Sylvia Browne Looks Foolish On Radio Show

[Doug]

DOUG
Sylvia Browne--who accepted the challenge to be tested for psychic powers by the James Randi Educational Foundation and then refused to come forward to be tested--made a huge blunder on a radio show regarding the West Virginia mining disaster.

She was on George Noory’s live syndicated radio show, "Coast to Coast" at around 3 a.m. on Wednesday, January 4, 2006.

From:
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,180681,00.html

==============
Browne, who had just announced that John McCain would run against John Kerry in the next presidential campaign, was relieved to hear from Noory that all but one of the miners was alive.

Noory: "Had you been on the program today, would [you] have felt if — because they heard no sound — that this was a very gloomy moment — and that they might have all died?"

Browne: "No. I knew they were going to be found. I hate people that say something after the fact. It’s just like I knew when the pope was dead. Thank God I was on Montel’s show. I said, according to the time, it was 9-something and whatever Rome time was. And I said he was gone, and he was."

But the situation was fluid, something Browne — ahem! — obviously didn’t sense despite her claims of being able to speak to the dead, among other things. She couldn’t have imagined that within a short time, the entire story of the miners would change completely — and make her look very foolish indeed.

Noory soon announced that there were new reports that all but one of the miners was dead.

Browne — who was still in the studio taking questions from listeners — had to say something. Now she was just riffing: "I don’t think there’s anybody alive, maybe one. How crazy for them to report that they were alive when they weren’t!" Then she added: "I just don’t think they are alive." She cleared her throat, and there was a deafening pause.

Noory went to a commercial.

But that wasn’t all. Hanging over the show was a feeling of dread that Browne had shown herself to be without psychic ability, just the good sense to be quick and respond to news reports.

Returning from news and commercials for their last segment together, Noory tried to dig Browne out of her hole with a softball question. He asked: "With your accuracy rate so high ...."

Browne answered by injecting a non sequitur. Her earlier proclamation that she’d always known the miners were alive had obviously been worrying her.

She blurted: "I didn’t believe that they were alive."

Noory: "What’s that, the miners?"

Browne: "Yeah, I didn’t think — and see, I’ve been on the show with you, but I don’t think there’s any that are going to make it."

Noory: "They say there are 12 gone. I think we threw you a curveball, we were telling you after the fact."

Browne: "Yeah, no, I did believe that they were gone."
=================

[Dardedar]

DAR
I read that in my Skeptical Inquirer today and was going to post it too. What a pathetic human being that Sylvia Browne is.

D.
-----------------------
...the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), when asked if Dames' fantastic claims about his involvement in a particular missing-child case were true, responded:

"Thank you for forwarding the information on Mr. Dames. I forwarded it around to our directors of case management, public affairs, case analysis, and our COO and no one is familiar with Mr. Dames or his company. . . . As I mentioned on the phone, Mr. Dames has no connection with NCMEC. We do not work with or endorse the work of psychics in missing child cases. [Here] is a general statement on this issue: The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children has assisted law enforcement in the recovery of over 55,000 missing children since its establishment in 1984. Our toll-free, 24-hour hotline accepts information from all callers, but over the course of our 16-year history, we have no evidence of any cases of missing children having been successfully resolved in direct response to information provided by a psychic."

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I'm ambivalent on this - I've know some psychics, but they were all firmly of the opinion that if you go public - especially if you take money for it - you lose the power. This is not a "a friend of a friend of a friend heard it from her sister-in-law..." kind of thing. I handed my 14-month-old, not-speaking-yet younger son who was fussing & I couldn't tell why over to this woman. She held him for a minute, and then told me he had a pinched nerve at C5 - and convinced a chiropractor to take him. The chiropractor confirmed it, and adjusted it. Problem solved. So I can't say they are all frauds, or even that the current frauds were always frauds. I will say that I would never trust anyone publically claiming to be a psychic.

