In 1988 the first CSICOP delegation to China looked into the claims of several Qigong (pronounced cheegung)¹ masters and their young proteges. These child marvels supposedly possessed what Chinese admirers call “special ability” or “extraordinary functions of the human body.” They were said to be able to alter the shape or color of objects in sealed containers and perform a host of other minor miracles. What the first CSICOP delegation (composed of most of the Executive Council at the time) found was that these children could not produce their effects under close observation. In short, the whiz kids and their masters were performing unsophisticated conjuring tricks (Alcock et al. 1988). Also, in controlled tests, the delegation found the vaunted abilities of the Qigong masters to diagnose medical ailments to be unsubstantiated.

Despite such failures, medical uses of Qigong have continued to gain popularity in China. Along with other facets of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), it has become increasingly fashionable in the West as well. Most observers consider TCM’s growing reputation in China in the decades following the Communist revolution (takeover in 1949) to have been due primarily to a mix of practical necessity and political expediency on the part of Chairman Mao Zedong. With fewer than 30,000 scientifically trained physicians in all of China (most of them concentrated in the large cities and suffering from politically suspect class backgrounds), the Communist revolutionaries were faced with an immediate need to be seen as “doing something” about the dismal state of medical care in China at the time. With the economy devastated, hard currency almost nonexistent, and hostility emanating from most foreign capitals, the new regime saw little hope of soon being able to afford Western medical technology and pharmaceuticals for a population that was already approaching 600 million. Thus the Communist Party began a concerted effort to convince the masses that TCM, like other aspects of Chinese culture, was not merely equivalent but superior to decadent “imperialist” alternatives. This of course carried the added political bonus of fostering national pride and solidarity among a war-weary and fractionated people.

But while TCM was being touted to the masses by the elites, top party and military officials cynically kept for themselves the best treatments scientific medicine could offer. According to Mao’s personal physician, Li Zhisui (Li 1994), Mao himself relied on Western methods to treat his many illnesses (except for a few folk practices carried over from his rural childhood). Trained in scientific medicine at an American-run medical school in China, Li immigrated to Australia after World War II. He was working as a medical officer for an Australian shipping company in 1949 when he was enticed to return to Beijing. Shortly afterward, he was appointed Mao’s doctor, the post he held until Mao’s death in 1976. Li had no other patients than Mao, Mao’s hypochondriacal wife, Jiang Quing, and a few other Mao family members and top party officials. For them, Li had the latest Western drugs, surgical techniques, and medical equipment at his disposal, and a well-equipped portable hospital that accompanied Mao and his entourage on their frequent, impulsive romps around the vast countryside.

Although the health of the masses did begin to improve following the revolution, the herbal remedies, acupuncture, and moxibustion² dispensed by Mao’s “barefoot doctors” probably contributed much less to the improvement than several phenomenal efforts in the public health sphere (after all, folk medicine had been the only treatment available to the masses up to that time and the state of their health had been far from encouraging). Recruited from the peasantry, the “barefoot doctors” were armed with exhortations from the ubiquitous booklets of Mao’s quotations and training roughly equivalent to that of first aid attendants in the West. They organized vast and successful communal health projects. Sanitation facilities and access to safe drinking water were greatly improved and several parasitic epidemics were brought under control. At the same time, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases was contained and greater social stability allowed improvements in diet, perinatal care, and basic immunization (Horn 1976; China Report 1983).

TCM had been the treatment of the Chinese people since ancient times,³ but having gained Mao’s somewhat cynical imprimatur, TCM’s leaders began to amass increasing political power in the new China. Western journalists who accompanied Richard Nixon during his historic rapprochement with the Chinese government were intensively courted by the TCM establishment, as were later delegations of Western doctors (China Report 1983; Skrabanek 1985). These delegations were shown major surgery being performed with acupuncture anesthesia. When columnist James Reston required an emergency appendectomy during Nixon’s visit, he was widely, though erroneously, believed to have been given only acupuncture as a pain killer during the surgery. It was not until much later that it was revealed that the Chinese surgical patients observed by foreign delegations had been preselected for high pain tolerance and heavily indoctrinated beforehand.⁴ It was also disclosed that these demonstration cases were routinely administered surreptitious doses of morphine in an intravenous drip that supposedly contained only hydrating and nourishing fluids (Keng and Tao 1985). In addition, it has since come to light that much of the apparently objective and well-controlled research on TCM emanating from Chinese medical schools during the tumultuous era of the cultural revolution (1966-1976) was falsified at the behest of the hospitals’ scientifically unqualified political commissars to ensure that the “research” would support the party line.

Despite this prevarication, most experts today concede that acupuncture does have some analgesic properties (though its potency has been greatly exaggerated). Similarly, many herbal remedies have already been assimilated into scientific medicine.⁵ On the other hand, proof for the hyperbole served up by some professors of acupuncture from the TCM institutes Barry Beyerstein toured during a visiting professorship in China in 1990 remains as elusive as ever. For example, he was told then that acupuncture can cure cholera, deafness, paralysis, cataracts, and mandibular overbite, among other things. Although the evidence was lacking, claims like these appealed to deep-seated longings in certain social movements that were emerging in the West during the 1970s. The “New Age” movement is only the latest in the long history of Western movements populated by seekers who have turned to the East for answers in times of disillusionment. As Huston (1995) has noted:

The history of Sino-American relations is in part a story of Americans looking to the East and interpreting a huge, complex and, to an outsider, confusing culture in such a way that they see what they desire and fear the most.

Among New Agers in Europe and North America, there was an eagerness to embrace the “natural” and “holistic” philosophy they perceived in TCM. It fit nicely with their desire to replace the scientific worldview with mystical beliefs and, in particular, their willingness to credit virtually any healing claims, providing they are ancient or hail from exotic places.

TCM’s growing popularity in Europe and North America is widely recognized. Its shaky scientific foundations and economic and politically driven push for legitimacy are perhaps less well known. When the authors’ trip to China was conceived, the movement to make TCM part of the therapeutic mainstream in the West had already been 20 years in gestation. By 1995, the U.S. Office of Alternative Medicine had been created by Congress (not by scientists, it should be noted) and was sponsoring alternative medicine projects that were expected to provide hard evidence to justify some of these treatments.⁶ TCM practitioners have recently requested that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration upgrade acupuncture needles from the "investigative device” category, and Congress has just passed a bill upgrading the official medical status of these needles. U.S. schools of TCM, felt by many to be diploma mills, are graduating practitioners who clamor for licensure. Twenty-eight states have already licensed lay acupuncturists, and most states allow physicians to perform acupuncture. Some states allow lay acupuncturists to be “primary care physicians” for industrial injuries (and be paid the same as licensed M.D.s and D.O.s). Seven states now have laws allowing any “licensed practitioner” to use any method he or she wishes, as long as the patient is informed in advance that the treatment lacks scientific validation.

Likewise, unproven and possibly dangerous herbal remedies are widely sold in health food stores, herbalist shops, and by mail order in the U.S. and Canada. These products evade the regulations, which require prescription drugs to demonstrate their safety and efficacy scientifically, by means of a loophole that permits herbal remedies to be marketed as “food supplements.”

A bill before the U.S. Congress would legitimize all unproven remedies in all states; and no longer would use of scientifically discredited treatments be grounds for discipline by professional boards. Practitioners of TCM stand to gain immensely from these political gambits. Much of the willingness of North Americans to support these trends has been due to uncritical media reports concerning the extent and effectiveness of TCM in China today. As several members of the Chinese scientific community became aware of these shifting attitudes in the West, they began to worry that their reputations were being tarnished abroad by the growing acceptance of the media-driven notion that Chinese medicine was undergoing a wholesale reversion to its ancient, mystical roots. Thus it seemed a mutually advantageous time for a North American team to look into the status of TCM in China. An invitation from the Chinese Association for Science and Technology (CAST) to these authors and Andrew Skolnick, associate news editor of the Journal of the American Medical Association, afforded us that opportunity. CAST has long been a foe of pseudoscience in China and welcomed the opportunity to strengthen the cooperative ties it had already forged with CSICOP.

What is Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM)?

Every culture, including the Western culture, has evolved an indigenous system of folk healing (Atkinson 1956). Because of the body’s natural restorative processes and the power of the placebo effect, many physiologically inert folk remedies have long enjoyed unearned credit for curing diseases. It is only in the modern scientific era that it has been possible to separate truly effective treatments from only apparently effective ones by means of double-blind, random-assignment, placebo-controlled tests. When submitted to adequate clinical trials, some ancient folk remedies have proven their worth; many more have not (Nolen 1974; Stalker and Glymour 1985; Skrabanek and McCormick 1990; Randi 1989; Barrett 1990; Pantanowitz 1994). It was our desire to see what progress the Chinese were making in scientifically evaluating traditional treatments that motivated our tour of the major TCM centers in Beijing and Shanghai during the summer of 1995.

