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Therapeutic Touch

LindaRosa

New Blood
L
Joined
Apr 22, 2008
Messages
8
I note that JREF and Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking will be challenging Therapeutic Touch (TT) practitioners on April 20, 2013 in Philly at the Franklin Institute.

I hope JREF realizes that the really significant aspect of their 1997 event was not the testing of one TT practitioner, but the fact that letters were posted to 50 leading TT proponents, most being nursing academics, with none of these taking up the JREF challenge.

At this time, the real challenge to TT proponents is the Emily Rosa experiment that was published in JAMA 15 years ago today. There has been no refutation of this well-known study, despite the conclusions the JAMA editors thought justified by the experiment and extensive review of the literature:

"These facts, together with our experimental findings, suggest that TT claims are groundless and that further use of TT by health professionals is unjustified."​
Why the JREF challenge now? The TT practitioners haven't don't anything about the JAMA study in all this time.

The Emily Rosa study is the big elephant in TT's room and that is what they need to respond to, because it carries with it the above warning, via JAMA, about continued practice being "unjustified."
 
Linda, JREF staff very rarely reads the board. If you want to get their attention about their event, you have to contact them directly.
 
I don't think any test will happen, I just think JREF was throwing the gauntlet down publicly. I don't think anyone expects any TT practitioner will pick it up.

I could be wrong.

Ward
 
FYI on or about April 3rd, the page hits for the Wikipedia article on Therapeutic Touch went from their normal daily average of one or two hundred a day, to almost 2,500. And that page also contains information on Emily Rosa's study. It's always good to remind a new generation of the current state of things,and I imagine many people today have not heard of that study. So really any challenge to Therapeutic Touch seems good: it advertises what the JREF does, it introduces some skepticism into the minds of the public; and it drives traffic to other sources, like Wikipedia, to find the full story.
 
All very interesting, but did the trial take place?!

I hope I'm not the only one badly disappointed at the big announcement from JREF that a trial of therapeutic touch would take place at the Franklin Institute on April 20th, only to be followed up with complete silence. The great event was supposed to happen almost a week ago yet there's no indication that anything at all took place. Was this a Million Dollar Challenge Event? Or something else. If JREF President DJ Grothe "...will be in person at this latest attempt to discover the truth behind TT practitioners' million-dollar claims." (quote from Swift) why wasn't he back the day afterwards to tell us what occurred?

It's been a couple of years since I regularly kept up with JREF affairs. The organization seems to have lost its energy. What's going on here, please?
 
Spiro said:
I hope I'm not the only one badly disappointed at the big announcement from JREF that a trial of therapeutic touch would take place at the Franklin Institute on April 20th, only to be followed up with complete silence. The great event was supposed to happen almost a week ago yet there's no indication that anything at all took place. Was this a Million Dollar Challenge Event? Or something else. If JREF President DJ Grothe "...will be in person at this latest attempt to discover the truth behind TT practitioners' million-dollar claims." (quote from Swift) why wasn't he back the day afterwards to tell us what occurred?

It's been a couple of years since I regularly kept up with JREF affairs. The organization seems to have lost its energy. What's going on here, please?
Click to expand...

The Google is your friend.

http://www.philasciencefestival.org...e-and-nonsense-a-clarification-by-james-randi

From what I am able to tell, it was a lecture - not a demonstration.
 
This is not getting better

So "Tomorrow, the JREF and PhACT (the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking) will put therapeutic touch to the test at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute" in fact means "tomorrow, James Randi will give a lecture that includes a discussion of therapeutic touch". With respect, that's really not what the announcement implied.

But worse: the announcement has been pulled from the Swift blog. What IS going on?! You can see the original here: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php...ow-learn-about-it-today-on-qconsequenceq.html.
 
Spiro said:
So "Tomorrow, the JREF and PhACT (the Philadelphia Association for Critical Thinking) will put therapeutic touch to the test at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute" in fact means "tomorrow, James Randi will give a lecture that includes a discussion of therapeutic touch". With respect, that's really not what the announcement implied.

But worse: the announcement has been pulled from the Swift blog. What IS going on?! You can see the original here: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php...ow-learn-about-it-today-on-qconsequenceq.html.
Click to expand...

? Where did it used to be?

Also, to be fair, the lecture was at the Franklin Institute. ;) I don't know why you're saying "with respect". I just gave links. No horse in this race.
 
Denver said:
FYI on or about April 3rd, the page hits for the Wikipedia article on Therapeutic Touch went from their normal daily average of one or two hundred a day, to almost 2,500. And that page also contains information on Emily Rosa's study. It's always good to remind a new generation of the current state of things,and I imagine many people today have not heard of that study. So really any challenge to Therapeutic Touch seems good: it advertises what the JREF does, it introduces some skepticism into the minds of the public; and it drives traffic to other sources, like Wikipedia, to find the full story.
Click to expand...

Now we're talking.
For me, this is the important thing here- getting people to use the resources out there to learn how thing things stand.
 
The announcement is still on the Swift blog, it's just been bumped by other posts to the second page. So that's not nefarious. But, this thread was started by Linda Rosa because the original announcement definitely made it sound like some sort of test was going to happen.

I think my first post in this thread sums up what became of any actual test, but I think the JREF should follow up such a provocative post with a new post explaining that nothing happened in regard to a challenge (except that no one showed up).

Ward
 
Clarifications and a mild apology

Fine, wardenclyffe, please cancel my comment that the announcement had been taken off the Swift post. Maybe I'm just getting senile, but I'm sure it wasn't evident anywhere on pages 1-4 when I posted earlier.

Like Linda Rosa, I originally interpreted the announcement as indicating that something like a trial was going to happen; it's the tone of the announcement that has prompted this thread under the Million Dollar Challenge heading. There doesn't seem to have been any challenge for four years, which is why the notion of something coming up seemed so special!
 
I agree that that was the tone of the announcement. There should be a follow-up announcement declaring that no one took up the challenge. We'll see if there is.

Ward
 
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