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Need help finding peer reviewed journals regarding chiropractic

paperskater

Master Poster
paperskater
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Jun 23, 2008
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I need help! I have to write a big essay for my English class and I chose to write about why chiropractic is without foundation and can potentially cause harm. My instructor was immediately resistant to my initial email which contained my thesis and instead of approving or rejecting my thesis, she expressed concern that I wouldn't be able to find credible sources and that my thesis was weak because she supposedly has read evidence to the contrary.

She is pressing me for peer reviewed journals that support my thesis before we have even started this essay. The one source for peer reviewed journals seems to only have articles from the Journal of the Canadian Chiropractic Association, which she doesn't seem to understand why that is a problem.

It appears that I have hit a sore spot with her and unfortunately, I have never searched for peer reviewed journals on my own and my Google-fu appears to be weak in this aspect.

Medical professionals? Medical students? Could you help me out in any way?
 
http://scholar.google.com/

(Almost) all peer reviewed science, all the time!

This search:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?h...tics&btnG=Search&as_sdt=0,43&as_ylo=&as_vis=0

Pulls up this (#2 result):

http://scholar.googleusercontent.co...iropractic+history+skeptics&hl=en&as_sdt=0,43

Not all full texts are free, but many are.

Use the "cited by" button to see if older research was ever later debunked, too. REALLY cool feature. Also, keep at least two scholar windows open so you can trace stuff back to the original, original research when it's cited within an article.

Have fun perfecting your scholar-fu. :)
 
You can avoid your instructor's ire (she may have a relative who is a chiropractor, or she may see one herself for back trouble or something) by narrowing your topic to, "Why some chiropractic practices, treatments, and theories are bad." It's not hard at all to take accurate aim at chiropractors who offer treatment for non-skeletal-muscular-related things such as bedwetting, depression, and insomnia, and she could hardly have a problem with that.

Don't take on the entire industry, in other words; just those bits that you can prove are demonstrably wack.

The thing is, the entire chiropractic industry is not demonstrably wack; for example, they can sometimes do good things for people with lower back pain.

http://www.webmd.com/back-pain/chiropractic-pain-relief
http://www.webmd.com/pain-management/news/20041012/chiropractic-care-may-reduce-surgeries-x-rays

So it's not really sensible to take on the entire industry in one fell swoop. They're not all looking to cure your pet allergies with spinal manipulation.

While it's important to fight ignorance in the world, it is equally important to pick battles you can win. This may not be one you can win, plus you might be jeopardizing your grade. It's a compromise we all have to face sooner or later. ;)
 
Look to Edzard Ernst for some good info on chiro woo. I agree with the previous poster that if you stick to the more ridiculous claims of chiros, you will narrow your argument and may reduce the ire of your professor.

Oh, and HI Kelly! :)

Este
 
Another idea is to search legal sources for lawsuits and license revocations for chiropractic. Sometimes, the bad apples get exposed in court, as well as the bad science.

You can also cite standards from chiropractic organizations about what is and isn't in the purview of the discipline.

Are we going to be able to read the final product?
 
Estellea said:
Look to Edzard Ernst for some good info on chiro woo. I agree with the previous poster that if you stick to the more ridiculous claims of chiros, you will narrow your argument and may reduce the ire of your professor.

Oh, and HI Kelly! :)

Este
Click to expand...

Hey there, stranger. :)
 
Professor Yaffle said:
Edzard Ernst is probably the best place to start off reading:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18280103
http://jrsm.rsmjournals.com/content/100/7/330.full

A non peer reviewed piece here, but with plenty of references you can follow up:
http://quackfiles.blogspot.com/2005/10/value-of-chiropractic-edzard-ernst.html
Click to expand...


Taking the first of those sources to scholar takes you here:

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=17960053696798456422&hl=en&as_sdt=0,43


...And one of them is the full text!

So I think mixing non-scholar-indexed and scholar indexed sources is best for getting to the heart of a matter?
 
Here's a meta-anlysis of several randomized clinical trials:

Combined chiropractic interventions for low-back pain

BACKGROUND:Chiropractors commonly use a combination of interventions to treat people with low-back pain (LBP).
OBJECTIVES:To determine the effects of combined chiropractic interventions (that is, a combination of therapies, other than spinal manipulation alone) on pain, disability, back-related function, overall improvement, and patient satisfaction in adults with LBP, aged 18 and older.
SEARCH STRATEGY:We searched: The Cochrane Back Review Group Trials Register (May 2009), CENTRAL (The Cochrane Library 2009, Issue 2), and MEDLINE (from January 1966), EMBASE (from January 1980), CINAHL (from January 1982), MANTIS (from Inception) and the Index to Chiropractic Literature (from Inception) to May 2009. We also screened references of identified articles and contacted chiropractic researchers.
SELECTION CRITERIA:All randomised trials comparing the use of combined chiropractic interventions (rather than spinal manipulation alone) with no treatment or other therapies.
DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS:At least two review authors selected studies, assessed the risk of bias, and extracted the data using standardised forms. Both descriptive synthesis and meta-analyses were performed.
MAIN RESULTS:We included 12 studies involving 2887 participants with LBP. Three studies had low risk of bias. Included studies evaluated a range of chiropractic procedures in a variety of sub-populations of people with LBP.No trials were located of combined chiropractic interventions compared to no treatment. For acute and subacute LBP, chiropractic interventions improved short- and medium-term pain (SMD -0.25 (95% CI -0.46 to -0.04) and MD -0.89 (95%CI -1.60 to -0.18)) compared to other treatments, but there was no significant difference in long-term pain (MD -0.46 (95% CI -1.18 to 0.26)). Short-term improvement in disability was greater in the chiropractic group compared to other therapies (SMD -0.36 (95% CI -0.70 to -0.02)). However, the effect was small and all studies contributing to these results had high risk of bias. There was no difference in medium- and long-term disability. No difference was demonstrated for combined chiropractic interventions for chronic LBP and for studies that had a mixed population of LBP.
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS:Combined chiropractic interventions slightly improved pain and disability in the short-term and pain in the medium-term for acute and subacute LBP. However, there is currently no evidence that supports or refutes that these interventions provide a clinically meaningful difference for pain or disability in people with LBP when compared to other interventions. Future research is very likely to change the estimate of effect and our confidence in the results.
Click to expand...