Practitioners of TCM consider it an empirical “science” of healing that has proved its worth in Asian countries for more than 3,000 years (Wallnšfer and von Rottauscher 1975). According to Chinese government figures, there are now more than 2,000 TCM hospitals throughout the country (Hou 1991). Unlike Western scientific medicine, which aims to identify and counteract specific pathogens for different disease states, TCM views all illnesses as the consequence of a unitary cause, namely an imbalance of vital energies in the body. The term Qi, which translates roughly as “divine breath,” refers to these putative energies, which are assumed by TCM to permeate everything in the universe. With respect to biological organisms, Qi is rather like the concept of elan vital, a hypothetical “life force” that was abandoned in Western medicine when scientific discoveries made it apparent that there is no essential difference in chemical constituents or processes between living and inanimate matter.

TCM’s advocates assert that herbs, moxibustion, massage, breathing exercises, acupuncture, and certain foods are able to restore the balance of the Yin and Yang, variants of Qi energy, which are supposed to flow in invisible channels in the body called “meridians.” By balancing Qi in this way, they say, health is maintained or restored. Some of the means for achieving this balance can look rather strange to those accustomed to scientific medicine. Take, for instance, something widely sold in China, the “505 Magic Bag.” It is “shaped like an apron and, containing 50 [herbal] ingredients, [it] can prevent and treat many diseases of the stomach and intestines . . . [when] the bag [is worn] close to the navel” (Hou 1991).⁷

Critics have pointed out that TCM relies, even today, on an ancient philosophical view of the body that was formulated during an era when the Chinese, for religious reasons, were forbidden to dissect cadavers. Thus the organ systems referred to in the ancient texts that still underlie TCM’s practices are merely metaphors that bear little relationship to the anatomical systems revealed by Andreas Vesalius, William Harvey, and the other pioneers of scientific medicine.⁸ Chinese medicine of 3,000 years ago was certainly no more primitive than the folk practices from the same era that evolved into Western medicine; but just as we no longer rely on the astronomy of ancient Greece, it would seem that progress in anatomy, physiology, pathology, and therapeutics has rendered most ancient medical practices obsolete. For those who would argue that antiquity implies validity, consider the longevity of racism, sexism, or the belief in a flat Earth.

Although TCM is based on a philosophical rather than empirical understanding of bodily function, it is possible that some of its procedures might still work, but for reasons unrelated to the magical belief system that supplied their rationale thousands of years ago (Xie 1995). Open-minded physicians everywhere would welcome any treatment that could benefit their patients, regardless of its origins — providing it can demonstrate its value in properly controlled clinical trials. It was in this spirit that we approached the fact-finding mission that took us to the foremost TCM facilities in the People’s Republic.

We had been aware for some time that Chinese Qigong masters were amassing considerable wealth and political power by allegedly healing people with mysterious force fields — supposedly “external” manifestations of their Qi "energy.” Many masters subsequently immigrated to North America where they established even more lucrative healing ventures. Qigong masters were featured in Bill Moyers’s highly acclaimed but embarrassingly credulous 1993 public television series, “Healing and the Mind.” Appearing with Moyers on one segment was David Eisenberg, who enhanced his already high standing in the alternative medicine community by promoting the powers of the Qigong mentor, Master Shi. Moyers’s demonstration made it appear that Shi, this elderly, frail man, had the strength to resist vigorous shoving by his hearty young students, whereas he could apparently “push” them around from a distance with the invisible force of his external Qi. Our study of slow-motion replays led us to conclude that the student was not exerting any great muscular force on the master’s body, but was only pretending to do so.⁹ At one point, even the trusting Eisenberg is heard to shout, “Try harder. You look like you are faking it.” In response to the master’s movements, another student leaped backward, making it appear that the master’s “energy” had repelled him without physical contact. Peter Huston, writing in the September/October 1995 Skeptical Inquirer ("China, Chi, and Chicanery”) reached the same conclusion that we did from studying this performance. It looked like a well-rehearsed ballet. Various stage tricks passed off as miracles by Qigong masters have been repeatedly exposed by Chinese investigators, who were among our hosts during our tour of China (Lin et al., in press).

Eisenberg’s 1982 book, Encounters with Qi, recounts the postgraduate training in TCM he received in China. In the book he describes many supposedly proven paranormal feats performed by Qigong masters.¹⁰ Although he makes a few token proclamations of skepticism, Eisenberg seems curiously loath to ask the masters to recreate the effects he observed under conditions that would prevent the kind of stage tricks the demonstrations clearly resembled. In Encounters with Qi, he unquestioningly accepts the therapeutic benefits of balancing the body’s (internal) Qi with herbs, acupuncture, and moxibustion (also an herbal treatment). When he returned to China with Moyers, Eisenberg continued to embrace the therapeutic effects of TCM as enthusiastically as he had back in his student days when he accepted as real the kind of “external Qi” effects others have exposed as magic tricks. Moyers seemed equally willing to credit the healing powers of Qi on the basis of nothing more than patient testimonials and the word of his guides. Eisenberg now directs alternative medicine courses for medical students and physicians through Harvard University. These courses and a 1993 article he coauthored on alternative medicine (Eisenberg et al. 1993) were funded by the Fetzer Institute, a $200 million endowment for the propagation of various unproven “mind/medicine” principles.

The effects shown on Moyers’s program were said to be driven by “external Qi,” the same doubtful force invoked to explain allegedly supernatural feats, (extraordinary functions of the human body) that the 1988 CSICOP delegation exposed as conjuring tricks. Although the delegation found this “force” dismally inaccurate when the Qigong masters invoked it to diagnose illnesses, it is the same “energy” that TCM advocates say runs through acupuncture meridians to effect healing. It has always struck us as odd that proponents can accept that this mysterious energy is unable to interact with the physical matter in the sensors of measuring instruments (which could confirm its existence) while it is still able to interact with the physical matter of bodily organs to “read” their state of health and produce a cure.

It was against this background of mysticism, naive trust in testimonials, prior incidents of fakery, and a host of intertwined political and ideological considerations that we set out to look into TCM’s claims ourselves. We wanted to see if Qigong and other TCM practices were as fully integrated with scientific medicine in the Chinese health care system as proponents on this continent assert.¹¹ We had hoped to observe herbal prescribing, traditional pulse and tongue diagnoses, cupping, moxibustion, "back scraping,” and the use of acupuncture for anesthesia, analgesia, and treatment of organic disorders. Some of these we saw and others we did not, since our hosts in the TCM institutions selected our itineraries for reasons steeped in philosophy, politics, and courtesy.

Our Visit

Beijing: June 1995. While we were in Beijing, we enjoyed the superb hospitality of Madam Shen Zhenyu of CAST (the principal organizer), Mr. Lin Zixin (former editor of Science and Technology Daily and a CSICOP Fellow), Madam Shen Zhen-xin (of the Academia Sinia), and Mr. Bai Tongdong, a graduate student at Beijing University.

While touring the Forbidden City with us, Mr. Bai, a physicist and graduate student in the philosophy of science, set the tone for our later discussions with his assertion that Qi is a philosophy, not a reflection of physical reality. In his view, the principles of TCM, including Qi, are merely useful, socially determined metaphors for the realities and facts that only science can provide. He did not offer opinions on the validity of traditional Chinese medicine.

The morning of our first full day, we were taken to a major hospital and research institute at Beijing Medical University. There we were greeted by Professor Han Jishen, a world-famous neurophysiologist, and several other distinguished faculty members. Dr. Han proceeded to chair a seminar that included descriptions of the institute, its achievements in both Western and traditional Chinese medicine, and discussion among ourselves and the assembled faculty.

One of the speakers was Dr. Xie Zhu-fan, director of the Institute of Integration of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Western Medicine. In his presentation he outlined three historical phases in the resurgence of TCM in China. Dr. Xie did not mention the political contributions to this renaissance, merely saying that in the early 1950s TCM began to be taught after decades of neglect and that some Western-trained Chinese physicians had been released from their duties to study TCM. After this, he said, there followed a period devoted to documenting the clinical effects of TCM. Dr. Xie admitted, as he does in his recent book (Xie 1995), that TCM philosophy is not compatible with modern science; but that acupuncture and some other traditional techniques have been demonstrated clinically to have analgesic properties or positive effects on certain functional disorders.

