Talk:Reiki

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[edit] Avoiding pseudoscience

Attribution, clarity, specific wording, and scientific qualification are not weaseling. In this change [1] as I explained in the edit summary, I put a little more information in, and stated exactly what the situation is. It paraphrases the NIH, using the same word "not been validated" and also the word "researcher." This put the claim in line with the sources, in contrast to the previous version where the claim did not reflect the sourcing. Please provide sources which make the claims stated before returning it to the previous version, and you will also need to attribute such an absolute claim to its source. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 05:33, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ahemmmm ....

"Sourced" is not the same as "valid" or "true." A lot of biased edits on this article and POV wars, and they are unnecessary. Reiki believers state their belief in healing is what this is about. The edits and debates here seem to be religious debates and attempts at clinical grandstanding. Emotional health is as important as physical and they are correlated. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.70.238.44 (talk) 00:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

"True" isn't a criterion for inclusion on Wikipedia. Reliably sourced, however qualified, is. --Bradeos Graphon Βραδέως Γράφων (talk) 01:11, 2 April 2008 (UTC)
This is the point I was making. I also note you failed to read any of the material, just put it all back in without checking the sources and reverted. The sources are inflammatory. Use of the word "fraud" for what is described in the first paragraph of the article as a "spiritual belief system" as apposite points is entirely illogical. Sadly, this article appears to entirely miss the merits of the quoted sources and misstate them. Hopefully, other editors will come along and address many of these points and sort out this quagmire. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 166.70.238.44 (talk) 01:28, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Unsourced statements

Statements -especially about science- need good sourcing. Statements like "There is no scientific evidence to support of this technique as effective in the treatment of any physical ailment beyond any other placebo" need sources. I've put in requests, as this stuff has been edit-warred back in. I do not believe that there are any sources for this statement, as it contradicts the body of the text. But it there are, we need to put them in, or take out the statement. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:11, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

So if no one has objections, that is to say well-sourced objections, I'd like to go back to the edit which was reverted here. No reason for biased wording, nor for statements which not only are not sourced, but are contrary to the sources we have. Per:

Any material that is challenged or likely to be challenged must be supported by a reliable source. "Original research" is material for which no reliable source can be found. The only way you can show that your edit is not original research is to produce a reliable published source that contains that material. However, even with well-sourced material, if you use it out of context or to advance a position not directly and explicitly supported by the source, you are also engaged in original research; [2]

and

The burden of evidence lies with the editor who adds or restores material. All quotations and any material challenged or likely to be challenged should be attributed to a reliable, published source using an inline citation.[1] The source should be cited clearly and precisely to enable readers to find the text that supports the article content in question. [3]

and

I can NOT emphasize this enough.
There seems to be a terrible bias among some editors that some sort of

random speculative "I heard it somewhere" pseudo information is to be tagged with a "needs a cite" tag. Wrong. It should be removed, aggressively, unless it can be sourced. This is true of all information, but it is particularly true of negative information about living persons. [4][5]

I bent over backward and put in a cite tag, which has not been honored. And no, the burden is not on me to prove Reiki, the burden is on anyone who wants to make claims, and negative claims are still claims. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:38, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

I am only involved in this article as a copyeditor and have no knowledg of Reiki, but seems to me this statement needs a source to be Wikipedia compliant.(olive (talk) 01:53, 6 April 2008 (UTC))

[edit] Sources again

The following statement is not supported by the source- and not correct.

It's classified by academic scientists as "not even wrong", a pejorative quipped first by Wolfgang Pauli now saved in academia for reference to quackery and pseudoscience.[1]

Therefore, I upped the tag to totally disputed. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 21:54, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

I've now removed that quote - and replaced it with a reference to a Times article on alt med (inc. reiki) and a quote from Prof Ernst. I hope that's OK - the Times is a reliable source, and Ernst is a prominent expert on complementary therapies. Jon m (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 23:48, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Looks fine to me. The only issues before were with the reliability of the source used, the generalization from a personal website by an associate professor to "academic scientists" as the originators of the position claimed, and the fact that the source was little more than a collection of links attached to a brief pejorative comment covering them all rather than providing actual information on why they should be considered "not even wrong." Jarandhel (talk) 02:42, 18 April 2008 (UTC)
It looks great to me. There was also the nasty tone before, which you also removed. See if you can do something about the other absolute statements like "There is no scientific evidence to support this technique as effective in the treatment of any physical ailment beyond any other placebo.[citation needed]" which contradicts the sources where 4 of 6 studies were positive, and "There are currently no positive studies that have been accepted into any science based medical publication.[citation needed]" which just means that the author is judging the studies cited. Anyway, with three people now here, it isn't just reverting everything I try to change anymore (; ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:54, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Council of Australian Reiki Organisations Ltd.

