Thanks for another great post. With regard to the ‘Effectiveness of manual therapies: the UK evidence report’ by Bronfort et al., one wonders about its impartiality. It’s worth noting that Gert Bronfort serves on NCCAM’s National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NACCAM): http://nccam.nih.gov/about/naccam/roster.htm For those not up to speed with NCCAM, this is what the Skeptics Dictionary recently had to say about it: Quote “We’ve been waiting for 16 years for the NIH to announce some major breakthrough in health care that has emerged from NCCAM. Unfortunately, most of the “alternative” research is driven by faith, hope, and ideology rather than science. As Dr. Wallace Sampson noted: the NCCAM “is the only entity in the NIH [among some 27 institutes and centers] devoted to an ideological approach to health”….. $2.5 billion spent, no alternative cures found…” http://www.skepdic.com/NCCAM.html This is also interesting: Quote “Dr. Bronfort was recently commissioned by the British General Chiropractic Council to report on the evidence for chiropractic care. The Council and the British Chiropractic Association (BCA) has come under intense public scrutiny and pending litigation due to a large number of false-advertising claims filed against field practitioners. The purpose of the report was to help sort out what can and cannot be claimed about the effectiveness of chiropractic care, particularly manual therapies. The report is expected to be published in a peer-review journal in late 2009 or early 2010. Drs. Bronfort and Evans [Roni, a co-author of the GCC’s Evidence Report] were keynote speakers at the British Chiropractic Association Conference held in Wales, England, in October 2009.” http://www.nwhealth.edu/nwtoday/research1109.html Tell your friends. Reply
BTW, a few more interesting comments on the Bronfort et al review can be found on this JREF thread: http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=155947 Reply
I am particularly unimpressed by the ASA’s policy of not informing a complainant of the outcome of a case referred to the compliance team. I have tried in vain to get them to come clean, and they persistently refuse. The same perverse logic seems to be permeating Consumer Direct – or Consumer Indirect as it should be called. It is now impossible to contact Trading Standards dirdectly, as all calls are diverted to call centres, where poorly trained people tell me not to expect to hear anything further. Reply
The review is not about chiropractic, it is about “manipulation” done by anybody (masseurs, PTs etc.). Although it is difficult to sort through all the original sources, it is also clear that what counts for favorable evidence does not pass muster in scientific circles. For example, they claim the evidence for chiro treatment of enuresis (bed wetting) is inconclusive but favorable. That is their summary of two papers: Reed WR, Beavers S, Reddy SK, Kern G: Chiropractic management of primary nocturnal enuresis. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 1994, 17: 596-600. Leboeuf C, Brown P, Herman A, Leembruggen K, Walton D, Crisp TC: Chiropractic care of children with nocturnal enuresis: a prospective outcome study. J Manipulative Physiol Ther 1991, 14: 110-115. The latter study (1991) was un-blinded and uncontrolled, and concluded that chiro did not work. The former (1994) was tiny, and the treatment and control groups were not closely matched; and the treatment and control groups were not statistically different after treatment. Can someone explain how this is interpreted as “inconclusive” and “favorable?” The review is rife with such over-enthusiastic interpretations of literature, and non-chiropractic references. Aside from low-back pain, there is little support for chiropractic. Reply
Actually the Polish for ‘chiropractor’ is ‘kręgarz’. The extra ‘a’ at the end is because it’s in genitive case in this sentence. Reply