According to Dr. Xie, the Chinese are now in the third phase, the investigation of mechanisms that could account for TCM’s clinical effects. For example, he said they had confirmed the ability of certain Chinese herbs to dilate blood vessels, decrease platelet activity (inhibit blood clotting), and “modulate immune responses.” Because of the multiple actions of herbs, each could be used for several different disorders. Dr. Xie did not explain how these effects had been determined: whether the mixtures raised or lowered blood pressure and just how “immune system modulation” (we're not sure exactly what he meant by this term) benefits the patient. There was no discussion of side effects. Here, and during our discussions with other TCM physicians, it seemed axiomatic that when herbal medications are ingested, only desirable outcomes follow.¹²

After the opening seminar, we were taken on a tour of Professor Han’s laboratory. Dr. Han heads an institute with a staff of thirty-seven that occupies three floors of one campus building. His support comes primarily from governmental grants, there being few, if any, independent sources of funding in China. Dr. Han also has grants from the National Institute on Drug Abuse in the U.S. and Upsa Laboratories, a French pharmaceutical company. We met several of his collaborators, whom we observed in their labs. Although the lab appointments were simple, they were serviceable. The hallways were dimly lit by single, sparsely distributed fluorescent lamps, electricity apparently being expensive. Much of the lab’s equipment had been donated by an admirer of Dr. Han’s, the distinguished opiate researcher, Avram Goldstein, who shipped his furnishings and apparatus to Beijing after retiring from Stanford University. The institute’s walls were decorated with poster presentations from research meetings that described the lab’s discoveries. Professor Han spent two more hours with us, touring the lab and summarizing the work of his group on the physiology and neurochemistry of acupuncture. Our interest was to see whether the cellular effects of acupuncture found in the animal experiments could legitimately account for the myriad clinical effects in human patients claimed by practicing acupuncturists.

A detailed account of Dr. Han’s research is beyond the scope of this article, but we can summarize some of his work, which has been widely published and presented at international conferences (e.g., Chen et al. 1994). Dr. Han showed, before the discovery of the enkephalins (the brain’s endogenous morphinelike neurotransmitters), that acupuncture caused a reduction in pain responses in rabbits and that transfusing a treated animal’s cerebrospinal fluid into a nontreated animal produced a similar effect in the second rabbit. It was suggested that acupuncture had elevated the pain threshold by triggering a release of a transmissible agent (later identified as the opioid peptides, enkephalin and endorphin). Dr. Han later showed, by using antisense DNA in the system, that the ability of acupuncture to produce analgesia [lowered sensitivity to pain while conscious] can be prevented by blocking the expression of the endorphin receptor on the surface of spinal neurons. Others have shown that endorphin-blocking drugs also reverse acupuncture analgesia.

More recently, Dr. Han’s group has shown that the peptide neurotransmitter cholecystokinin (CCK — receptors for which are believed to be distributed in close proximity to those for the endorphins) antagonizes the endorphin-related effects of acupuncture. It seems to do so by altering the endorphin receptor’s affinity for its transmitter, or its ability to conduct messages inside the cell. Dr. Han thinks that natural hyperactivity of the CCK system in about 10 to 20 percent of the human population is responsible for the finding that a similar percentage of normal people is totally “nonresponsive” to acupuncture. He said he belongs to that group of nonresponders.

Our visit was too short to assess the adequacy of the methodology or the validity of these studies, although they seemed sound and have been published in peer-reviewed journals. Nonetheless, we felt that although this research is important basic science, it does not bear directly on many of the clinical claims made by acupuncturists. For instance, a rise in endorphin levels has been attributed to a number of varied activities — running, meditating, etc. — so Dr. Han’s findings are not necessarily uniquely caused by acupuncture. The demonstration of an agent’s effect in an animal model does not automatically imply its reproducibility, specificity, or significance in clinical practice.

Dr. Han maintained that, in humans, the acupuncture point between the thumb and forefinger is specific for the results he measured; but others have found that the exact placement of the needles is unrelated to the pain relief or other clinical effects obtained (Richardson and Vincent 1986). In addition, other researchers have failed to reproduce the reversal of acupuncture analgesia by the morphine antagonist naloxone, so the conditions under which measurements are made may be important, and the optimal ones are not yet known. It should also be noted that the role of the endorphins in pain relief remains controversial because plasma endorphin concentrations are not consistently related to levels of pain experienced by humans (Skrabanek 1985). And finally, a transient rise in endorphin levels could not reasonably account for the prolonged pain relief claimed by acupuncturists, nor other avowed cures in organ systems that are unaffected by the endorphins.

Dr. Han has also developed a low-voltage electric stimulator for administration of electroacupuncture, which he favors for both research and therapy. Known as the “HAN N S,” we found it used throughout China by those who prefer to deliver brief electric pulses through acupuncture needles rather than merely twirling the needles in the traditional manner. It resembles the TENS transcutaneous stimulators widely used in Western pain clinics.

Dr. Han was most gracious to us, and he is obviously a leader in his field. At the end of our tour, we wondered if he would agree, as we had read, that a number of other, less invasive stimuli can also raise endorphin levels in the central nervous system. We asked if it were not true, as Dr. Victor Herbert had shown,¹³ that any irritative stimulus, such as a pinch, might produce a similar rise in endorphin levels (this is conceded by many acupuncturists who use “acupressure” where the skin points are simply massaged rather than needled). He replied that yes, that is so, but acupuncture does not hurt as much as a pinch. We wondered at this juncture why pinch controls are not routinely included in acupuncture experiments and how one could justify clinical use of an invasive method (needling) known to be capable of producing serious complications to obtain such modest, inconsistent results. We, like Skrabanek (1985), also wondered whether suggestion and placebo effects had really been ruled out by acupuncture researchers as a more parsimonious explanation for observed clinical effects in humans. The argument that acupuncture’s effectiveness in animals eliminates the placebo explanation ignores the fact that the immobilization necessary to insert the needles in animal subjects has been shown to produce a sort of catatonia/analgesia by itself.¹⁴ At the very least, we went away wondering why, back home, a special “profession” now needs to be created to administer this procedure, so little about it having been satisfactorily proved.

We next visited several clinics at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Beijing. The main one was a moderate-sized room, approximately 12 by 4 meters, crowded with ten or twelve patients being treated — most with acupuncture, several with acupuncture and moxibustion, and two with cupping, as described below. The acupuncturist deftly twirled the needles in the prescribed points, leaving them in place for twenty to thirty minutes. Some patients received electroacupuncture, others the traditional method. Moxibustion, the placement of burning herbs on the surface of the body, is like the process of "blistering” common in prescientific Western medicine. Here it was administered by placing the smoldering material in a wooden box with a porous, recessed bottom that was placed on the diseased body part — in these cases, the back or the stomach. This was difficult for us to understand because we could not see how any active ingredients the burning herbs might contain could be absorbed in therapeutic quantities, and we had read previously that, for moxibustion to be effective, the herbs must be twisted into small cones and burned precisely over the appropriate acupuncture points. Moreover, the same herbal mixture seemed to be used indiscriminately for a variety of quite different complaints.

For cupping, heated clear glass vessels were placed on the upper back and shoulders, on presumed meridians or acupuncture points. As the cups cooled, skin was sucked up, much as with a vacuum cleaner. The rationale given was that the suction draws out bad or diseased energy from the body. An identical practice survived from ancient times until surprisingly recently in Western medicine as well — to draw out diseased “humors” or “vapors” that are no longer believed to exist.

While touring the TCM complex, we made several observations. The total space in this institution devoted to the practice of TCM was a relatively small portion of its holdings. The rest of the complex of several large buildings was apparently devoted to more mainstream scientific research. We asked what portion of the total medical services delivered in China was TCM, and how people were chosen to receive TCM treatments. We received some surprising answers: Patients generally request TCM treatments themselves, rather than being referred to TCM practitioners by biomedically trained physicians. Most scientifically trained doctors do not practice TCM, nor do they decide on the mode of treatment if they should refer a patient for TCM.

TCM is practiced at the institute by specialists trained in their respective techniques. We were told that most TCM students receive little scientific medical education and, overall, scientifically trained physicians seemed to have little interaction with TCM practitioners. Some physicians from abroad were studying at the institute, but most of the foreign students we met were physiotherapists, health food entrepreneurs, naturopaths, or other alternative medicine practitioners. By 1991 more than 2,000 foreign students had graduated from the thirty TCM colleges in China. At any given time, there are typically 30,000 Chinese students studying TCM (Hou 1991).