CARO is a national non-profit organisation established in Australia to deal with many of the issues debated. It might be worth keeping up to date with their activities. David Woodward (talk) 09:18, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Scientific research

In light of my recent change diff to the Reiki#Scientific research section to reflect this new systematic review of the literature, I would like to remove the {{Totally-disputed-section}} tag from this section. Thoughts? - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 18:17, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

It's very good. I made some small changes in other sections and removed a WTA in the section you improved, and took out the disputed and POV tags as requested. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 00:03, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe the tag should be restored after seeing (controversial rewrite) edits like this. QuackGuru 00:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
I'll put it back in myself, if you wish. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 00:40, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Including both sentences may be the best option. QuackGuru 00:44, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Not really - that is the Teachings section. The placebo issue is still treated under Scientific research. Neither version says that research (clinical, at least - basic plausibility is also treated under Scientific research, where it belongs) supports ineffectiveness, only that it does not support effectiveness. The stronger wording will require a different source. If you want to reword anything in line with this source, here is an infobox-style summary from the review:

Message for the Clinic The decision to include reiki on the list of complementary medicines recommended for pain management, anxiety and depression by the NHS Trusts and Princess of Wales’s Foundation of Integrative Medicine, is not evidence based. Patients who are using (or considering using) reiki for management of these symptoms should be provided with current evidence of effectiveness. Whilst a lack of evidence does not mean that reiki is ineffective, patients should be informed that the only systematic and critical appraisal of RCTs demonstrates that there is currently no robust evidence to recommend a course of reiki for management of several chronic conditions.

- Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 00:59, 3 May 2008 (UTC)


Right, exactly. What you just posted has scientific nuance. There is simply no source for the following statement, except the opinion of one scientist: "There is no scientific evidence to support this technique as effective in the treatment of any physical ailment beyond any other placebo." It needs to be attributed to Professor Ernst or removed. It's also redundant.

Nah, strike that. The quote is "There is no good evidence that Reiki is effective for any condition" [6]. Even attrubution can't save the statement as it is. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 01:28, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Jefffire's version works for me with the placebo language being cited to the Lee review and the no scientific support being cited to both. I do not think it is too great a conceptual leap to go from "The RCTs included in this review fail to fully control for placebo effects. It is therefore impossible to tell to what extent the therapeutic response (if any) is due to specific or non-specific effects." to 'no evidence of effect beyond placebo response'. We can (and do) point out the lack of scientific plausibility for the underlying idea, but I agree that strictly speaking any possible therapeutic benefits despite this are "unproven" rather than "disproven". - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 22:16, 3 May 2008 (UTC)
Just make it "The review concludes that there is insufficient evidence to recommend reiki as being more effective for any condition than a placebo." ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 01:10, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Weasely. Just make it "The review concludes that Reiki is no more medically effective than a placebo." ScienceApologist (talk) 07:34, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Correctly reporting what the report says is not weasly. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 20:00, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Eldereft's and ScienceApologist's versions fairly report the results of the report. Antelantalk 20:08, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Er, actually I disagree with ScienceApologist - the review concludes that even the best research on this topic sucks is methodologically unsound. If a crappy poorly designed underpowered study lacking sufficient rigor fails to discard the null, you have learned almost nothing. Compare with the evidence against proton decay or the lower bound for Higgs - failure to see a signal in those well-designed experiments actually provides information.
The review does include a (brief) discussion of publication bias, and we might could include a mention of prior probability (zero based on aforementioned utter lack of scientific justification for the existence, importance, and manipulability of ki) and the limitations of EBM (exhibit 1: Ioannidis JPA (2005) Why Most Published Research Findings Are False). I myself find these arguments compelling, but Lee et al. does not support a conclusion of disproof. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 21:03, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
So is there any good evidence that it is more effective than a placebo? What do you think of "The review concludes that there is no evidence suggesting that Reiki is more medically effective than a placebo," or more simply, "Reiki has never been shown to be medically effective"? Antelantalk 21:08, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Nope, none whatsoever. I am not all that particular, but based on the fact that this is a systematic review I would prefer as a conclusion to that section the slightly stronger language of "no scientific/medical evidence" to any "this review concludes" language. This is to date the only objective (modulo the well-known problems with SRs) professional assessment of the entire body of relevant literature - I think that it can bear the weight of such a conclusion. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 21:30, 4 May 2008 (UTC)


Ok, here is the actual conclusion in their words:

Conclusion: In conclusion, the evidence is insufficient to suggest that reiki is an effective treatment for any condition. Therefore the value of reiki remains unproven.

I suggest that we simply put that in quotation marks. Can't get more NPOV than a quote. If not that, then just paraphrase:

The report says that there is insufficient evidence to conclude that reiki is effective for any medical condition, and it's value therefore is still unproven.

Either option is easy to understand for the reader, and also completely accurate on the scientific status. Ok?