[Betsy]

Was the chiropractor a friend of hers?

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Friend, no - one she used and respected, yes. (& it took some convincing, since he didn't normally see children, especially toddlers.)

[Betsy]

okay, sorry, just checking...

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

I don't blame you, with the Sylvia Brown's et all out there. It's true that an X-ray would have shown the same thing, and a Chiropractor could have found the problem without the psychic's intervention - but I didn't know enough about what was wrong (and didn't have enough money for "fishing expeditions", even if I wanted to subject my kid to that) to do that. The woman herself had no medical training whatsoever, was a secretary by trade, and the only thing she knew about chiropractic was what her dr told her while adjusting herown imbalances. And she was right about my son. Once he had the adjustment, the behaviors and fussiness that had concerned me stopped. That's why I can't just blow the whole idea off, even though I am well aware that most folks publically claiming to be psychics are frauds.

[Doug]

Once he had the adjustment, the behaviors and fussiness that had concerned me stopped. That's why I can't just blow the whole idea off, even though I am well aware that most folks publically claiming to be psychics are frauds.

DOUG
Despite over a century of scientific testing, no one publically OR privately has been found to have paranormal powers.

[Betsy]

Do you think it's possible that people can have psychic visions or knowledge of something from a psychic sense, that is uncontrollable and therefore cannot be tested? Like, they can't conjure up something; it just comes to them whenever it comes to them.

[Savonarola]

Do you think it's possible that people can have psychic visions or knowledge of something from a psychic sense, that is uncontrollable and therefore cannot be tested? Like, they can't conjure up something; it just comes to them whenever it comes to them.

Then how would one distinguish it from "lucky guesses," like when you think of a friend and that friend calls? (That is, you think of friends all the time, but you think nothing of it when they don't call. Wouldn't saying that you "foresaw" your friend's calling be special pleading?)

[Doug]

Do you think it's possible that people can have psychic visions or knowledge of something from a psychic sense, that is uncontrollable and therefore cannot be tested? Like, they can't conjure up something; it just comes to them whenever it comes to them.

DOUG
If it is physically possible, this would have to be shown by either (a) some hypothesis of how this could happen, or (b) evidence from actual cases in which the best explanation for the events would be psychic powers. Psychics have been consistently unable to produce either kind of support to show that psychic powers are possible.

This doesn't PROVE beyond doubt that there are no psychic powers, but the lack of evidence does show that belief that there are psychic powers is unreasonable. Just as I cannot prove that there are no unicorns in the woods of Devil's Den, the lack of evidence would make such a belief unreasonable.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

OK Doug, how do YOU explain my mother's coworker holding my kid & picking up that the problem was a pinched nerve at C-5? Remember, she didn't give a general "take him to a chiropractor" - she gave the specific problem, later confirmed - and corrected - by the chiropractor. She had no training in chiropractic, she didn't even feel along his spine, she just held him.

I am ambivalent about anybody who publically claims to be a psychic - and want somebody I trust (like my mother) to vouch for one if I'm intending to use that path to gain knowledge because there are so many frauds out there - but I've seen too many things I can't otherwise explain.

As to scientific proof, I'm not sure paranormal phenomena is consistent enough to test (which makes it very undependable for anything official, like finding lost/stolen children, etc) - especially since emotion can (apparently & per the experiences of acquaintances of mine) cause it to "malfunction" - so this is one I have to say I believe because of the evidence of my own experience, but you don't have that experience and that evidence, so I don't expect you to.

Savonarola - that's why paranormal is so hard (if possible) to test - because, other than frequency (which is what most paranormal testing tests), minor phenomena is indistinguishable from "lucky guesses". Now if you not only think of your friend just before a call, but also think of exactly what your friend is calling about, and you haven't heard from them in months and haven't a clue what is going on in their life at the moment...

[Dardedar]

OK Doug, how do YOU explain my mother's coworker holding my kid & picking up that the problem was a pinched nerve at C-5?