We were told that, these days, the proportion of Chinese patients choosing TCM, nationwide, is only about 15 to 20 percent, a figure that surprised us, but was consistent with the relatively small area allotted to these practices in the institute we visited in Beijing. Government publications as recent as 1991 had put the usage rate for TCM at about one-third of all patients in the country (Hou 1991). The 15 to 20 percent estimate was later reiterated by other informants who practiced TCM in Shanghai. Most TCM patients we observed were being treated for chronic problems such as indigestion, back pain, arthritis, and bursitis, which was not surprising to us. Conditions such as these often respond well to reassurance and psychological interventions and they tend to be cyclical, so virtually any treatment is likely to coincide with relief at some time. This is why placebo controls are essential in evaluating all putative therapies.

We were surprised at the low levels of personal interaction between TCM therapists and their patients. The warm, individualized attention and extended time spent with patients (a distinguishing feature of TCM according to its advocates in North America) was not evident here. Most patients arrived at the Beijing clinic with diagnoses in hand. The treatments we saw seemed to be largely symptom oriented, contrary to claims of supporters in North America who see as one of TCM’s superiorities that it “treats the whole person.” There was no attempt, in our presence anyway, to diagnose with TCM methods (e.g., by reading the fifteen unique pulses traditional healers say they can discern, or the more than 100 different diagnostic signs on the tongue [see Wallnofer and von Rottauscher 1975]). Diagnoses for the patients we saw had generally been made by biomedical physicians, and the patients had elected to receive TCM in addition to their Western treatments. We were not shown acupuncture anesthesia for surgery, this apparently having fallen out of favor with scientifically trained surgeons. Dr. Han, for instance, had been emphatic that he and his colleagues see acupuncture only as an analgesic (pain reducer), not an anesthetic (an agent that blocks all conscious sensations).

Before leaving the Beijing Institute, we were shown the largest collection of references on TCM, especially herbalism, in China. We entered through a long reading room with rows of display cases and tables. Another room branched from the side and at the end was a large vault, temperature- and humidity-controlled, containing stacks of rare, ancient volumes. Splendidly bound, they dated back many hundreds of years, some much more, and contained beautiful illustrations of medicinal plants. TCM recognizes more than 8,000 plant species as having medicinal value. Students come from all over China to study these tomes, although we saw only a few while we were there. On another floor we were shown a major project funded by the UN’s World Health Organization to establish a computer database from this storehouse of information about TCM.

Interspersed with our packed itinerary of official visits, we were shown the sights of Beijing including the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, and several museums; and we trekked along the Great Wall. Everywhere we went, our hosts pampered and fed us in grand style. Our questions were answered frankly and we were always made to feel most welcome. In Part 2 of this report [to be published in a future issue of SI], we shall describe the major scholarly conference CAST arranged to coincide with our visit, and our further explorations of TCM in Shanghai.

Notes

1. “Qi” is the name Chinese philosophy gives to a scientifically undetectable force or energy that is supposed to permeate all things. Believers in TCM assert that imbalances in the flow of Qi are responsible for disease, fatigue, etc. Acupuncture, Chinese herbs, etc., supposedly restore well-being by rebalancing the flow of this mystical essence. Qigong is a set of mental and physical exercises akin to those of Tai Chi Chuan and Ai-ki-do that also promise spiritual and physical benefits by channeling this mysterious energy. With its mental disciplines and breathing exercises, Qigong has long been practiced as a form of self-hypnosis that claims to promote relaxation and general health, much in the manner of certain yoga exercises. These days, practitioners of this sort of discipline call it “internal Qigong” to distinguish it from so-called “external Qigong,” which has enjoyed a dramatic rise in popularity in China and the West. Devotees of external Qigong claim they can control the Qi force outside their bodies to debilitate their foes, achieve the sorts of psychic feats familiar to Westerners, as well as to diagnose and cure physical ailments. Qigong masters have become rich and powerful in China, filling massive sports arenas for their demonstrations of magic and faith healing. Chinese skeptics who have exposed these Qigong hoaxers were among the hosts of the delegation that included these authors (Lin et al., in press).

2. Moxibustion employs various herbal materials but instead of being eaten, they are twisted into small cones and set on fire. The cones are placed over hypothetical “meridians” that are supposed to supply “Qi energy” to the afflicted part of the body. There they smolder, much like lit tobacco leaves. Although this is the traditional procedure, in the clinics we observed it had mostly been replaced by one in which a wire-bottomed box containing the smoldering herbs was simply placed over the site of the patient’s complaint.

3. We should note, as Skrabanek (1985) points out, that TCM has been banned several times in Chinese history as useless, only later to be reinstated by official fiat. Mao’s resurrection of TCM rescinded the 1929 ban instituted by the Kuomintang government, which had opted for scientific medicine over folk practices but did a very poor job of delivering it to the masses.

4. Western physicians have long been aware that suitably selected patients can undergo major surgery without anesthesia and show astonishingly little evidence of suffering if given hypnotic inductions or any of a host of other, related cognitive/social manipulations (see Melzack and Wall 1982, or Skrabanek 1985). Modern psychological research has shown that pain is partly a sensation and partly an emotional reaction (the “agony component”). Any manipulation of attention, anxiety, or arousal that attenuates the emotional component leaves the purely sensory aspect of pain surprisingly tolerable.

5. Many mainstays of modern pharmacology have their origins in traditional folk remedies (Lewis and Elvin-Lewis 1977). Traditional Chinese herbalism has already provided scientific medicine with valuable medications such as ephedrine (from the plant Chinese herbalists call “Ma Huang”). Undoubtedly, many other useful medicines remain to be isolated from the huge traditional pharmacopeia.

   Unfortunately, as it stands, most traditional herbs have not yet been properly tested for safety or efficacy. Thus, herbalism remains an inseparable mixture of some safe and effective remedies, some inert placebos, and some dangerous substances. It is difficult, if not impossible, in most instances, to tell which concoctions belong in which of these categories. The encouraging news is that, particularly in China, there are increasing numbers of attempts to apply scientific methods to separate the effective herbal medications from the placebos and to isolate the active ingredients in those that actually work.

   Firmly in the pseudoscience camp must be placed all traditional remedies made from rhinoceros horns, tiger penises, bear gall bladders and other parts of magnificent, endangered species. Lucrative poaching to harvest these body parts is seriously threatening these animals with extinction. And all this for useless treatments based solely on principles of sympathetic magic; i.e., the ancient belief that “like begets like.” These are symbolically potent parts of powerful beasts, so it is believed that such organs must therefore magically transfer to the people who take them the vitality and fortitude of their donors.

6. The newly appointed director of the Office of Alternative Medicine, Joe Jacobs, soon ran afoul of the wishes of the alternative medicine community and resigned his post (Marshall 1994). Jacobs exhibited a rare and commedable mixture of willingness to entertain unconventional hypotheses and a hardheaded demand for rigorous tests before accepting them. Alternative practitioners had long contended that the only reason their treatments had not proven their worth scientifically was that the hidebound medical establishment had prevented them from receiving the necessary research funds. When Congress suddenly made grants available through the new institute, most proponents of alternative medicine proved that they didn't know how to conduct proper clinical trials and didn't really want them anyway. When they increased their demands that most of the money be turned over to them, without proper peer review, to continue gathering the scientifically useless testimonials they had always relied upon, Jacobs quit rather than perpetrate a charade. He called their demands “professionally insulting.”

7. This exemplifies another aspect of sympathetic magic in TCM. Believers in “contact magic,” say that things that are in physical proximity can influence each other by passing a mystical “vital essence,” merely by being in the same vicinity. This is why psychics believe they can tell things about absent owners of objects they are allowed to hold—the owners’ essence supposedly transferred to the object and then into the psychic, by contact.

8. For instance, no reputable scientist has ever found an anatomical basis in the circulatory, nervous, or lymphatic systems for the “meridians” through which the health-enhancing vital energies posited by TCM are supposed to flow. The energies themselves cannot be detected by conventional scientific instruments. Likewise, doubts have been raised because of the ways in which TCM remedies, such as moxibustion, are administered — it must be claimed that they interact with their target organs by some sort of dubious “vibrations” or “sympathy” because our modern understanding of the body’s integument and membrane properties rules out their absorbtion by and distribution to target organs by any of the conventionally accepted routes. For instance, take this description of a TCM product promoted by an official Chinese government publication: “Yuwang-Brand Superior Weight-Reducing Bathing Liquid is made from medicinal herb extracts mixed with high quality detergent. It cleans the skin and promotes fat metabolism, helping to reduce weight and keep the figure slim” (Hou 1991, p. 33).

