Comments on: Hypnotherapist Wants Boxing Match With Pseudo-Scientist Professor

By: Mike Reeves-McMillan

Mike Reeves-McMillan — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 21:39:41 +0000

Adam, further to this piece the same material is now up on the web at:

http://findmeacure.com/2008/04/30/mystics-and-medicine/

I’ve left a comment there basically reprising what I said in my own blog post.

By: Adam Eason

Adam Eason — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 07:24:16 +0000

Don, always good to hear from you and have my feet kept on the ground. Very interesting points you make… I’ll read up and on…

Mike, I’d love to hear from you some more – PM me and maybe we can put our heads together.

Michael, thank you kindly for your contribution.

Excuse my late responses… I have been out of town and what with wedding plans, moving house, work, etc, etc, Excuses, excuses! 😉

By: Michael Harlow

Michael Harlow — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 22:41:37 +0000

I haven’t seen the TV piece, nor will I read the book, but from your report it doesn’t seem these people have done enough open-minded investigation to arrive at any sort of useful contribution to the possible values of alternative therapies, much less to write them off. The one possibly useful contribution such verbiage makes, is to demonstrate their consistency within their chosen trance (reality).

By: Mike Reeves-McMillan

Mike Reeves-McMillan — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 22:26:03 +0000

Adam, I just wrote a big post the other day on that same study: Hypnosis isn't magic, but it can help you stop smoking. It's been around for 15 years, it examined 600 studies covering almost 72,000 people, it clearly concluded that hypnotherapy is much more effective than drugs for giving up smoking. Yet what do we see promoted by government stop-smoking programmes? Drugs. I notice that Dave Sabat's posted in response to the same Daily Mail article about a more recent study, much smaller scale, showing the same thing (in fact, the outcome in that study was that hypnotherapy was more than three times as effective as nicotine replacement therapy, which actually performed worse than control). We need to club together on this and make these findings better known.

By: Donald Robertson

Donald Robertson — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 14:39:31 +0000

Chiropracters are dangerous charlatans. There I said it. Large scale consumer research has consistently shown no benefit to spinal adjustments. Many chiropracters run franchises where they lure people into treatment by offering free spinal analysis that is basically an excuse to tell unsuspecting punters that they are going to hell in a handcart unless they sign a direct debit mandate to have their spine cracked twice a week for the next six months. I speak as someone who has had chiropractic treatment but pulled out when I saw through the scam. My chiropractor showed me a slight curvature in my spine which she called “mild scoliosis” but I read elsewhere, in a book by a respected back specialist, that is normal and not a cause for concern, and that chiros are well-known for using it to frighten punters into paying for expensive and totally ineffective treatment.

As for this book, ironically, Adam, I think it’s sounds great. The researchers say exactly what I would expect. You are mistaken in your own interpretation of the research, with respect. The meta-analysis reported in New Scientist is based on old studies that don’t meet modern research design criteria, and are considered unreliable. There’s a complicated debate worth having over that conclusion, but it’s a reasonable position to adopt given the facts. They might have said that we are still waiting for the outcome of more sophisticated modern studies on hypnotherapy. However, I have to say that even as a hypnotherapist myself, I am well-aware that direct suggestion scripts typically have about 17% sucess at one-year follow-up. Researchers therefore distinguish between this approach and hypnosis combined with CBT which is arguably about twice as effective, under the same conditions.

Hypnotherapists in private practice get a higher success rate mainly by doing things to select their clients, primarily charging high fees and asking how motivated they are, etc.

By: Adam Eason

Adam Eason — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:48:59 +0000

Well, there are two authors – lets tag team wrestle them! Hahaha.

By: Gordon Mullan

Gordon Mullan — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 15:27:42 +0000

Ooooooh – this kind of stuff makes me SO cross!

In the interests of disclosure, I run a complementary health clinic, but to say that chiropractors are dangerous charlatans is just flat out untrue. I bet our chiropractor would have something to say about this – and a long list of satisfied clients.

And I’m sure Jenny would have something to say about the comments on hypnotherapy too.

ARGH! Like you say – provoking controversy just to sell books.

Can we make that boxing match a tag team? 🙂