DAR
Simple, she made it up. Not necessarily dishonestly. Probably most psychics really think they do have powers. Fortunately we have ways to test those powers as long as they are making some kind of claim about our real, observable, world. And when they are tested, they fail. No exceptions.

Remember, she didn't give a general "take him to a chiropractor" - she gave the specific problem, later confirmed - and corrected - by the chiropractor.

DAR
That's a big unwarrented assumption. A much simpler assumption, which doesn't need to assume supernatural psychic powers or even that a chiropractor can confirm a pinched nerve, is that the "fussing child problem" went away, or even perhaps that a little back cracking may have relieved some strain, somewhere. The body is notoriously good at fixing itself or the nearly as effective method in many cases of imagining (placebo) it has fixed itself (doesn't work on AIDS however).
You say the chiropractor "confirmed" the problem at C-5. Psychics work similiarly. They are really good at confirming information that they are given, especially if it can't be checked. So I am skeptical of this at each and every stage, the psychically diagnosed problem of pinched nerve at C-5, the confirmation of a pinched nerve at C-5, and that a pinched nerve was corrected at C-5.
There are no end of anecdotes and what are called "just so" stories but they can't prove anything to others since they are necessarily second hand and usually not carefully observed or recorded/documented. Too bad we couldn't go back in time. If you could get a specific diagnosis of "pinched nerve at C-5" by the authority of a psychic who didn't touch the person, and this could be verified by someone who wasn't told... it would certainly win our $1,000 prize. I think I would even go $5,000 for that one.

She had no training in chiropractic, she didn't even feel along his spine, she just held him.

DAR
In my personal experience with chiropractors, and from what I have read about them, many if not most chiropractors are up to their eyeballs in quackery. Their whole theory of subluxation is pseudo-science IMO. I've tried them several times, I even caught one local guy doctoring my x-ray. I know some people find some relief with them and that's fine. From my position the chiropractor might as well have descerned the problem by psychic powers.

D.
--------------------
"In reality," says mathematician John Allen Paulos, " the most astonishingly incredible coincidence imaginable would be the complete absence of all coincidences." When Evelyn Marie Adams won the New Jersey lottery twice, newspapers reported the odds of her feat as 1 in 17 trillion-the odds that a given person buying a single ticket for two New Jersey lotteries would win both. But statisticians Stephen Samuels and George McCabe report that, given the millions of people who buy U.S. state lottery tickets, it was "practically a sure thing" that someday, somewhere, someone would hit a state jackpot twice. Consider: An event that happens to but one in a billion people in a day happens 2000 times a year. A day when nothing weird happened would actually be the weirdest day of all.
Our intuition, as I explain in Intuition: Its Powers and Perils, fails to
appreciate the streaky nature of random data. Batting slumps, hot hand
shooters, and stock market patterns may behave like streak-prone random data, but our pattern-seeking minds demand explanations. Yet even the random digits of pi, which form what many mathematicians believe is a true random sequence, have some odd streaks that likely include your birth date. Mine, 9-20-42, appears beginning at the 131,564th decimal place. (To find yours, visit www.angio.net/pi/piquery.)

The moral: That a particular specified event or coincidence will occur is
very unlikely. That some astonishing unspecified events will occur is certain. That is why remarkable coincidences are noted in hindsight, not predicted with foresight. And that is why even those of us who believe in God don't need God's special intervention, or psychic powers, to expect, yet also delight in, improbable happenings.”

--Social psychologist David G. Myers is author of Intuition: Its Powers and Perils, published by Yale University Press. For information and
excerpts, see www.davidmyers.org/intuition.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Doug - 2 things: 1) we're talking about a baby here, can't talk yet (not sentences, anyway), and the fussiness includes the way he was moving - not normal for him at that time. It was also not a momentary thing - I'd noticed the behavior starting about 2 weeks before going to my mum for advice. I'd already tried a whole bunch of stuff that helps the body adjust itself and if a placebo was going to work, the warm bath he normally loved to play in probably would have done it. I guess it's too bad I didn't spend the money on an x-ray, but didn't realize at the time I would need the evidence 31 years later. By the way, she wasn't happy about being asked to do it - psychometry was her speciality - and was rather surprised when she "got" something. She neither asked for nor received payment.