9. Whether this disciple was in fact “pulling his punches” intentionally to make his master look good, or was psychologically deluding himself that he was actually applying massive force when he was not, remains a matter of conjecture. What is known is that strong believers are capable of “ideomotor actions” (or inactions) where they honestly believe their movements (such as with a Ouija board or a dowsing rod) are not being initiated and controlled by their own volition (Vogt and Hyman 1979). Similarly, there is evidence that people can sincerely convince themselves they are exerting muscular effort when in fact they are not. Various hypnotic phenomena are of this sort.

10. In a similar vein, Barry Beyerstein, when he lived in China several years ago, was told by the staff at his residence that they knew a Qigong master who could leap over buildings. Of course, they said, the skeptical foreigner could have a demonstration. Unfortunately, for some reason, the time was never quite right. When he returned to Canada, Beyerstein organzed a lecture by a famous Qigong master, Ge, who had relocated to Vancouver. Ge promised to demonstrate the power of his Qi by making distilled water taste sweet. Once again, the audience was greatly disappointed when, after a rambling, incoherent lecture, the master announced he was now too tired to do the double-blind, forced-choice test Beyerstein had prepared. Ge’s claim that he could diagnose diseased organs by passing his hands over the surface of a patient’s body and feeling a twinge in the same organ in his own body was met with a question from the floor: “And just how do you detect ovarian cancer?”

11. It was the conclusion of Barry Beyerstein, after touring several treatment facilities outside the largest Chinese cities six years ago, that the much-publicized “complete integration” of traditional and scientific practitioners was not as happy a marriage as it had been portrayed. Back then, scientifically trained Chinese doctors were more circumspect in expressing their doubts about official encouragements of TCM, but many of them expressed their reservations quietly to the visitor nonetheless. On this more recent visit most scientific critics were bolder, but still cautious.

12. This belief that if something is “organic” or “natural” it must be milder, safer, and more benign than “manufactured” drugs is a common misconception among most practitioners of herbal medicine. A moment’s reflection will reveal that strychnine, “deadly nightshade” (belladonna), and a variety of mushrooms are among nature’s most dangerous poisons. Many herbal remedies are of questionable safety, let alone efficacy (Tyler 1985).

13. In a personal communication, Herbert presented the following account of a demonstration of animal acupuncture he had observed in China. The experimenter inserted needles into the animal subject and took a blood sample that showed a rise in endorphin levels. Herbert asked if he could try pinching the skin to see if it would have a similar effect on endorphin levels to that of the needles. It did.

14. Known in the older literature as “animal hypnosis,” grabbing and rapidly turning over small mammals can produce a stunned immobility, a protective freezing response, in which they appear to be insensitive to painful stimuli.

References

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Consider the following: A major public university’s burn center requests a grant for $317,725 from the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences (USUHS) (a department of the Pentagon) in order to study the “laying over of hands,” or “The Effect of Therapeutic Touch on Pain and Infection in Burn Patients.” One might be skeptical about the topic to be investigated and therefore not surprised that the grant was rejected. Now assume that this same university resubmitted the grant proposal revised in accordance with the suggestions of USUHS and two months later was awarded a grant of $355,225.

And, in fact, that’s what happened: $355,225 was awarded September 20, 1994, to the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Burn Center for a “single blinded randomized clinical trial- to “quantify the effect of therapeutic touch (TT) on pain and infection in burn patients, and to develop a research-based protocol for practice. A comparison will be made between the control group which will receive placebo intervention (mimic TT) along with the standard treatment regimen, and the experimental group will receive TT in addition to usual burn center management.”¹

During the experiment, a group of burn patients — suffering from first-, second-, and third-degree burns on anywhere from 5 percent to 70 percent of their bodies — will have a nurse’s hands waved over them without touching (which should relieve any anxiety about exacerbation of pain on the part of burn patients) to see if the patient is helped. This group of patients will be compared with a control group of burn patients — selected by a coin toss — who are denied the benefit of a trained practitioner’s TT, but who instead get a wave of the hands from a nurse who has been trained in how to fake therapeutic touch.

Of course, a skeptic might ask, “What’s the difference between waving your hands over a patient’s body hoping to help heal him or her and pretending to wave your hands over a patient’s body hoping to help heal him or her?” Another question might be, “What if the mimic TT practitioner feels compassion for the burn patient and accidentally performs actual TT?” How would that affect the results of the study? Granted, the UAB Burn Center deals with burn victims, but if the USUHS was going to reject the first proposal and make suggestions, why didn’t they suggest that the practitioners start with a group of subjects suffering from less trauma? For example, people with mild sunburn?

The proposal “is designed to investigate the effects of a complementary therapy.”²

The “specific objectives” of the project are to:

• Recruit 150 subjects aged 15 to 65 and randomly assign them to either the treatment or control group.
• Compare the effects of TT on the outcomes of pain perception and nosocomial infection.
• Develop and test a TT protocol for use as an adjunct to narcotic analgesia in lowering pain levels and the incidence of infection in burn patients.³

• Therapeutic touch is a contemporary interpretation of several ancient healing practices.
• The technique . . . is based on the assumption of a human energy field which extends beyond the skin. The idea behind TT is that the human energy field is abundant and flows in balanced patterns in health but is depleted and/or unbalanced in illness or injury.
• This action is believed to place the person in an optimal position for his/her own resources to be used in self-healing.
• In this view, the therapist acts as a human energy support system until the person’s own immunological system is robust enough to take over.
• Central to the practice is the assumption of a human energy field and an environment filled with ‘life energy’ which is also present in all living organisms.
• Support for this view is based entirely on a field world view.
• Quantum theory states that all of reality is made up of energy fields and that over 99% of the universe is simply space.
• Our present technology does not allow the measurement of the human energy field, but to a trained sense, primarily touch, the human energy field can be perceived and assessed.⁴

Perhaps the people at USUHS were impressed by the diagram of the Conceptual Model of Study that accompanied the proposal. The diagram (reproduced on the next page) shows that burn injury causes “pain,” “stress,” and “risk of infection.” TT, on the other hand, leads to “activation of endogenous opioid system,” “reduced stress,” and “decreased T-suppresor (sic) lymphocytes,” which in turn lead to “pain relief” and “decreased risk of infection,” which together lead to “enhanced healing.”⁶ Of course, the existence of a human energy field as well as the benefits of TT are all hypothetical. Their efficacy is the purpose of the study, after all. Unfortunately, the continued assumption of the validity of the theoretical basis of TT is to be found throughout the proposal without any comment about this logical fallacy on the part of the proposal’s reviewers.

Among other criteria for selecting the subjects are the necessity of speaking English and the ability to communicate verbally. The subjects must also be able to see and hear. One might wonder if the patients need to be able to see and hear so that they will be aware when either TT or mimic TT is being administered. However, this requirement is putatively added in order to determine if the TT was effective and if the mimic TT was not effective. Why? Because the results are measured by asking the patients if they feel better!

The proposal says the following “instruments” will be used in this study to collect data relative to outcome variables:

1. McGill Pain Questionnaire (which consists primarily of three major classes of word descriptors: sensory, affective and evaluative, and is used to specify the subjective pain experience);
2. Visual Analogue Pain Estimation Scale (which is used by having the patient mark or indicate a point on a straight line that reflects the amount of sensation the patient is experiencing at the time);
3. Visual Analogue Anxiety Estimation Scale (which is used by having the patient mark or indicate a point on a similar straight line that reflects the amount of anxiety the patient is experiencing);
4. Credibility of Therapy Form (which is used after an explanation of TT to record the patient’s opinion as to how logical TT seems, how confident the patient is that TT will be successful, and if the patient would be willing to pay for TT as an optional part of hospital treatment).⁷

The names of patients who answer “yes” to that last question ought to be valuable information to somebody!

The grant proposal isn’t afraid to reveal the secrets of TT by describing how it works: “The TT practitioner will begin by centering” which “consists of a quieting and focusing of consciousness with the intent to help. Next, an assessment of the subject’s energy field will be done to search out all areas of imbalance, blocked energy flow, congestion, or deficit in energy flow. Then TT treatment will begin, starting at the subject’s crown and moving downward to the feet . . . through stimulation and augmentation, clearing of congestion or blocks in flow, or quieting the energy flow to achieve a balanced, abundant, symmetrical energy flow. The TT practitioner’s hands, held about four inches above the subject, will move in a rhythmical way directing energy from central areas of the subject’s energy field to peripheral ones or touching the subject lightly for short periods where additional energy is needed.”⁸ Contrast this precision methodology with TT’s exceedingly imprecise origin in Martha Rogers’s “. . . nursing theory . . . based entirely on a field world view . . .”⁹ which has far more in common with revealed wisdom than with a scientific hypothesis.

