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Applied Kinesiology

Incidentally, I once went to another kind of woo-woo -- a Vision Therapist -- on a regular basis. One day, he decided he ought to do a nutritional analysis on me, so he did some Applied Kinesiology. He just had me rest my right hand on various bottles of different vitamins and minerals, while he tested the strength of my left arm. He claimed that the stronger my left arm was, the more my body needed whatever nutrient was resting under my right hand, which is backwards from some of the descriptions given above.


Note that the vitamin bottles were all labelled so that I could tell what they were. He recommended that I not look at them, though, so that I wouldn't think, "Oh, this is Vitamin C, which is supposed to be good for me, so I'll make my arm stronger."
 
See, even the woowoos can't get it right when their practice is based on such complete nonsense. Weaker, stronger, what's the difference? You'll still buy whatever supplement your body "tells" you!
 
I would like to talk to someone who can demonstrate how Applied Kinesiology demonstrations used by proponents of CAM products are useless and can explain why. Does anyone have any suggestions regarding whom I should contact about this? Thanks in advance.
 
Be careful not to conflate Kinesiology with Applied Kinesiology, the are two totally different things, the former being a legitimate (and regulated) medical profession, the latter being a woowoo diagnostic method used by chiropractors like our friend David Flowers. AK has nothing to do with the actual science of Kinesiology, only borrows the word in order to lend itself credibility. As a rule, anything with "Applied" in it is generally nonsense, as that provides a loophole through which a quack can use the medical term without having to provide any qualification. No real doctor uses any "applied" techniques.

Since I'm not a lazy cut-n-paster, I used the practice of "Applied Googling" to find some proper links:

http://www.skepdic.com/akinesiology.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_kinesiology
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3372923
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/applied+kinesiology
 
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A few years ago, a friend of my wife's told her that her daughter was diagnosed with an allergy to chicken. The way this was figured out is that the mom took the daughter to a chiropractor. The girl sat in the mom's lap, the chiropractor said the name of a food - "corn" - and then he tugged on the mom's arm. When the chiro said "chicken" he determined that the mom's arm was somewhat more resistant to his tug.

Therefore the daughter had an allergy to chicken. This is applied kenesiology. I kid you not - it's just that stupid.
 
CurtC said:
A few years ago, a friend of my wife's told her that her daughter was diagnosed with an allergy to chicken. The way this was figured out is that the mom took the daughter to a chiropractor. The girl sat in the mom's lap, the chiropractor said the name of a food - "corn" - and then he tugged on the mom's arm. When the chiro said "chicken" he determined that the mom's arm was somewhat more resistant to his tug.

Therefore the daughter had an allergy to chicken. This is applied kenesiology. I kid you not - it's just that stupid.
Click to expand...



Patient: "So what's wrong with me, doc?"

Chiropractor: "You've got teepee bungholitis"

Patient: "Are you pulling my leg?"

Chiropractor: "No, I'm pulling your arm. Why?"
 
CurtC said:
A few years ago, a friend of my wife's told her that her daughter was diagnosed with an allergy to chicken. The way this was figured out is that the mom took the daughter to a chiropractor. The girl sat in the mom's lap, the chiropractor said the name of a food - "corn" - and then he tugged on the mom's arm. When the chiro said "chicken" he determined that the mom's arm was somewhat more resistant to his tug.

Therefore the daughter had an allergy to chicken. This is applied kenesiology. I kid you not - it's just that stupid.
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Ah, but did he test for the rare form where the sufferer is allergic to only the male chicken - that sounds much more fun ;)

Yuri
 
BradCatlin said:
I would like to talk to someone who can demonstrate how Applied Kinesiology demonstrations used by proponents of CAM products are useless and can explain why. Does anyone have any suggestions regarding whom I should contact about this? Thanks in advance.
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This comes down to the "burden of truth" - there is no proper evidence that applied kinesiology is effective (individual anecdotes are not valid evidence) and no mechanism by which it could work. The onus is on proponents to prove it works, not on any one else to prove it doesn't.