2) Chiropractic is a medical profession. To license requires a 4-year med program, just like an M.D., it just specializes in manual adjustment of the spine to correct subluxation of one or more vertebrae, and secondarily may also manually adjust joints out of alignment due to said subluxation. While older AMA people still call it quackery (which could be also said of some of them - and older ACA people do), more modern/recent medical doctors not only acknowledge chiropractic's validity in its sphere, but refer such cases to chiropractors. Chiropractic is accepted as the most efficient treatment for certain types of back pain/trouble (i.e., those caused by subluxation) by Medicare and major insurance companies. The fact that laity "crack" backs without training (which drives chiropractors up the wall, since they know what kind of damage that can do if the condition is a ruptured disc rather than subluxation) doesn't mean chiropractic is fraudulent any more than pseudo-scientists dabbling in "sunspot theory" makes scientific research into global warming fraudulent.

[Doug]

Doug - 2 things: 1) we're talking about a baby here, can't talk yet (not sentences, anyway), and the fussiness includes the way he was moving - not normal for him at that time.

I don't know what type of case you are talking about, but what is "normal" for a baby "at that time" seems to be a rather subjective judgment unless you can provide more details.

It was also not a momentary thing - I'd noticed the behavior starting about 2 weeks before going to my mum for advice. I'd already tried a whole bunch of stuff that helps the body adjust itself and if a placebo was going to work, the warm bath he normally loved to play in probably would have done it.

Again, this "behavior" is still quite vague. I see that you didn't consult a family practitioner or a specialist. Perhaps they would have said they'd seen such "behavior" and that it was not all that out of the ordinary.

I guess it's too bad I didn't spend the money on an x-ray, but didn't realize at the time I would need the evidence 31 years later. By the way, she wasn't happy about being asked to do it - psychometry was her speciality - and was rather surprised when she "got" something. She neither asked for nor received payment.

Just about everyone can "get" something by using the imagination. I still don't see any details here that would suggest a paranormal event.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Not normal behavior included multiple things, but the specific one that gradually began to concern me was that he'd reach for something with his right hand, stop, and then pick it up with his left. The fact that he was using his left hand didn't bother me, I've got multiple "southpaws" in my family and I wasn't trying to force him to conform to a right-handed society - it was the reaching with the right first, then stopping and switching hands. There were several other things of like nature. He didn't cry as if anything hurt, his shoulder/arm/hand were not sensitive to the touch, and there was no apparent injury or anything like that. At the time I was a "stay-at-home mom" and I was quite familiar with what was normal behavior for my second son - that wasn't.

As to "getting" something using the imagination, you must have enough background information, if not training, using the imagination, to "get" anything as specific as this and have it make sense. She did not have the training to know which of the cervical vertebrae subluxing and impinging on the appropriate nerve to cause this. But then, you don't consider confirmation by the chiropractor to be valid.

[Dardedar]

Doug - 2 things: 1) we're talking about a baby here, can't talk yet (not sentences, anyway), and the fussiness includes the way he was moving - not normal for him at that time.

DAR
Maybe he had gas. It can be real painful. I had to go to emergency once. I think that more likely than that a psychic correctly identified a pinched nerve in a specific location. I also don't understand how a chiropractor could even confirm a pinched nerve in a baby. And this happened 31 years ago? Then there is the whole issue of memory.

Now on to the chiropractic material...

BARB
2) Chiropractic is a medical profession.

DAR
Very loosely defined perhaps. Medical practitioners, that is MD's, can prescribe drugs, chiropractors cannot.