An ongoing assessment by the practitioner will indicate when the treatment is completed. At the conclusion of this process, the subject will be allowed to rest quietly for about 10 minutes. It is implied therefore that the subject needs this time of quiet rest at the end of TT treatment in order to recover from all the agitation caused by the practitioner’s waving hands.

On the other hand, the placebo intervention of the mimic TT administered to the control group will be completely different:

Mimic treatments will be provided to all control group subjects by the non-nurse research assistant, who does not know what Therapeutic Touch is. This research assistant will be trained to perform the same movements that will be used by the Therapeutic Touch practitioners. However, instead of centering and holding the intent to help the subject as the Therapeutic Touch practitioners will do, the research assistant will simply begin the treatment and will count back from 100 by serial sevens during the mimic treatment. To assure that the sessions are all comparable, three uninvolved lay persons will be asked to observe the research assistants and the Therapeutic Touch practitioners and identify which treatments are real. The research will not be started until observers cannot tell the real from the mimic treatments. Mimic treatments will be given in the patients’ rooms approximately one hour before the daily dressing change. As in the Therapeutic Touch treatment, the patients will lie on their backs on the hospital beds. Lighting will be dim, and soft, relaxing instrumental music will be playing. Prior to the first treatment, the subject will be instructed to relax as fully as possible and a brief explanation of what will be done during the treatment will be given. The research assistant may randomly spend between five and twenty minutes doing the mimic treatment. At the end of the mimic treatment, the subject will be allowed to rest quietly for about 10 minutes. Thus, with this single, blind placebo intervention, all subjects and unit personnel will perceive that subjects are receiving the same intervention. The identity of the mimic TT vs. TT intervention subjects will be known only to the researchers.¹⁰

The proposal attempts to address some “limitations” of its study: “A frequent criticism when TT administration is used as an intervention relates to the ‘placebo effect.’ However, administration of a mimic intervention to control subjects helps control for placebo effect.”¹¹ In other words, a placebo treatment for a possible placebo treatment will take care of that problem!

In considering the success that the UAB Burn Center had in acquiring $355,225 to study TT, we ask whether public money is best spent on such highly speculative “alternative therapies.” What is the difference, after all, in TT and “remote healing” where practitioners will patients to get better from across the room, or perhaps, over the phone. (What about E-mail?)

Further, should questions not be asked about the ethics of trying a completely speculative technique on burn patients whose pain is most severe and intractable and whose infection rate is very high? First and most important, practitioners of TT must demonstrate some basis in reality for their theory. Then, and only then, can they move to the next step — proving its efficacy.

Notes

1. Grant No. MDA 905-94-Z-0080. Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences. Project Title: The Effect of Therapeutic Touch on Pain and Infection in Burn Patients (N94-020A1), p. 35. Awarded to: University of Alabama at Birmingham. Principal Investigator: Joan G. Turner. Award amount: $355,225. Period of Award: 9/15/94 through 9/30/95. (Due to the unwillingness of UAB to provide us a copy of this grant proposal, we obtained it through a Freedom of Information Act request.)
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., p. 40.
5. Ibid., p. 42.
6. Ibid., p. 45.
7. Ibid., p. 47.
8. Ibid., p. 49.
9. Ibid., p. 40.
10. Ibid., p. 52.
11. Ibid., p. 52.

Acknowledgements

Grateful acknowledgement to Mary Folsom and Dan Culberson.

There are at least three reasons:

1. The leaders of mass media organizations are not educated enough to recognize and expose pseudoscientific “theories.” They don’t ask advice of real scientists, probably in order to conceal their naivete; and scientists themselves are, as a rule, not sufficiently active in the struggle against antiscience.
2. Real scientists understand the limitations of general knowledge. They sincerely acknowledge that many puzzles of nature are not yet understood. Parascientists, on the contrary, are confident in their “achievements”; they pretend to be more certain.
3. In the 1930s and 1940s some attempts were made in the former Soviet Union to end investigations in such important fields as genetics and cybernetics. After such oppression was disclosed and lifted, biologists and physicists — along with pseudobiologists and pseudophysicists — felt freedom. The latter demanded respect for their “new ideas’ and they portrayed themselves as fighters for truth.

When real scientists are active, they can expose pseudoscience. A well-known scandal happened in 1991, when physicists of the USSR Academy of Sciences demanded that government cease to support charlatans working on “microlepton fields’ (distant biological influence of army and civil inhabitants with “torsion radiation”). About $500 million had been spent on such “investigations.” Fortunately, the Supreme Soviet Committee stopped this waste of money. The Academic Department of General Physics and Astronomy at a special session on July 9, 1991, characterized this case as “organized activity of pseudoscience with specific features of large-scale bluff.”

In the 1990s the government of the Ukraine allocated much money to a man named Bovbalan for realization of his ideas to move clouds and cyclones, to cause rains in drought areas, and so on. This episode became known to the public only a year ago.

Even in the circles close to the president of the Russian Federation there are “believers’ in miracles. The newspaper Moscow News (weekly, Nos. 29 and 30, 1995) published a story about General George Rogozin, who is the deputy chief of the Presidential Security Service. His hobby is studying occultism, telepathy, astrology, etc. As the newspaper stated, Rogozin prepares the astrological “forecasts’ for the leaders of the country.

We should not be astonished when in a Russian television program astrology was characterized as an “applied science”; and when we regularly watch on television such “specialists’ on astrology as former doctor of sciences in chemistry V. Velichko or former physicist Tamara Globa.

I am a member of the International Academy of Information, which has headquarters in Moscow. There are many divisions organized by scientific specialization or by regions of activity (as our Irkutsk Division, for instance). The leadership and divisions of the academy have taken much positive action. But recently I was shocked to learn that one more division was named: the “Division of UFOlogy and Bioenergoinformatics”! Isn’t that a shame for the scientific community? We are trying to overrule this disgraceful decision, but it is difficult to find the source of such a mistake.

One more shameful situation happened in the Russian Parliament. Members invited a “soothsayer”—Raisa Soumerina—to talk to them. She tried to determine who in the government is “constantly erring,” who is “stamping his feet,” etc. And the members of the Parliament were listening to this delirium! Professor of physics E. P. Kruglyakov, the corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, called this case a symbol of “degradation of authorities’ (Nauka v Sibiri, weekly, Nos. 47 and 48, 1995).

There are a few ways to struggle against pseudoscience. One is to check publications and television programs prepared by astrologers, parapsychologists, etc. in order to find their mistakes and to disclose false “facts’ and bogus “theories.” This is being done by the NLO (UFO) Commission of the Russian Academy of Sciences and by the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal in the United States and elsewhere. But we are never sure that the results will be as widely available to the public, radio listeners, and television watchers as are false claims. In every case scientists can be labeled “oppressive” or “fighters against new ideas.”

Another way is the popularization of real science, its laws, and its achievements. Everywhere we can use the possibilities to teach: in schools, universities, in television and radio programs. But maybe the best way of popularization is to publish books and articles in popular journals.

Such publications should not only be correct and understandable; they must be very interesting, written by scientific authors skillful in popularization.

In Russia we had examples of good, popular books on mathematics, physics, biology, and geology (including mineralogy and geochemistry). Repeatedly reprinted, these books attracted the attention of adults and teenagers for decades. One of the most popular books amongst teenagers — my contemporaries — in the 1940s was the collection of romantic short stories by the well-known Russian mineralogist and geochemist A. E. Fersman, named Reminiscences about Stone. There are twenty-five stories, from three to nine pages each, connected with the brightest memories of the author’s life.

“Saami’s Blood” described the legend about the origin of the rare mineral eudialyte, red in color, in the Lovozero Mountains of the Kola Peninsula. “Testa Nera” (from the Italian for “black head”) was a folk story telling why crystals of polychromatic tourmaline on Elba Island have black tops. “Blue Stone of Pamirs’ was about the deposits of lapis lazuli in one of the mountain creeks with an appropriate name, Lajvar-Dara (Lazurite Creek).

“Proceeding to Sulfur” documented the story of the discovery of rich deposits in the center of the Kara-Kum Desert.

“The Kiss” was about the unexpected gratitude of a Mongolian guide who had to be threatened to show the way.

In the final chapter, the author calls upon young people to explore vast territories of Siberia, to discover ores and waters under their feet, and to invent new methods of metal extraction. He cited the words of the great Russian scientist of the eighteenth century, Michael Lomonosov: “Metals and minerals will not come to the yards themselves, they demand eyes and hands to be found.”

Hundreds and thousands of youngsters became students in geology and geography departments of universities after reading this book and many other books written by Fersman and his colleagues, for example, geologists V. A. Obruchev and I. A. Efremov. I will cite just one sentence from Obruchev’s popular book Foundations of Geology: “What does a stream whisper running along a ravine?”