Perhaps you were a bit hasty in constructing your thesis.
 
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Thank you for the responses so far! It's a tremendous help to me, especially since I have very little knowledge on how to search for these things. I am slowly learning. :)

mijopaalmc said:
Here's a meta-anlysis of several randomized clinical trials:

Combined chiropractic interventions for low-back pain

Perhaps you were a bit hasty in constructing your thesis.
Click to expand...


Thank you for your link. However, I am not here to debate chiropractic. Please do that in another thread. Right now, I am just looking for sources of peer reviewed articles, nothing more.
 
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paperskater said:
Thank you for your link. However, I am not here to debate chiropractic. Please do that in another thread. Right now, I am just looking for sources of peer reviewed articles, nothing more.
Click to expand...

I'm not debating it with you. I'm saying that your thesis might be seen as attacking a practice on which you have formed an opinion based on preconceived notions.

I have no opinion one way or the other on the efficacy of chiropractic.

That said PubMed is a database of NIH-funded research and is a great resource for biomedical literature.
 
paperskater said:
Thank you for the responses so far! It's a tremendous help to me, especially since I have very little knowledge on how to search for these things. I am slowly learning. :)




Thank you for your link. However, I am not here to debate chiropractic. Please do that in another thread. Right now, I am just looking for sources of peer reviewed articles, nothing more.
Click to expand...
For what it is worth, I don't think mijopaal was trying to start a debate; chiropracty for some pain management is effective, the problem is is that many or perhaps most chiropractors practise outside the scope of evidence-based medicine and make ludicrous claims involving subluxations causing disease/disorders. You will also want to research the difference between "straight" and "mixed" chiropractors.

Este
 
Weak Kitten said:
Wow, just wow! I didn't know about that! This is why I visit these forums, thank you!
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No problem, and yeah, that's beyond super-cool, isn't it? OMG, I still get goosebumps. We, the average person, can STAND ON THE SHOULDERS OF GIANTS! OMG.

Never in the whole history of humanity has the average person been able to access scientific data. And scientific conversations, etc. And just 5ish years ago they made all publicly funded science open to the general public! These are wild times and they are not sure to last, but indulge while you can!
 
mijopaalmc said:
I'm not debating it with you. I'm saying that your thesis might be seen as attacking a practice on which you have formed an opinion based on preconceived notions.

I have no opinion one way or the other on the efficacy of chiropractic.

That said PubMed is a database of NIH-funded research and is a great resource for biomedical literature.
Click to expand...


I apologize if I interpreted your comment in a way that was not intended. Perhaps I am just feeling a bit touchy, but your comment came off to me as if I didn't have a somewhat informed opinion on the matter. However, my opinion has not been formed out of thin air, it is based on lots of curious independent research. The point of this essay is to present a controversial issue and choose one side to argue. Again, I apologize if this was not clear.

This is a very broad subject, and I realize that. I am actually still trying to narrow down my thesis to something more concrete, a work in progress. At this time, I think I am attempting to attack the lack of science-based treatments of chiropractic, which seems to be far more numerous than the treatments that do appear to have some efficacy in some cases.
 
kellyb said:
Never in the whole history of humanity has the average person been able to access scientific data. And scientific conversations, etc. And just 5ish years ago they made all publicly funded science open to the general public! These are wild times and they are not sure to last, but indulge while you can!
Click to expand...

Oh cool! I didn't know about that either! Sorry, getting a bit over excited but I'm just so happy that I can at least nibble at the edges of scientific advancement. I may not understand it all but it's so nifty!
 
Weak Kitten said:
Oh cool! I didn't know about that either! Sorry, getting a bit over excited but I'm just so happy that I can at least nibble at the edges of scientific advancement. I may not understand it all but it's so nifty!
Click to expand...

Curiosity is the only barrier between you and scientific understanding. ANYTHING you're really curious about, you can understand in full. I'm 100% certain of this. Now that science is written in English (as opposed to Latin) most times, ANYONE (besides a non-native English speaker) who is curious enough to want to understand anything can do so.

We Americans have a lot of stuff to be mad about. But in this one area, we have a lot of room to feel victorious, for now, at least (a lot of politicians want to roll back the clock and make the scholar info unfree again.)
 
paperskater said:
This is a very broad subject, and I realize that. I am actually still trying to narrow down my thesis to something more concrete, a work in progress. At this time, I think I am attempting to attack the lack of science-based treatments of chiropractic, which seems to be far more numerous than the treatments that do appear to have some efficacy in some cases.
Click to expand...



You could focus specifically on the concept of the chiropractic vertebral subluxation, which has no basis in, or support by, scientific fact, and you could go into the history of it. How long does this essay have to be? The "History of" a thing is generally good for at least a page. :D
 
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