BARB
To license requires a 4-year med program, just like an M.D.,

DAR
No comparison to science based medicine IMO. And when they get out a majority of them practice stuff like the following. I do think maybe 10-20% of Chiropractors are legit and doing good useful work so it is a shame there is so much quackery giving the good ones a bad name. I know of and have gone to local chiropractors doing some of the following:

***
"Anyone visiting a number of chiropractors will be confronted with a bewildering variety of pseudoscientific diagnostic procedures. In 1981 Mark Brown, a reporter for the Quad City Times, spent five months visiting chiropractors in the Davenport, Iowa, area (the birthplace of chiropractic). Diagnostic methods included placing a potato on his chest and pressing down on his arm (applied kinesiology), projecting lines on his back to read body contours (Moire contour analysis), reading the iris and comparing markings with a chart (iridology), measuring leg lengths for unevenness (one chiropractor said Brown's right leg was shorter, another said his left leg was shorter) , measuring skin surface temperature differences, and palpation [16]. Other dubious diagnostic methods used by some chiropractors include pendulum divining, electroacupuncture, reflexology, hair analysis, herbal crystallization analysis, computerized "nutritional deficiency" questionnaires, a cytotoxic food allergy test, and the Reams urine and saliva test.

Chiropractors also employ a wide variety of pseudomedical therapies. Magnetic therapy (placing magnets on the body), homeopathy, herbology, colonics, colored-light therapy, megavitamin therapy, radionics (black box devices), bilateral nasal specifics (inserting a balloon in the nose and inflating it), and cranial manipulation are but a few of the unfounded therapies employed by various chiropractors."
***

http://www.chirobase.org/01General/controversy.html

BARB
...it just specializes in manual adjustment of the spine to correct subluxation of one or more vertebrae, and secondarily may also manually adjust joints out of alignment due to said subluxation.

DAR
A little background on Chiropractic, it's founder, and subluxation:

***
Chiropractic is the brainchild of Daniel D. Palmer, a late-nineteenth century dabbler in metaphysical approaches to health care. Palmer had practiced phrenology and magnetic healing, and had some osteopathic training. He reported that a spiritualist medium inspired him in his search for "the single cause of all disease." He puzzled over the fact that pathogenic germs were found in both healthy and sick people and searched for an explanation. (Today, we know that the immune system makes the difference.) He claimed that in 1895 he restored the hearing of janitor Harvey Lillard and concluded that the spine was the key to health and disease.
Unique Theory

Palmer contrived the notion that "subluxations" of the spine impinge nerves, interfering with nerve flow, which he dubbed the Innate Life Force, and that all a practitioner had to do was to adjust the spine -- the healing powers of nature would do the rest. Neither Palmer nor any other chiropractor has ever been able to reliably demonstrate the existence of "subluxations," much less validate their importance to health and disease. Nevertheless, chiropractic has thrived and now has about 60,000 practitioners in the United States.

When chiropractors are challenged to explain precisely what effect nerve impingement is supposed to have upon a nerve impulse (i.e., frequency of propagation, amplitude, etc.), they either fall back upon metaphysical notions of the Innate Life Force or evoke one of many common ploys:

* Make a virtue of their ignorance by retorting that they don't know how it works but that it does.
* Claim that studies to determine the mechanism are now under way or just completed but unpublished (the "Oh, haven't you heard? You're behind the times!" ploy)
* Change the official rhetoric by adding ambiguous language: "Pathological processes may be influenced by disturbances of the nervous system. . . . Disturbances of the nervous system may be the result of derangements of the musculoskeletal structure. Disturbances of the nervous system may cause or aggravate disease in various parts or functions of the body." [1] These three statements are true but do not support chiropractic's subluxation theory or the general notion that spinal problems are an underlying cause of disease.