These authors wrote their books (sometimes science fiction, such as Plutonia by Obruchev and Andromeda Nebula by Efremov) to show not only interesting facts and fantastic landscapes, but also principles of nature and specific features of life in expeditions. They tried to attract readers’ attention to many puzzles of science, and to the excitement and happiness of divining them.

To my regret I cannot think of any members of the Russian Academy of Sciences of recent years who have written books for a wide circle of readers. It means that scientists do not consider the popularization of science to be one of their important functions.

One of the results is that, in many popular Russian journals such as Nauka i Zhizn (Science and Life), there are some poor scientific stories and even pages of parascientific attempts “to explain” something not understandable. In the bookstores, really scientific books are sinking in the seas of books with pretentious titles, such as Everything about Life, Secrets of Health, Stars Recommend, etc.

Let us stop being passive in situations when we have to act! Let us demand that mass media companies consult with real scientists when they publish or show something connected with science and nature. Let us write popular books and articles in order to demonstrate real scientific achievements and to make the truth stronger and more evident.

Tsering told me that no such manuscript ever existed at this or any other Buddhist monastery; that it was all “thought construction.” He also wrote that just as we in the West have many legends about Jesus, so too, Buddhists have put up with quite a bit of nonsense in the East about the Buddha.

Frederick Lenz — “Rama” to his cult following — has created a version of Buddhism in Surfing the Himalayas that is entirely self-serving, while revising Tibetan religion from an idiosyncratic, New Age perspective. In the book, he introduces us to a fictitious, “enlightened” monk with miraculous powers, Master Fwap. The monk is the sole living teacher from the ancient (fictitious) Rae Chorze-Fwaz Order. Fwap’s lineage stems from the legendary Atlantis that sent great teachers to ancient Egypt and other places before it sank from its karmic depravity. Fwap tells us that the ancient wisdom behind true enlightenment is now contained in his mysterious Buddhist enclave outside of Katmandu, Nepal.

Although Surfing the Himalayas is published as a fictional account, Lenz nevertheless claims that the book contains his “real experiences” when he was in Nepal “some time ago.” The story begins with Lenz, the author, as the narrator — a device used by James Redfield in his comparable best-seller, The Celestine Prophecy — telling us about his love for the snow and sledding as a young boy. It quickly moves to a period when Lenz was a man of college age — which places the narrative around 1970. He flies to Nepal to “surf” the Himalayas since he has already “successfully snowboarded most of the higher mountains in the United States and Canada.” He checks into the Katmandu Youth Hostel where he falls asleep and has a weird dream in which he meets a magical Buddhist monk on a mountain of snow. The monk appears in the air next to Lenz, who has inadvertently careened off a cliff. The monk teaches him to levitate and saves him.

Later, after awakening, Lenz hires a yak-drawn cart driven by a farmer who takes him from Katmandu to a snow-covered Himalayan mountain “in several hours.” After a few hours of climbing, Lenz states that he was “on top of a mountain twice as high as any I had snowboarded before.” During his first run he crashes into an old, bald-headed monk who seems to appear out of nowhere. Thus begins his relationship with Fwap, who convinces the boy to become his student because of Lenz’s achievements in past lives as a meditator and occultist. We discover that Lenz has been chosen to carry on the important work of the Rae Chorze-Fwaz Tantra Mystery School and that Fwap is its only living “enlightened” master on the planet.

From Chapter Two onward the text abounds with the wisdom of Fwap, who guides his beguiled young student into the teachings of his order. The master uses the snowboard as a tool during several sessions. In one situation Fwap himself steps on the board with the “wrong shoes” and swiftly glides down a steep slope only to levitate, board and all, back to the top. Fwap directs Lenz to accomplish this by becoming “one with the board.” Such magical guru tricks amaze Lenz who then wants to learn more. But the unflappable Fwap brushes magical power aside, telling his student that it is merely a by-product of enlightenment — the true goal.

Fwap’s preachings are directed by simple questions from his student. On one occasion Lenz asks how to tell if a Buddhist master is enlightened. “The first condition was that the master’s aura would turn a beautiful, bright golden color when he meditated.” The second characteristic was that the master “would always have a totally outrageous sense of humor, because life, when viewed through the eyes of enlightenment, was incredibly funny!”

Some of Fwap’s teachings sound suspiciously like those of the don Juan character created by writer Carlos Castaneda. Fwap discourses about the second attention, luminous beings, the tonal, places of power, and seeing in terms familiar to anyone who has read Castaneda’s own magical autobiographical adventures. Perhaps don Juan was merely teaching the Rae Chorze-Fwaz Tantra philosophy.

But there is more here than a mere rip-off of Castaneda. In this book Lenz has condensed significant elements of his own teachings since the early 1980s. His devoted students believe that he is an enlightened being (like Master Fwap or don Juan) who radiates golden light and has an outrageous sense of humor. Well, at least some of them do. The rest seem to believe that they are not spiritually advanced enough to see his luminous aura or appreciate his humor, but they remain loyal with hopes that someday they might.

Surfing the Himalayas was self-published in 1994 by Lenz in a small edition mostly for his students (InterGlobal Seminars, Inc.). The book gained the attention of Warner Books, which has had huge success with another initially self-published spiritual adventure, The Celestine Prophecy. Warner bought the rights to Surfing for a cool quarter million dollars and planned to publish it under its label in the fall of 1995. After the Warner-Lenz deal appeared in Publisher’s Weekly (May 22, 1995), Warner received information alleging Lenz was a controversial cult leader with a sordid reputation for sexually manipulating female followers. Warner dropped the contract, but still lost $80,000 to Lenz in the deal. St. Martin’s Press, an earlier bidder, picked up the contract for an undisclosed amount, but according to the New York Times (July 13, 1995), St. Martin’s was unaware of any controversy surrounding Lenz.

There has been a spate of books geared for the spirituality seeker carried in recent decades by publishing houses hoping to tap the expanding New Age/metaphysical market. Lenz’s book mimics many others that use literary devices such as a mysterious spiritual master from a mysterious and ancient spiritual order. The remote Himalayan cultures and exotic Tibetan teachers have been foils for many authors. Often these authors gain a cult following gullible enough to believe that the writer actually experienced what he wrote about. For instance, there have been hundreds of thousands of people who believed that the books by T. Lobsang Rampa — the first was The Third Eye in 1956 — were true stories by a Tibetan monk who gained psychic powers. In reality, T. Lobsang Rampa never existed. The books were written by Cyril Henry Hoskin, the son of a British plumber. He had never visited the Orient.

Lenz’s spiritual adventure comes closer in type to another man’s, who also posed as a student of a mysterious Tibetan master. Paul Twitchell published The Tiger’s Fang in 1967 about his magical adventures with Eckankar Master Rebazar Tarzs. Tarzs, according to the book, has been around nigh 500 years and is a member of the ancient Vairagi Order of Soul Travelers. In reality, Twitchell based his Tarzs character partially on Kirpal Singh, a guru from a fringe Sikh organization, the Radhasoami Satsang, with whom Twitchell had studied. Twitchell was known to have plagiarized heavily in writing his “autobiography.” The new religion of Eckankar is based on Twitchell’s revelations, which curiously blend Theosophy with the Radhasoami tradition of India and Scientology. Twitchell had been a member of the latter group as well.

Lenz had dedicated his first book, Lifetimes: True Accounts of Reincarnation (1980) to his guru, Sri Chinmoy, now based outside of Brooklyn. Lenz was called “Atmanada” when he broke with Chinmoy in the early 1980s to start his own cult. His first members had been Chinmoy devotees. Chinmoy is another godman who has made claims to superhuman powers. Chinmoy had been a member of a modern ashram in India founded by Sri Aurobindo before setting up his own group in the late 1960s. Lenz denounced Chinmoy and proclaimed himself to be Rama around 1983. Although Lenz has been called a charlatan in the media many times, he manages to hold onto several hundred or more dedicated devotees who nearly all pursue computer programming jobs. Many “offer” him as much as several thousands of dollars a month for his “spiritual” support. Fwap, in some ways, is merely a revision of Sri Chinmoy, who claims to be the most evolved human being on the planet.

One former Lenz devotee and close friend who knew him in the early days from 1977 is Mark E. Laxer, who published Take Me for a Ride: Coming of Age in a Destructive Cult in 1993. He left Lenz in 1985. Laxer notes that Lenz became progressively more delusional and coy, but manipulative, over the years. Lenz said he believed then that LSD helped a teacher to reorganize a student’s aura of luminous fibers and he encouraged its use with special students. Fwap does not talk about LSD, but he does teach that a person’s soul or aura needs to be “repatterned” with a master’s help in order to speed up enlightenment. I believe that Lenz has chosen this period of his life to revive himself with Surfing the Himalayas.

