Oot and Aboot with Some Canadian Skeptic

Oh noes! My head asplode.

Jebus...I had no idea. I may have to throw a hissy fit about this guy from my site too. Thanks for bitching and keep it up!

I'm curious where the automatic association with quackery just for being a chiropractor comes from. The 2 that I have been to have never claimed to do anything other than relieve the back pain I was experiencing due to injury. I was referred by my GP. They did some adjustments and gave me some exercises to keep the muscles from spasming. They were also very concerned about causing further injury. Maybe in the States it’s worse but at least in Edmonton I haven’t seen any wackos. It seems more like an augmentation to drugs like physiotherapists or dieticians. For the most part I think a lot of these people take it very seriously and treat is like a proper scientific discipline. At least that’s my experience. I can’t vouch for the Minister, but I don’t think you can automatically dismiss him as a loon because he’s a chiropractor.

Now as for the acupuncture, well that I have no experience nor have I read up on it enough to form an opinion whether or not it works. So no comment on that.

dysentery we have chirpractors in Edmonton who fully embrace the woo. I used to visit one on a regular basis, it was his claim to have a chiropractic cure for auto-immune diseases(such as AIDS, TTP, Crohn's) that started my investigations that led me to dump chiropractic as a junk science. I also did not receive a satisfactory response from their self-governing board the "Alberta College and Association of Chiropractors" denouncing such claims.

There is also the story of the woman paralyzed by an Edmonton chiropractor.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/edmonton/story/2008/06/13/chiro-lawsuit.html

And here is the website of another Edmonton based chiropractor who links to and endorses anti-vaccination claims.
http://drtwebb.chiroweb.com/

here is something else to consider, if your chiropractor is selling any merchandise (pillows, supplements, foam wedges for "traction") then he/she is stepping beyond the dubious claims of their field. you are far better off with a physiotherapist who doesn't need to fall on unsubstantiated claims about "sublexations" causing all of the body's ills.

Acupuncture is as effective as placebo, plenty of studies have shown that.

Hi Nathan,

Yeah, that’s too bad that many chiropractors push the BS. I’m disappointed that it happens here. It certainly doesn’t help their image at all. I do have a question. Just out of curiosity, why did you go to the chiropractor in the first place? Was it for pain or some other reason? If it was for pain, did it help?

Can we agree the premise behind chiropractory is that manual adjustment of the muscles and skeleton can relieve pain and improve posture? If so, when you look at the stupid claims like curing AIDS, et al made by SOME chiropractors and then dismiss the whole thing as junk science, that’s not really being fair. I mean if you go because you threw your back out, I think that it has real benefit. If you’re going because your pro-biotic yogurt isn’t keeping you regular enough then that’s another story. Are there studies showing that chiropractory is ineffective in the base claims?

As far as the malpractice arguments go, I don’t see the bearing. There are plenty of surgeons that screw up and kill people too. Nobody is perfect. Some are a lot less perfect than others. Then it falls to the governing board to enforce competence. But that is a different argument and I don’t see how that relates to whether or not chiropractory is a legit discipline. There are also anti-vax MD’s. You want to write off that entire field too? Unless you can prove the minister is anti-vax, I don’t see this point either.

So basically what I’m saying is that you have to look at a person’s track record instead of just writing them off as a crank because they are a chiropractor. Some are cranks, I’ll give you that, but there are also some that aren’t and chiropractory itself seems legitimate as long as it restricts itself to what it ACTUALLY accomplishes. That’s all.

You know, reading this through, I look like a shill for the ACAC. I just want to say I am not involved in this field in any way.

So far as I know, those stupid BS claims go back to the original chiropractor. He claimed to restore a patient's hearing by fixing his back. Quacks ["Doctors"]don't give chiropractics a reputation for BS; it started with one.

As for you Canadians, I feel your pain. And here I thought Harper seemed like an intelligent guy.

The author puts forward a silly argument - that chiropractors are immediately equal to quackery. As a professional engineer, who was injured on a construction site, requiring extensive rehabilitation; I can say first hand that all of the chiropractors I have dealt with are consumate professionals and astute businessmen running their own practices. It would be better to judge this cabinet member by standards of performance, rather than your own prejudices and cynicism.

Stan Smith, P.Eng.
St. Albert, AB

Anonymous,

I'm sure chiropractors are professional, it's not like they're seeing patients half-naked with a cigar hanging off their lip dripping ashes onto their clients or something (or at least I hope they're not).

