The first series of events occured in the late 1980’s through the early 1990’s, when the Foundation for Chiropractic Education and Research funded a series of fellowships to financially assist Masters-degree-holding scientists to achieve their PhD, with their research foci on chiropractic. The concept was to achieve a “critical mass” of credible researchers so that chiropractic-focused research centers could be founded. What happened instead was, after writing chiropractic-oriented dissertations, the fledgling chiropractic researchers found that they could not get hired, published, or funded if any aspect of their applications or papers referenced chiropractic in any way, and that they were socially ostracized in academia if they discussed their interest in chiropractic. Unsurprisingly, all these researchers are working in other areas now.

The second experience was at Florida State University, which has a well-established reputation for biomedical research. FSU established a College of Medicine in 2000, one of whose stated missions was to improve training of young physicians in alternative medicine. The Florida Chiropractic Association raised $1M in “seed money” from its membership and lobbied heavily until money was budgeted by the legislature to include a College of Chiropractic at FSU. This looked set to proceed in 2003-2004.
At that time, the medical school’s final accreditation was pending, and suddenly the medical school’s clinical director, an irascible orthopedist who hates chiropractors virulently, announced that he would resign if a chiropractic school were founded at FSU. He arm-twisted approximately 1/3 of the medical staff of the school to go along with him. An administrative hearing was held; the Florida Medical Association and the American Medical Association both spent hundreds of thousands of dollars getting career “experts” in “quackery” to testify.

So, chiropractic is not scientific because it doesn’t have large-scale, university-based research to back it up. But, it has lower quality research because it is “not scientific” enough to be the subject of serious academic research.

Olafdottir’s study does bring into question the effectiveness of chiropractic intervention for colic, which prior studies such as Nillson’s had supported. It is, however, underpowered, as calculation of confidence intervals compared to the p values shows. The real solution would be for a study utilizing thousands of infants treated by dozens of pediatric-board-certified chiropractors at multiple centers to be designed, funded, and performed. This would cost about 1/10th of 1% of the funding allocated by the US government to conduct one typical series of trials on one drug.

Lastly, if you had bothered to read Nilsson et. al., you would know that dimethicone drops are used precisely because they are no better than placebo, as a control group for the study, and that the study includes references to research on the natural history of colic which shows that both control and placebo groups did better than the normal progression of the untreated condition.

Careful, BCA, you might slip a disk! | Bad Astronomy | Discover Magazine is an excellent post. But I feel it is missing on a few points….

> I would rather see them respond “anecdotally” than suffer “scientifically”.

I absolutely agree that responding to treatment is better than suffering. That’s obvious. But you’d agree that the best of all possible worlds would be that they respond scientifically?

I would rather see them respond “anecdotally” than suffer “scientifically”.

So, how about you suggest that your fellow chiropractors should put their profession on the basis of some solid controlled evidence, hmm? If it is as good as you say it is, then it should be easy to demonstrate that benefit in a controlled study, right?

What’s odd is that what I do is considered “bogus” for those that I’ve helped, while the “scientific” community can prescribe all the antibiotics and surgically implant countless tubes in the ears of children that fail a vast majority of the time.

Actually, the treatments performed in the hospital are obliged to have passed clinical trials that they are (a) better than the previous treatment, and (b) more beneficial than harmful. Typically, a medical treatment for something as widespread as asthma will not be in the marketplace for long unless it works more often than not.

The bottom line is that if the practice of “scientific” medicine held all the answers parents wouldn’t continue to carry their children into my office for care. So, until then, I want to use my time in helping the sick and suffering.

I find it interesting that you describe these cases in the following way:

(1) Child is sick;
(2) Parents take child to hospital for treatment;
(3) Child is released from hospital;
(4) Parents take the child to you while said child is still exhausted from a sequence of severe asthma attacks;
(5) You treat the child;
(6) The child’s condition improves;

and you conclude that chiropractic is what has helped the child. What if it actually was the steroids, but that their main benefit was delayed by a few days? How can you tell?

If people will pay you to apply the post hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy to their child, well, there you go.

If you are so convinced of the benefits of chiropractic for treating asthma, why are you not screaming for your professional organisations to organise some proper trials and prove it? Some real evidence would no only bring chiropractic into mainstream healthcare, it would erase the doubts and would at least double the number of customers that chiropractors get. How could that be a bad thing? And why are so few chiropractors advocating the acquisition of real evidence?