Eldereft, I don't know why you think that the review can be made more emphatic than itself??? ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 22:17, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

No, Eldereft is right here. If this were one of many objective assessments, it would be another story. Antelantalk 22:22, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
The fact that there is only one means we have to state what it says accurately. We don't need to make the statement weaker or stronger than it is, and I don't know why anyone would want to. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:37, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
It is the only reliable scientific evaluation of the field. It's not about "strength" of statement, it's about content. Antelantalk 23:46, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
If so, and you're probably right, that means we need to say exactly what it says, rather than change it. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 23:49, 4 May 2008 (UTC)
Or it means that we make statements about the field and back the statements with references to that paper. Quotation is an ungainly solution here. Antelantalk 23:55, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

(undent) Would we like to take this to a noticeboard or somewhere for a wider debate? I am thinking WP:NPOV/N, since whether or not this systematic review supports the statement "no scientific evidence" looks like basically a WP:WEIGHT issue. I could also see WP:RS/N since they seem to deal more in individual sources, or maybe WP:FT/N since the evidence base is frankly dreck. If they say Martinphi's direct attribution version is all that is supported then I am fine with one of those, but according to the authors Lee et al. is the only systematic evidence-based evaluation. I think that this quality makes its conclusion of unproven (again, not disproven) uniquely privileged and should be reflected in the article. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 00:50, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Ok- I would prefer NPOV/N. But give it one more go here: I agree completely (at least as far as I know) that "Lee et al. is the only systematic evidence-based evaluation. I think that this quality makes its conclusion of unproven (again, not disproven) uniquely privileged and should be reflected in the article." Here's the thing: the report says "insufficient to suggest." That just doesn't mean "no evidence." That means, in scientific language, "we couldn't get a positive result." One could have several studies which are methodologically flawed and show an effect, and some which aren't and show a small effect, and still get this result because they couldn't get the statistics to be significant once they threw out all the flawed data. So we can't say "no evidence," because we don't know that, and our source doesn't say that. What we can say is:

"there is insufficient evidence to conclude that reiki is effective beyond a placebo"

or

"insufficient evidence of any effect beyond placebo response" (which is exactly what it says, rather than "no evidence")

or

"The review concludes that there is not enough evidence to conclude that Reiki is more medically effective than a placebo"


"There is not enough evidence to conclude that Reiki is more medically effective than a placebo"

Or lots of other formulations. I'm not saying we have to attribute again, but we can't say "There is no scientific evidence" because that's really not what the source says. It says the studies had flaws, and it says there isn't enough evidence to conclude. Eldereft, you know a lot about science, and you know that telling a reader "no evidence exists" just isn't what that study says. You said it yourself, bolded above. \ The study contradicts "no evidence": "The aim of this systematic review is to summarise and critically evaluate the evidence for the effectiveness of reiki" Wait a minute....... we just told the reader there wasn't any evidence. So there wasn't anything to evaluate, was there? What was the source even talking about? "the evidence is insufficient to suggest" Wait a minute again...... we just told the reader there wasn't any evidence. What's this about there not being enough? Does that mean there was some? The source doesn't support the statement.

Another formulation which agrees with what you said above:

"Reiki has not been proven to have an effect beyond that of a placebo." ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:49, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

The Times source says "no good evidence" and Lee et al. say "no robust evidence" (emphases mine). I think that "evidence" is being used in two different ways - you seem to be reading it as none of these data points would support a conclusion of efficacy as a singular rather than collective noun, whereas I was reading it as 'taken as a whole the body of evidence fails to discard the null'. Consider a fair coin. Flip it 100 times. Roughly fifty of those tosses come out heads - are those results evidence that the coin is weighted towards heads?
On the other hand, I am now convinced that the first reading is in fact the most direct and literal interpretation what that sentence in fact said; even if I am wrong, then at the very least the fact that an apparently intelligent and capable editor is arguing this point indicates that it should be changed.
I combined the final two sentences (diff) of that paragraph, eliminating both the 'no scientific evidence' language and changing 'physical ailment' to 'medical condition', as psychological symptoms were included in the review. Also, to the best of my semantic ability, there is no remaining subtext of either 'it works but science just has not caught up yet' or 'saying insufficient evidence is code for fails to work'.
Please feel free to revert or otherwise improve if this does not accurately reflect this discussion. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 20:11, 5 May 2008 (UTC)
It's really great, and thank you for all your patience -which I know is hard. I can be really exacting over these points and sometimes it drives people up the wall. It's been great working with you (: ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:17, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
I never thought of reading it the way you did. Interesting... both could be correct interpretations. I guess I'd say "taken as a whole, the body of evidence cannot support a conclusion that it is effective. Some data maybe seem to point in that direction, other data may be null or negative. It's an unknown, but we can be certain that a positive conclusion based on the data is not warranted." (I didn't use their free trial to read the whole thing... maybe I should have.) ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:29, 7 May 2008 (UTC)
And thank you for your help, patience, and explanations in pursuit of NPOV - it feels nice to get something to say precisely what it means without interpretation or insinuation. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 06:03, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Article needs shortening

