User:Fyslee/Sandbox Charges of quackery in chiropractic

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Contents 1 Charges of quackery in chiropractic 2 Quackery in Chiropractic

[edit] Charges of quackery in chiropractic

Accusations against chiropractic for being a pseudoscience, and for promoting and failing to counteract quackery within the profession, have plagued the profession since its beginning, and continue to this day, in spite of attempts by some chiropractors to do something about the internal problems motivating those accusations.

Chiropractic has traditionally brushed such accusations aside as being the views of their enemies; of being outdated and no longer relevant claims; of being a reaction to the unscientific and unethical actions of a small minority of chiropractors; or of being based on turf protection efforts by the AMA and its allies.

One could easily quote many skeptical sources outside the profession, but the words of the profession's own historian and former professor, Joseph C. Keating, Jr, PhD [1], will suffice. He sums up the problems quite well in a Letter to the Editor from 1991, entitled "Quackery in Chiropractic:"

The so-called "quackery myth about chiropractic" is no myth. If anyone doubts the continuity of quackery in the profession, he has only to turn to pages 31 and 35 of the same issue of Dynamic Chiropractic."

Wow! Cures for psoriasis and the common cold. Sure sounds like Nobel Prize winning stuff. A search of scientific sources (Chiropractic Research Abstracts Collection, Index Medicus), however, paints a very different picture. My scan of the literature reveals no experimental evidence from Drs. Connolly or Dorobiala to substantiate the wild claims made in these advertisements. Rather, these advertisements amount to for-profit promotion of unproven health remedies and thereby clearly meet the criteria1,2 of quackery.

I pick on Drs. Connolly and Dorobiala because their advertisements so clearly amount to "quackery" that they are easy to document. But the kernels of quackery (i.e., unsubstantiated and untested health remedies offered as "proven") are ubiquitous in this profession.3,4 I dare say that health misinformation (if not quackery) can be found in just about any issue of any chiropractic trade publication (and some of our research journals) and much of the promotional materials chiropractors disseminate to patients. The recent unsubstantiated claims of the ACA are exemplary.

"Chiropractic procedure not only corrects athletic injury but also enables your body to operate at peak efficiency without the use of drugs or medication" (ACA pamphlet #ST-3, 1990) and,

"Chiropractic is a drugless, non-surgical method of procedure which has been proven effective for improving performance" (ACA pamphlet #ST-4, 1990.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this tradition of unsubstantiated claims is that those chiropractic remedies which may, in fact, be helpful to patients (i.e., safe and effective) go untested and discredited because of the profession's willingness to promote them with nary a shred of experimental evidence.

It escapes me entirely how Dr. Downing, the ACA, MPI, and Dynamic Chiropractic can suggest that there is no quackery in chiropractic. Either these groups and individuals do not read the chiropractic literature or have no crap-detectors. I urge a reconsideration of advertising and promotion policies in chiropractic.

- Joseph C. Keating, Jr, PhD[2]

Skeptics consider his observations to be equally valid to this day, while chiropractors generally consider his observations to be incorrect.

On Feb. 4, 1994, the ABC TV program 20/20 broadcasted an unfavorable exposé of chiropractic. Dr. Keating had this to say about it and the profession's reaction to it:

Well, if you don't share the above sentiments, and felt angry and embarrassed by the most recent expose of chiropractic gobbledygook, what's to be done about it? If your ire is directed toward the "20/20" program for airing our "dirty laundry," I think it's misdirected. What about the dirty laundry itself, and the makers thereof? And, what about ourselves, the chiropractic profession-at-large, who have traditionally dismissed these shenanigans as the unfortunate foolishness of an unrepresentative and minuscule minority? Are we not ultimately responsible, by our silence and tolerance (grudging though it may be), for the outrageous claims and practices in our midst?

Some of his graphic descriptions are:

"gooney rhetoric;" "unchallenged," "unsubstantiated claims;" "uncritical attitudes toward practice standards are actively encouraged at some of our institutions of 'higher learning';" "institutions as doctor factories, rather than as centers for scholarly excellence;" "The leadership of the world's largest chiropractic organization is not yet prepared to bite the bullet and work to eliminate the gobbledygook in chiropractic;" "the ACA is still not ready to clean up its own periodicals;" "forces within the profession which see the promotion of untested theories and theologies as chiropractic's birthright, if not its salvation;"

"The attitude of the ACA has progressed to the point where research is acknowledged as necessary to prove "what we say is true." The idea that we should desist from making claims, unless and until the clinical value of a chiropractic method is established, is not yet widely apparent in the profession nor among elected leaders. Indeed, I have been informed that the ACA cannot take responsibility for screening the advertisements which appear in its publications, not even its own advertisements!"