But "professional" and "effective evidence-based medicine" are not the same thing. Many of the evidenced-based practices that they do manage to employ are actually physiotherapy, and not "chiropractic" by strict definition.

Chiropractic is based on a model involving channels from the spine etc etc having disease effects on the body that have no physiological or anatomical basis. Some of the claims they make fly in the face of the disease/germ theory of medicine.

I think it is these types of chiropractors that Steve is referring to in his article. IMO, the ones who aren't crooks should just get a physiotherapy license and be done with the other nonsense. Otherwise their "standard of performance" includes quackery by definition and yet they get to call themselves "doctor". That is not acceptable, regardless of how well they are running their business.

Let me be perfectly clear (and I sincerely hope to make this as non-insulting as possible):

Chiropractic is, in the truest sense of the word, a pseudo-science: The rigours of self-discipline and internal mechanisms for self-regulation and evidence that are ubiquitous in legitimate medical fields are simply absent (or woefully insufficient) in chiropractic.

This does not mean that chiropractors are theives, liars, idiots or, as Kimbo put it. "seeing patients half-naked with a cigar hanging off their lip dripping ashes onto their clients".

It means that chiropractic is not science.

By extention, Mr. Goodyear's chiropractic background makes him unqualified to write our science policy.

I agree that it's better to judge the man based on his performance but your charge that I'm speaking out of cynicism and prejudice is simply unfounded.

There is nothing pre-judgmental about my charge. Chiropractic is not scientific in the least, ergo, Goodyear is unqualified for a job that, in my humble opinion, should require it's applicants to have at least a functional knowledge of science. Chiropractic is pseudo-science...not quasi-science.

If I may add one more counter-argument to your point that in your experience the chiropracters you're familiar with are astute businesmen:

1)Your experience is statistically insignificant
2)I don't want my medical doctors to run their practice as a business, but as a place of healing. This is why we have socialized medicine in Canada, so that our system can operate at a financial loss in order to provide for the health of the people. I think it borders on the dishonest to see the going rates to visit a chiropractor, and how often they suggest (I would say cajole) their patients to keep returning.

In short: Chiropractic=not science. Goodyear=chiropractor. Goodyear=unqualified for his cabinet post.

I am so, so sorry, neighbors, but I just have to laugh at a witchdoctor overseeing science and technology. He's got the bases covered: Science? chiropractic. Technology? Really big needles.

What ever happened to the push to outlaw chiropractic in Canada? I seem to recall a lot about that in the news a few years ago when I was putting together a presentation for my students to explain the nature of pseudoscience.

I love my chiropractor, he makes my neck, back and jaw feel wonderful when he realigns them. He has interesting views on herbal remedies, but he has never ONCE claimed to replace standard allopathic physician, nor does he attempt to convince his patients of this. He knows his craft well, and he knows its limitations. I am sure he would agree that Goodyear is well outside of his limits. To me, appointing Goodyear as Minister of Science and Technology isn't much different than appointing someone based on a magazine subscription to a scientific magazine. I'm sure there were better candidates out there, and like in the US this was simply a case bordering on cronyism.

Ccameron:

Your chiropractor may not discourage "allopathic" medicine to you, but you don't know that he doesn't for ever. But more importantly, even if he's the most respectable to legitmate evidence-based medince as he can be, the majority of Chiropractors in Canada and the United States perscribe homeopathic remedies, refer their patients to accupuncturists, and insist that their patients continuously return for treatment (which is always expensive). Yours may be honest, but the evidence is that that most chiropractors are either actively dishonest, or are profoundly ignorant pruveyors of "woo".

In short: your experience is statistically insigificant.

To me, appointing Goodyear as Minister of Science and Technology isn't much different than appointing someone based on a magazine subscription to a scientific magazine. I'm sure there were better candidates out there, and like in the US this was simply a case bordering on cronyism."

And that's the other problem: his background in chiropractic and accupuncture puts him on par with just some guy with a subscription to Popular Science Magazine. That is sickeningly ignorant and lazy of the conservatives to go that route.

If they don't have many experts to choose from, that also says something damning about the conservative party, me thinks. There is also no law in Canada that says that a cabinet minister must be from the same party as the governing party. So Harper could (and should) have just as easily reached across the aisle and got someone to head up science policy that had some damned credentials.

And if you are freely willing to admit that this was US-style cronyism, don't you think that that is worth shouting over? "That's politics" is an excuse I hear far too often by people too unwilling to change things.