This article is too long, given its subject. Particularly, health claims should be appropriately truncated or removed, and excessive detail (with or without clothing, etc.) should also be removed. I'll work on this, and would appreciate help. Antelantalk 20:49, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

Your edits look to be pretty good. Have fun. I put back in a balanced statement which was truncated a bit too much. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 21:35, 12 May 2008 (UTC)

What you and Shoemaker did looks good to me. I'm not expert on this article or Reiki in general. I changed a few bits in the lead which were not supported by either the sources, nor by the text of the rest of the article they were supposed to summarize. They're now in harmony with the rest of the article, and the scientific studies. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:04, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Placebo

In the interest of maintaining my right to complain if others misrepresent and obfuscate sources, here is the selection from the Discussion section of the Lee et al. systematic review on which I am basing removal of language indicating even placebo effects:

Three trials were both subject and assessor blinded (13,15) or practitioner blinded (14), whereas two trials were subject blinded only (16) or assessor blinded (20). Four studies did not make any attempt at either subject or assessor blinding (12,17–19). Trials with inadequate levels of blinding are likely to show exaggerated treatment effects (24). Only two trials calculated sample size and took adequate allocation concealment procedures (15,20). All of the other trials suffered from a lack of adequate allocation concealment and sufficient sample size. The RCTs included in this review fail to fully control for placebo effects. It is therefore impossible to tell to what extent the therapeutic response (if any) is due to specific or non-specific effects.
Even the trials scoring high on the Jadad scale were not devoid of flaws (14,15). The trial by Shiflett et al. (14) had a small sample size and included nonrandomised historical controls in their statistical analysis. ... numbers refer to citations in original

This evidence base just plain cannot be used to support any conclusion. It does not even consistently indicate an 'enrollment effect', which I believe is fairly well established in well-designed trials. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 11:08, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Two smallish cuts made

Hello after a long break from me! And thanks to all those who have clearly put in much time and effort on the reiki article. I've made two cuts: A final clause in the Intro said something about "not recommended" whereas the sources do not concern themselves with recommending or not recommending the use of reiki: They merely talk about clinical evidence for its effectiveness, which is something quite different. The other cut was a single sentence paragraph at the end of the Teachings section, basically summarizing the Science section. It was a duplication and out of place in the Teachings sections. (Not sure whether the changes were tagged against my username.) Andy Beer (talk) 14:16, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

The source does discuss it, though not in the obvious place - see the section "Message for the clinic", as well as the quote above. It went a little too far for that particular source, though, so I tweaked it to be less dogmatic. Shoemaker's Holiday (talk) 14:30, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Thanks Shoemaker, I had missed the strange "Message for the clinic" box, unconsciously thinking it was some sort of advertisement and not part of the review! I am happy with your wording. Andy Beer (talk) 12:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Safety

i've added a sentence to the Safety section, based on a paragraph in the Discussion section of Lee et al. Andy Beer (talk) 12:54, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Effectiveness section redundant

I propose that we delete the little section titled "Effectiveness." This was useful before we had the scientific review to refer to. Now the Effectiveness sources just look shoddy in comparison. Any thoughts? Andy Beer (talk) 07:32, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

I would prefer that it remain. Those references are commentary on the evidence base (both prior to Lee et al.) and would be out of place under research, but summarize a notable point of view. I think previously Effectiveness was a subsection of a now defunct Criticism section, and the tone still reflects that organization. A reorganization or representation might be in order, but the references are fine for what they say. - Eldereft ~(s)talk~ 16:58, 27 May 2008 (UTC)
For now I've combined the Effectiveness section with the Religion section, tentatively reusing the old Criticism heading. Points of View could be an alternative heading, perhaps. Or we could further combine with the preceding Safety section, using the general heading Concerns. Andy Beer (talk) 17:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I might lean towards Concerns or perhaps Outside commentary or something along those lines. Criticism is generally deprecated as a header, and the strongest criticism (lack of any evidence that it is in any way connected to objective reality) belongs in the Scientific research section. We should not, however, make that section a subsection of Criticism, as that would imply an editorial statement that any research showing any such effect would not be scientific. On a case-by-case basis this may remain true, but such commentary is not encyclopedic. - Eldereft (cont.) 22:42, 11 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Derivation of name

Is it just me, or does anyone else find the Derivation of name section rather heavy and not very relevant? Are we writing an encylopedia or an etymological dictionary? I propose that we either remove it completely; drastically reduce it and move it to the end of the article; or create a separate page for it. Any feelings? Andy Beer (talk) 17:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)