If I told you I was looking at a real live unicorn on my front lawn right now it would be a bit unreasonable of me to expect you to prove beyond doubt that I wasn't (anyway, it's gone now).

Hope that helps,

Yuri
 
CurtC said:
A few years ago, a friend of my wife's told her that her daughter was diagnosed with an allergy to chicken. The way this was figured out is that the mom took the daughter to a chiropractor. The girl sat in the mom's lap, the chiropractor said the name of a food - "corn" - and then he tugged on the mom's arm. When the chiro said "chicken" he determined that the mom's arm was somewhat more resistant to his tug.

Therefore the daughter had an allergy to chicken. This is applied kenesiology. I kid you not - it's just that stupid.
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:jaw-dropp

I had a friend who had a very similar experience to this. The "professional" concluded that she was allergic to chicken by doing some type of "test" involving the arm and torso.
 
wardenclyffe said:
Here's our old pal, The Amazing Randi (remember him?) putting the double-D-bunk on both Applied Kinesiology AND Crystal Power at the same time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_MzP2MZaOo

Enjoy. I know I did.

Ward
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Near the end, the AK woman says "I suppose that means that rat poison is good for her." Randi should have asked her why the other samples of rat poison didn't work, also.

Steve S
 
steve s said:
Near the end, the AK woman says "I suppose that means that rat poison is good for her." Randi should have asked her why the other samples of rat poison didn't work, also.

Steve S
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I would guess he was running out of time for the segment and had to get to a commercial break. Also, there's not much that could be added to that to make it sound any sillier.
 
wardenclyffe said:
Here's our old pal, The Amazing Randi (remember him?) putting the double-D-bunk on both Applied Kinesiology AND Crystal Power at the same time:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_MzP2MZaOo

Enjoy. I know I did.

Ward
Click to expand...

My only complaint about that test is that they didn't do a control test with the known crystal in the cloth bag. This would have allowed the woman to show that she was able to get the result she wanted with the crystal in the bag, and thus eliminate that as an excuse when the actual test was performed.
 
Well, yes it's not a perfect test. Was it a test of crystal power or a test of applied kinesiology? It's too messy to do both at once. And there was no open test. This wasn't a MDC test, it was a quick and dirty TV test. It's very entertaining and suspenseful, which is rare in skepticism. In promoting skepticism, I believe that an imperfect, but entertaining demonstration is much more useful than a perfectly controlled boring demonstration.

Ward
 
Also, it's implied that plenty of pre-testing was done by the practioner. It could have been done weeks before, but I'm guessing that it happened mostly backstage just prior to the demostration.

Ward
 
TheSkepticCanuck said:
My only complaint about that test is that they didn't do a control test with the known crystal in the cloth bag. This would have allowed the woman to show that she was able to get the result she wanted with the crystal in the bag, and thus eliminate that as an excuse when the actual test was performed.
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The two women got what they agreed was a positive result from a lump of rat poison.

If they had not gotten a positive result, it would have shown that the test was meaningless. But they got hit... from rat poison.


Rat poison.
 
Yes, they got a "hit" from rat poison, and that was good enough, but it would have been better to test the known crystal in the cloth sack first.

That would have cut off that one excuse, but then again, how can you foresee what excuse someone is going to come up with? If they had done it with the control in the sack, she would have just come up with another excuse upon her failure. It's like playing Whack-a-Mole with excuses.
 
CurtC said:
Yes, they got a "hit" from rat poison, and that was good enough, but it would have been better to test the known crystal in the cloth sack first.

That would have cut off that one excuse, but then again, how can you foresee what excuse someone is going to come up with? If they had done it with the control in the sack, she would have just come up with another excuse upon her failure. It's like playing Whack-a-Mole with excuses.
Click to expand...



That is why you bring in a psychic, they can tell you in advance which excuses will be used.
 
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