching them, strike hard body blows with a light
touch, remain stationary when groups of strong burly men try to move them,
snuff out candles from across the hallway, and other feats. While everyone supposedly has chi, learning
to control it takes years, though some seem to be able to summon it
naturally. All a skeptic has to do to
learn about chi is to visit a martial arts dojo where chi is taught and
used. If they ask, a demonstration of
chi can be made either on them or one of the students. I have done this myself and seen
demonstrations such as masters sparring striking blows onto students (apparent
by the painful grimace on the students’ faces) without barely even touching
them, if at all. I have also seen chi
practitioners in
In any case, the bottom line
about alternative medicine/treatment is that it CAN work and it HAS worked
before. Now I am not one of those
anti-pharmaceutical company people who believes in forgoing all pharmaceutical
drugs in place of herbal remedies or alternative treatments. One of the concerns of skeptics is that people
may risk their lives by forgoing conventional drug treatments for alternative
remedies instead. This, they maintain,
is the danger of alternative medicine. (Michael Shermer
loves to tout that as his motivation for debunking) However, I do not advocate that. I think that they should be used in
conjunction. If one wants to try an
alternative remedy that seems to work, he/she should in addition to prescribed
medication given by a licensed doctor.
What skeptics don’t seem to
get though, is that the common sense rule is that if something WORKS, then
people will and have a right to use it again, until it stops working. It’s simple sound reasoning to do what simply
works, and all creatures since the beginning of our planet have done that! So I find it odd that many skeptics are
advising people to stop all alternative remedies even if they work, cure
people, or save lives. Here is an
example of what I mean which says it all, from an article about Homeopathy (energy
water) in Psychology Today (March/April
2004)
www.psychologytoday.com/htdocs/prod/ptoarticle/pto-20040302-000003.asp
“Amy Lansky didn’t care that homeopathy is one of
nine months of homeopathic treatment, Max was a
different child: talkative, active, sociable and
popular. Under Melnychuk’s
guidance, Lansky gradually
decreased his dose of Carcinosin,
eventually
discontinuing it. Max continued to improve. By age
five, he was virtually indistinguishable from any
other kid. “He now sees Melnychuk
maybe twice a year,”
says Lansky. “As far as I’m concerned, he’s cured.”
Max’s experience led Lansky to quit her job and study
homeopathy full-time. Last fall, she hung out a
shingle. “As a scientist,” she explains, “I recognize
that homeopathy is implausible. But I’ve seen it cure
my son.””
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