They do this while continuing to practice as if subluxations were an established reality.
***
http://www.chirobase.org/01General/skeptic.html

BARB
While older AMA people still call it quackery (which could be also said of some of them - and older ACA people do), more modern/recent medical doctors not only acknowledge chiropractic's validity in its sphere, but refer such cases to chiropractors.

DAR
Right, a couple of years ago at my request I had my doctor refer me (needed for insurance purposes) to a Chiropractor for my whiplash. There's not much anyone can do for this so might as well give it a try. I did. They are happy to oblige. My doctor who is generally quite smart also believes prayer works (it doesn't). I understand chiro helps some people but it didn't help me. And I am not judging chiropractic on my own anecdotal experience with regard to this whiplash event (which I still deal with daily) but rather what I have read and personally investigated.

BARB
Chiropractic is accepted as the most efficient treatment for certain types of back pain/trouble (i.e., those caused by subluxation) by Medicare and major insurance companies.

DAR
By efficient you mean they are cheaper? Could be. "Caused by subluxation" is an unwarrented assumption in my opinion. Consider this response to your point:

***
More than three fourths of the states require insurance companies to include chiropractic services in health and accident policies. The federal government pays for limited chiropractic services under Medicare, Medicaid, and its vocational rehabilitation program, and the Internal Revenue Service allows a medical deduction for chiropractic services. Chiropractors cite such facts as evidence of "recognition." However, these are merely business statistics and legal arrangements that have nothing to do with chiropractic's scientific validity.

Although it has existed for nearly 100 years, the chiropractic health-care system has failed to meet the most fundamental standards applied to medical practices: to clearly define itself and to establish a science-based scope of practice. More disturbing is the fact that chiropractic has made no contribution to the worldwide body of knowledge shared by the health sciences and continues to isolate itself from the mainstream of the health-care community.

http://www.chirobase.org/01General/controversy.html
***

More on Palmer's unique theory:

***
Chiropractic's Unique Theory

Chiropractic's uniqueness lies not in its use of SMT, but in its theoretical reason for doing so. just as prescientific osteopathy found its justification in the "rule of the artery" (the belief that manipulation improved circulation by reducing muscle spasms), chiropractic is based upon the "rule of the nerve" (the belief that SMT has important effects upon "nerve flow").

The word chiropractic literally means "done by hand." The term was adopted by chiropractic's founder, Daniel David Palmer. Palmer was a layman with an intense interest in metaphysical health philosophies such as magnetic healing (Mesmer's "animal magnetism"), phrenology, and spiritualism. In 1895, he claimed to have restored the hearing of a nearly deaf janitor by manipulating the man's spine.

Obsessed with uncovering "the primary cause of disease," Palmer theorized that "95 percent of all disease" was caused by spinal "subluxations" (partial dislocations) and the rest by "luxated bones elsewhere in the body." Palmer speculated that subluxations impinged upon spinal nerves, impeding their function, and that this led to disease. He taught that medical diagnosis was unnecessary, that one need only correct the subluxations to liberate the body's own natural healing forces. He disdained physicians for treating only symptoms, alleging that, in contrast, his system corrected the cause of disease.

Palmer did not employ the term subluxation in its medical sense, but with a metaphysical, pantheistic meaning. He believed that the subluxations interfered with the body's expression, of the "Universal Intelligence" (God), which Palmer dubbed the "Innate Intelligence." (soul, spirit, or spark of life). [9] Palmer's notion of having discovered a way to manipulate metaphysical life force is sometimes referred to as his "biotheology."
***

http://www.chirobase.org/01General/controversy.html

You can read a great deal about this here if you are interested:

http://www.chirobase.org/

I have always found the information from Stephen Barrett's, MD and William T. Jarvis, Ph.D. to be accurate and well referenced. I call Dr. Barrett up on the phone sometimes when investigating local quacks (Joel Wallach of "Dead Doctor's Don't Lie" fame).

BARB
The fact that laity "crack" backs without training (which drives chiropractors up the wall, since they know what kind of damage that can do if the condition is a ruptured disc rather than subluxation) doesn't mean chiropractic is fraudulent...