"our propensity to speak without data and to tolerate such in other chiropractors;" "there has been little effort to make unsubstantiated claims by chiropractors socially unacceptable among chiropractors themselves. Instead, we seem content to let the journalists and the medical community do our house cleaning for us. The emperor continues to prance around in the buff, and most chiropractors seem unconcerned, if not delighted, with the spectacle;" and "venders of chirogibberish." [3]

For other expositions of such viewpoints from outside sources, the external links can be used.

ORIGINAL

[edit] Quackery in Chiropractic

A chiropractic professor and its foremost and highly respected (within chiropractic!) historian, Joseph C. Keating, Jr, PhD, explains why quite pointedly (my highlighting added):

Dynamic Chiropractic, February 15, 1991, Volume 09, Issue 04

Quackery in Chiropractic

Dear Editor:

The recent editorial suggestion (Dynamic Chiropractic, January 18, 1991, p. 22) that American Chiropractic Association (ACA) President Charles F. Downing, D.C.'s letter to "Dear Abby" has "picked clean the last vestiges of doubt about chiropractic and 'quackery'" is absurd. The so-called "quackery myth about chiropractic" is no myth. If anyone doubts the continuity of quackery in the profession, he has only to turn to pages 31 and 35 of the same issue of Dynamic Chiropractic.

On page 31, Dynamic Chiropractic has published Dr. Robert E. Connolly's advertisement for "my proven psoriasis treatment" and his unsubstantiated claim that "psoriasis can be cured" by his methods. Dr. Connolly also notes that his cure will increase doctors' income substantially. He offers several testimonials to buttress his therapeutic claims. Page 36 reveals that James F. Dorobiala, D.C.'s Ten Minute Cure for the Common Cold has made it to the Motion Palpation Institute's (MPI's) "Preferred Reading and Viewing List." This "difinitive work" on "The Cure and Management of the Common Cold" is available for a mere $75.

Wow! Cures for psoriasis and the common cold. Sure sounds like Nobel Prize winning stuff. A search of scientific sources (Chiropractic Research Abstracts Collection, Index Medicus), however, paints a very different picture. My scan of the literature reveals no experimental evidence from Drs. Connolly or Dorobiala to substantiate the wild claims made in these advertisements. Rather, these advertisements amount to for-profit promotion of unproven health remedies and thereby clearly meet the criteria1,2 of quackery.

I pick on Drs. Connolly and Dorobiala because their advertisements so clearly amount to "quackery" that they are easy to document. But the kernels of quackery (i.e., unsubstantiated and untested health remedies offered as "proven") are ubiquitous in this profession.3,4 I dare say that health misinformation (if not quackery) can be found in just about any issue of any chiropractic trade publication (and some of our research journals) and much of the promotional materials chiropractors disseminate to patients. the recent unsubstantiated claims of the ACA are exemplary.

"Chiropractic procedure not only corrects athletic injury but also enables your body to operate at peak efficiency without the use of drugs or medication" (ACA pamphlet #ST-3, 1990) and,

"Chiropractic is a drugless, non-surgical method of procedure which has been proven effective for improving performance" (ACA pamphlet #ST-4, 1990.

Perhaps the most unfortunate aspect of this tradition of unsubstantiated claims is that those chiropractic remedies which may, in fact, be helpful to patients (i.e., safe and effective) go untested and discredited because of the profession's willingness to promote them with nary a shred of experimental evidence.

It escapes me entirely how Dr. Downing, the ACA, MPI, and Dynamic Chiropractic can suggest that there is no quackery in chiropractic. Either these groups and individuals do not read the chiropractic literature or have no crap-detectors. I urge a reconsideration of advertising and promotion policies in chiropractic.

- Joseph C. Keating, Jr, PhD[4]

That public domain Letter to the Editor was written in 1991, and much of that situation is unchanged. If I had a bird cage, I'd do what some chiropractors report that they do with Dynamic Chiropractic and JVSR, and use them to line the bottom. (No, not really, since I archive everything, including DC. It's interesting reading. To this day there is hardly a single page without some type of promotion of a quack method, get-rich-quick sales gimmic, practice builders, weird gizmos and machines, etc. It's still filled with pseudoscience, nonsense, and dubious stuff, with only a few writers really contributing stuff worth reading and learning from.

He has more to say on the subject:

Well, if you don't share the above sentiments, and felt angry and embarrassed by the most recent expose of chiropractic gobbledygook, what's to be done about it? If your ire is directed toward the "20/20" program for airing our "dirty laundry," I think it's misdirected. What about the dirty laundry itself, and the makers thereof? And, what about ourselves, the chiropractic profession-at-large, who have traditionally dismissed these shenanigans as the unfortunate foolishness of an unrepresentative and minuscule minority? Are we not ultimately responsible, by our silence and tolerance (grudging though it may be), for the outrageous claims and practices in our midst?[5]

Here are his archives, the largest in the profession. They are a goldmine for all parties!

Here is a bio page about him.