It is highly unlikely that Lenz was snowboarding in Nepal at the time of his story, for several reasons. Snowboards were not developed until the mid 1970s or later. Lenz has never demonstrated his snowboarding abilities to eyewitnesses, to my and former members’ knowledge. Even if the snowboarding is merely a fictional device employed by Lenz, the author’s knowledge of actual places like Katmandu and the Himalayas is insular. I visited Darjeeling, Katmandu, and other Himalayan communities in February 1981. Himalayan yaks flourish around 14,000 feet or higher and get sickly and die at lower altitudes. I remember seeing a lone yak in the zoo in Darjeeling. It was in terrible shape at 7,500 feet. Katmandu is at 4,600 feet. It is unlikely that Lenz hired a yak-driven cart there. Less likely is a slow-moving animal reaching anywhere near snow-clad slopes from Katmandu in several hours as Lenz describes, even in winter.

Lenz states that he climbed “twice as high” on his first Himalayan peak as he ever had in North America. I have climbed many average American peaks up to 13,000 feet. During the snow season, hiking was extremely difficult if not impossible without snowshoes. Even if Lenz had snowboarded at a mere 12,000 feet in North America, this would have placed him at 24,000 feet in Nepal, no easy feat for a single trekker in one day who may have had to climb around 10,000 feet after a yak cart dropped him off. In any case, Lenz neglects to mention that trekking in Nepal’s mountains was not and is not allowed without a permit and a guide with the route approved by the Central Immigration Office.

The yak, the snow-covered peaks, and Fwap all become fantastic literary devices upon analysis of Surfing the Himalayas and not part of a possible setting that supports good fiction. Fwap’s Rae Chorze-Fwaz Order is as fictional as Tarzs’s Vairaigi Order and a host of other pseudolineages proclaimed by modern cults. Fwap’s discourses on Tantric Buddhism speak more of Western New Age occultism and folk Tantra than essential Buddhism. Fwap argues that the Christian-influenced West is linear and hierarchical in its thinking, whereas the Buddhist East is circular and more efficient. He teaches that the earth is polluted psychically by too many unenlightened people; and that he (Fwap) needs to refresh himself at times at his monastery.

“Every living being is psychic. . . . Did you know that the vast majority of thoughts you think and emotions you feel aren't even your own?” Master Fwap asked with a wry smile on his face (p. 55).

Fwap later carries this equivocal concept to extremes: “Whether you are aware of it or not, your board has an inherent knowledge of its own capabilities because it is made up of intelligent energy, just as you are” (p. 87).

He also stresses that one needs a living, enlightened teacher if one is to seek enlightenment. Fwap’s master was Fwaz Shastra Dup, a monk who died around 1950. Lenz does not tell us if Fwap is available to other seekers, but he does point to himself today as heir to the Tantric throne of enlightenment via the Rae Chorze-Fwaz Order.

Lenz’s future plans are indicated in Chapter Four, in which he has a curious dream about himself in the future. His future self convinces Lenz to meet with Fwap rather than go snowboarding on an auspicious day.

“You owe him your life, you know. You ran him down with your snowboard. . . . He could have easily burned you into a very small pile of ashes with his occult power, but because he is a compassionate Buddhist master he let you off the hook.”

He reveals this in his vision to himself as a student in a large Buddhist temple with stained glass windows. Lenz meets his future self facing a large white marble altar adorned with six giant red candles. Lenz tells the novice the future: “This is my — our — temple. Not bad, is it? We designed it ourselves.”

Earlier in this review I mentioned Nawang Tsering. In 1979 he published Buddhism in Ladakh in India, a biography of an eighteenth-century Ladakhi saint and scholar, Ngag-dbang Tse-ring [sic]. The saint was a historically authentic follower of Buddhist Tantra and, according to Tsering, a pivotal scholar and reformer much loved by his disciples and peers. That is far more than we can say about Fwap — a magical character of the imagination. After initial promotion, including a full-page ad in the New York Times in November 1995, Surfing is doing very well as a New Age title. Frederick Lenz may have a best-seller by present indications, but that is not surprising.

There is a market for gullible seekers who fail to distinguish either the message or the messenger of Buddhist wisdom. Another case in point, The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche has done very well since its release in 1993. If Sogyal Rinpoche is an authentic Buddhist by training, if not in practice, that is more than we can say about Lenz. If you want Buddhist wisdom, first get an education in authentic Buddhist philosophy. Reading books by Sogyal Rinpoche or Lenz is not going to get you closer to Buddhist spirituality.

Figure 1 and Figure 2. “Ghostly” forms in photos like these made by a New York State couple are becoming common.

I first became aware of the mysterious phenomenon when I received a call at my office at the Center for Inquiry. It was from a Lockport, New York, couple who were experiencing some spooky occurrences and were concerned about their young children. The most unusual phenomenon, they said, was found in their color snapshots. Although they had seen nothing at the time the photos were taken, each contained strange, unusually white shapes the couple could not explain (see Figures 1 and 2).

Similar pictures were taken by another couple. They had appeared with me on The Danny Show (where they presented UFO video sequences). Afterward, discovering I had written a book they praised, Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation (1994), they gave me some snapshots that puzzled them. Looking at them later I recognized a few that had similarities to the photos that the first couple had taken. A note on one indicated it had been made in Mexico and was similar to a photo in Fate magazine.

Figure 1 and Figure 2. “Ghostly” forms in photos like these made by a New York State couple are becoming common.

Naturally, the notation led me to the October 1995 issue of Fate, which featured a nationwide ghost photo contest. It was (to quote Yogi Berra) deja vu all over again! Beginning with the Grand Prize Winner’s photo (Figure 3), mysterious strandlike forms "infected” all six winning photos. Citing my book, Camera Clues, at the end, the accompanying Fate article explained how some of the ghost effects in the photos that the editors had received were due to such causes as film-processing errors, lens flares (caused by interreflection between lens surfaces), and outright hoaxes. What was left, they opined, were a few pictures that “may represent an ectoplasmic energy or kinetic energy often associated with the presence of a ghost; however, experts tell us that kinetic energy can be related to a living being as well” (Fate Ghost Contest 1995).

Figure 3. Grand Prize-winning photo featured in Fate magazine’s ghost photograph contest was made by Marilyn Bolduc, Sanford, Maine. (Published by permission.)

Yet again, the strandlike forms appear in a British photo in Jane Goldman’s The X-Files Book of the Unexplained (1995, reviewed in SI, May/June 1996). Goldman’s caption suggests the white shape is a ghost; “Or is it fogged film?” Goldman asks in a moment of doubt.

Actually it is neither. I learned the source of the ghostly phenomenon when the first young couple visited my office and, at my request, brought their camera and film for me to keep for a few days. Examination of the negatives revealed nothing remarkable, but by the next day I had the answer: the strand- or looplike form was caused by the new subcompact camera’s hand strap getting in front of the lens. Since this type of camera’s viewfinder does not see what the camera sees (as it does in a single-lens reflex type camera), the obtruded view goes unnoticed. Although such camera straps are typically black and photograph black (or dark) in normal light, their sheen enables them to brightly reflect the flash from the camera’s self-contained flash unit.

Figures 4 and 5. Experimental photographs by the author reproduce similar ghostly effects.

Some of my experimental snapshots are shown in Figures 4-6. The braiding of the strap can even be seen. When the cord is quite close to the lens, the result is softer, more mistlike. It follows that analogous effects could occur if other articles were placed before the lens — either deliberately or inadvertently. For example, flash-reflected hair, jewelry, articles of clothing, or the like could produce distinctive effects that might not be easily recognized.

It is instructive to note that in each of the cases I have related, including the six examples in Fate magazine, no one saw anything out of the ordinary but simply discovered the anomalous shapes when the photos came back from the film processors. As I point out in Camera Clues, that situation is a good indication that the paranormal phenomenon in question — ghost, UFO, or other entity — is really only some sort of photographic glitch caused by camera, film, processing, or other element. In this case, a new type of camera was the culprit in a rash of allegedly supernatural pictures.

Figure 6. Experimental photographs by the author reproduce similar ghostly effects.

References

• The Fate Ghost Contest. 1995. Fate, October, pp. 42-45.
• Goldman, Jane. 1995. The X-Files Book of the Unexplained. London: Simon & Schuster, p. 25.
• Nickell, Joe. 1994. Camera Clues: A Handbook for Photographic Investigation. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.