DAR
I am not asserting they are frauds in most cases. Just practicing pseudo-science in most cases. I don't know what you mean by "laity." As far as I know, all chiropractors crack backs based upon the very questionable hypothesis of "subluxations." If you spend a little time snooping around the link I gave above you will find much well researched well referenced reason to suspect this profession.

Incidentally, I go after MD's and the medical profession just as hard at times. I think the number of people dying in hospitals from preventable infections is atrocious. I know there are doctors who are incompetent etc.

D.
------------------------
One thing chiropractors excel at is satisfying their patients. Patients rank them above medical doctors in the concern exhibited about their problems, understanding their concerns, amount of time spent listening to a description of their pain, information provided about the cause of their pain, making them feel welcome, and other factors related to the art of fulfilling human needs [21,22]. Although it is important for physicians to differentiate between mere patient satis, faction and true clinical effectiveness, it seems that they could learnsomething from chiropractors about meeting the emotional needs of suffering patients.

http://www.chirobase.org/01General/controversy.html

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

DAR - It wasn't gas - please give me credit for knowing what was normal and what wasn't of a child who was with me most of his waking hours (and some of his sleeping hours) and had been for the entire 14 months of his life. Of course I remember it - the whole episode was something "not normal" - those make a distinctive mark in the memory.

As to Chiropractic - I have been with that for most of my life and have worked for 2 Chiropractors. Your material about Dr. Palmer's ideas is correct, and as with many ideas formerly touted by medical doctors ("cupping" for instance, and radiation treatment for skin problems), many were proved incorrect and were deleted from the education program. (Remember the late 19th Century brought us Christian Science and Science of Mind, amongst a number of other "metaphysical" religions, plus a resurgence in the fundies - must have been something in the water.) Chiropractic College is very science-based medicine - the 1st 2 years are especially similar, practically interchangeable. Chiropractors don't prescibe drugs, as with psychologists, because they aren't dealing with organic/internal medicine problems. Subluxation is exceedingly provable by x-ray and Medicare requires x-rays before they will cover the treatment. Some of the "alternative" diagnostic procedures are quite valid and are moving into "traditional" medicine (hair analysis, nutritional deficiencies and allergy testing, etc). Palpation is just using the sense of touch to determine a misalignment. If the misalignment is significant, it is easily determined without x-ray (for Medicare, they get x-rays anyway, but it can save someone without insurance significant money if the subluxation can be determined without them). Chiropractors actually have more required training hours in diagnosis than G.P.s because they use so many techniques of varying complexity (with or without equipment), rather than handing off to "specialists" - a Chiropractor can use palpation to determine if something needs to be x-rayed - or MRI'd - and someone really good at palpation can tell by touch whether or not a patient needs to be referred to a surgeon (anything "iffy" gets x-rayed - and most Chiropractors x-ray just as common practice, since most patients do have insurance - I, however, hit my tolerance for radiation some years ago, so had to find one who didn't). A number of "alternative" medical techniques are hitting mainstream that were considered quackery when your 1981 study was done. On the other hand, many of the techniques (diagnostic and treatment) your source listed have fallen by the wayside as they have not proved out. New ones are being tried - the really great thing about Chiropractic is they test and use non-invasive practices - unlike medical doctors who are getting more invasive by the minute. And the fact that they can't prescibe drugs means they aren't going to "treat the symptom" rather than look for the problem - nor hand out medication based on the drug company blurb rather than actual test results.

