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Peer Reviewing and Alternative Medicine (was: Spiritual Healing)

Started by Shadax, May 13, 2011, 01:10:06 PM

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Pumpkin Seeds

Actually the article stated that they were not able to perform a neurologic assessment in a timely fashion.  They did list that a majority of the patients reported a subjective improvement in the mobility of their limbs.  While I realize that for someone not suffering from paralysis or limited mobility that might not seem like a big deal, for those that are and the staff caring for them a subjective improvement is good.  Considering they also stated that this would be a useful compliment treatment, I fail to see the issue.  The number of patients is for a single hospital in Germany, they will only have so many stroke patients with limb mobility issue at their disposal who will agree to treatment.  Treatment samples tend to be quite small due to having to monitor for the care of all the patients involved in case of unforeseen consequences.  These are not bacteria in a dish after all.

A prolonged placebo effect that affected their blood gas results along with pulmonary function test?  I thought the article you submitted earlier and the view point you were using was that placebo effect only altered subjective complaints.  If the placebo affect can alter blood gas results then perhaps more research needs to be done along that line of operation.  As for the control group, the article states that all patients were kept on their regiments and hospital appointments.  The only change made was that acupuncture was added to the treatment regiment for a select group. 

Once more note the specificity of the disease process being tested.  Chronic Obstructive Bronchitis tested from one site where the researcher attempted to adjust for a common co-morbidly in the disease process.   They were not conducting three separate experiments, but the same experiment attempting to control for a variable.  Pulmonary hypertension is a very serious complication that occurs with COB.  In regard to people not starting at the same point, once more these are not bacteria in a dish.  They were examined before as a baseline and examined afterward to see what had changed.  There is no way to eliminate all variables from an experiment on human beings.

As you deemed not to read the last one, I can only critique the little doubt you indicated.  Another study that investigated surgical intervention of children with this disorder could only pool 12 children of 85.  Obviously this is not a common disorder.  Also, the number of parents willing to sign up for a doctor to have someone insert needles in their child is probably not an outstanding amount. 

As for refuting the entire journal, then I would have to see the editor discredited and stripped of his license for fraud.  The journal is staffed by people with appropriate degrees, the research shows the physicians conducting clinical trials and the journal is published by a seemingly reputable publishing company.  Quite honestly, if I submitted an article from this journal as part of my research in school I would not think twice that my teacher would refuse the reference. 

Jude

#51
So the only way a journal can be proven disreputable is if the editor of the journal loses his license for fraud?  That's a pretty high standard of proof there.  There are certainly other ways of measuring whether a journal is reliable?

Pumpkin Seeds

The journal presents articles that are in line with its stated purposes.  This is a medical journal that deals with the medical application of acupuncture.  The only way I see this journal as being shown to be false is if there is an example of fraud conducted by the editor of the journal.  Each article can be judged on its own merits and it is obvious that they are not hiding any short comings of their research.  The journal is then publishing the articles as they are written and as the experiments are done.  I see no ethical problems with the limited amount of articles I can purview nor do I see anything amiss in the writing. 

So unless there is evidence that these articles are being tampered with by the editor or he is failing to present the entire article, I don’t see much of a problem.  As has already been pointed out, medical journals in the past have printed articles to support their bias without discrediting the entire journal. 

This entire thread has honestly been derailed while you put one reference source under the most extensive scrutiny I have seen anyone give a reference in this forum.  I would seriously consider your own bias at this point.

Jude

Fraud is not the only reason to discount a source.  If they continually make editorial claims that aren't backed up by evidence, reach conclusions that their studies don't show, and publish data with little to no statistical value then they aren't conducting good science.  None of that seems to phase you though, so I give up.  I'll stop pressing the issue.

In good humor though, I'd like to part with a small quotation from one of their studies over music.  I encourage everyone to listen to the youtube link while they read the quoted material.
Dr.Strangelove - Ending 1080p
QuoteCONCLUSION
The despair that frequently accompanies chronic illness is often a pointer to the loss of Heart Spirit, a loss that conventional medicine generally fails to recognize or treat – in large measure because it itself is grounded in a collective Heart-Mind split. In contrast, acupuncture is uniquely placed to help patients reintegrate the Body-Mind-Spirit, and to rediscover a Heart center their ego does not realize was ever lost. However, to help patients integrate Heart and Mind demands something more from the practitioner, who must embody the principles of Heart-Mind integration into his/her very being as part of the therapeutic ritual. Such a shift can present a challenge for conventionally trained physician-acupuncturists to understand and practice.

Nevertheless, attention to the condition of the Heart center (Heart Yin) is an essential part of psychospiritual acupuncture practice. If the Heart-Mind split is ignored, illness is bound to recur simply because the ego-mind is fond of creating problems to bolster its imaginary sense of existence. In contrast, the rediscovery and integration of Heart (Heart Yin) demands an ego-transcendence that demolishes the problem-oriented view through a radical personal transformation.

Oniya

And yet, there are many cases of psychological illness where the patient - no matter how many drugs get thrown at them - can't get better until they've gotten to the point of acknowledging what their problems were, that those are in the past, and that the patient can and has overcome them.  The phrasing might be couched in New Age philosophy, but the mind is very fond of latching onto things like 'I'm too fat/skinny/imperfect looking' (Body dysmorphic disorder types), 'I'm worthless', 'People are out to get me', and so forth.  It requires someone to pass beyond the limits of that inner voice, getting away from focusing on those negative messages, and thus achieving a breakthrough.
"Language was invented for one reason, boys - to woo women.~*~*~Don't think it's all been done before
And in that endeavor, laziness will not do." ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think we're never gonna win this war
Robin Williams-Dead Poets Society ~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~Don't think your world's gonna fall apart
I do have a cause, though.  It's obscenity.  I'm for it.  - Tom Lehrer~*~All you need is your beautiful heart
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Noelle

That conclusion lost me at the inclusion of Heart-(insert word here) terms, nevermind the usage of the term "psychospiritual". Using terms like "heart" outside of the physical, muscular organ is incredibly imprecise, as it is a loaded, touchy-feely word with no concrete or universal definition. They may as well have tossed the word 'love' in there while they were at it, if they were aiming for the least clear vocabulary possible.

Pumpkin Seeds

So, which research article was that from?  I noticed there wasn't a link to the article.