The standard medical treatment for pinched nerves is muscle relaxants and pain killers & hope it rights itself. Chiropractic standard response is move the vertebra back so it's not pinching the nerve. When you consider that the nerves/spinal cord runs down the center of the vertebrae collectively known as the back bone and out to the rest of the body through the spaces between them, you can see intellectually (and actually, with an x-ray of a subluxation) that of course a vertebra out of alignment is going to pinch a nerve. If the nerve in question deals with sinuses (C1 or C2 locations), then your "cold/sinus" symptoms have the possibility of being caused by a pinched nerve, especially if allergy and viral or bacterial infections have been ruled out (treated but without relief). Equally (I don't remember the exact vertebra - but lower lumbar or upper sacrum) the one that the sciatic nerve passes through out of alignment will cause some serious pain and possibly inability to walk - go to bed for several days fuzzy-headed from the muscle relaxants or see your chiropractor and be fine within hours.

The "Innate Life Force" idea has gone the way of the "humors" that modern medicine of the slightly pre-Palmer era used to explain illness. Chiropractic now sends folks with viral diseases or bacterial infections to M.D. and ruptured discs to surgeons - but deals quite successfully in its own venue of spine, nerves, and joints - remember nerves go through joints, too. (Medicare and insurance companies only started covering chiropractic after governmental studies indicated chiropractic was both more efficient and less expensive for certain types of back pain - just about the time of your Mark Brown stuff.)

As to your whiplash, Chiropractic is successful with that only when the cause of pain is subluxed vertebrae. If you have a soft tissue injury as well, Chiropractic can reduce the pressure and therapeutic massage can temporarily ease the pain, but that's about it. Alternating warm and cool compresses can sometimes help when it flairs up and you'll probably always know when the weather is changing. (Here's some irony for you, as late as 1904 most people didn't trust medical doctors because their med schools weren't affiliated with real live colleges and doctors learned most of what they did by more or less apprenticing with practicing physicians - and even as late Dr. Palmer the best way to kill your wife was to made sure she got the best medical treatment money could buy when she was pregnant - now am I supposed to base my opinion of the current state of medical science on that?)

[Betsy]

You guys lost me with all the boring technical chiropractor talk, but that aside, I'm with Barbara on this one. I don't trust anyone who promotes themself as a psychic but I think there are such things as "psychic" experiences. I don't think psychic experiences can be conjured up and therefore they can't be tested. But I, myself, have experienced random things being told to my brain that I couldn't have known. Usually useless information, so I have no idea why it would even happen. Like what I told you about the name "Bonnie" coming to mind when my mother and a friend were trying to remember some guy's dead wife. Out of thousands of names, the right one just came to me. But if you asked me now to think of someone I don't know's name for $10,000, I sure couldn't do it.

Here's one you can test but it'll take 6 1/2 years to find out. Something (psychic forces? god? the devil?) told me the other day that an ex-boyfriend of mine will be diagnosed with a serious, life-threatening illness when he is 58 years old. I haven't told him that, so his knowledge of my premonition can't affect the outcome. Unless, now, of course, he stumbles across this blog, but I doubt he'll do that since he thinks blogs are dumb and he can't type. Oh, and he's a Christian.

(I know, I know, what was I doing dating someone who CAN'T TYPE, for PETE'S SAKE!!??)

[Savonarola]

Okay, let's muddy up the water a bit...

When I'm making the three hour trip to my hometown or back, I usually listen to a certain CD on the "shuffle" setting. On a rather regular basis -- say, two or three times per trip -- I get the "feeling" that a certain song will come on next.

Now, while an analysis would have to consider the number of songs on the CD and the number of songs that have already been played, the numbers still come out in my favor. Certainly, I'm not consciously remembering which songs have been played and which haven't (although the subconscious could be doing it instead). And "guessing" correctly with only two songs remaining isn't all that impressive. However, during my last trip, for example, I "felt" song #5 (out of 23 on the disc) correctly. I've gotten two in a row before. This phenomenon isn't explained away by mathematical probability, but it's not repeatable upon demand or immune to the occasional "miss," either.

So what's going on here? Am I picking up electromagnetic signals from my CD player? Is my subconscious counting songs and getting lucky? Am I just plain psychic?

I'd like to hear your interpretations of this.