SI DIGEST 10-8-98
SkeptInq@aol.com
Thu, 8 Oct 1998 13:04:41 EDT
SKEPTICAL INQUIRER ELECTRONIC DIGEST
OCTOBER 8, 1998
SI Electronic Digest is the biweekly e-mail news update of the Committee for
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are the Chances?" and includes articles on coincidence, numerology and
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This week's SI DIGEST includes:
--ABC News Special "The Power of Belief" Delights Many Skeptics
--CSICOP Continues Efforts on Campuses
--Study on Chiropractic Treatment of Low Back Pain Finds Marginal Benefit
--CFI LECTURE: Controversial "Aliens in America" Author Jody Dean Sparks
Debate
"POWER OF BELIEF" DELIGHTS MANY SKEPTICS
Tuesday, October 6, ABC NEWS ran their much anticipated John Stossel special
on belief in the paranormal. Featuring provocative visuals and snappy
soundbites, the hour-long program was a critical review of firewalking,
psychic sleuths, therapeutic touch, alternative therapy nostrums, near-death
experience, astrology and spiritual mediums.
Unlike the majority of media presentations, which in the name of "balance"
present most any claim in the wide realm of the paranormal as unsolved
mysteries, John Stossel and his production team at the Stossel Unit of ABC
News provided responsible, critical information and commentary for American
audiences.
The special featured investigator of unusual claims and CSICOP founding
fellow James Randi. One of the most illustrative segments of the program
aired clips from Randi's now famous Carlos hoax from the 1980's. With the aid
of an Australian news program, Randi trained a young Miami artist to
impersonate a medium. In the stage show and multi-city tour, Carlos and his
claims were unleashed on the rest of the Australian media. Sure enough, the
media bought into Carlos' tale with little or no background investigation or
criticism.
Viewers of the ABC NEWS program can post reviews on the Council for Media
Integrity Website at:
<A HREF="http://www.csicop.org/cmi/reviews/submit.html">
http://www.csicop.org/cmi/reviews/submit.html</A>
You can also send comments to ABC NEWS by going to:
<A HREF="http://www.abcnews.com/onair/email.html">
http://www.abcnews.com/onair/email.html</A>
CHIROPRACTIC TREATMENT OF LOW BACK PAIN HAS MARGINAL BENEFIT
Suffering from chronic low back pain, you are given three options. Spend $280
on physical therapy or chiropractic treatment or $1 on an educational pamphlet
on back pain. Now consider that the latest study published in this week's New
England Journal of Medicine (NEJM) finds that patients receiving chiropractic
treatment or a form of physical therapy called the McKenzie method experienced
just marginal improvement in back pain over those patients that only received
the educational pamphlet. Tough decision?
The back pain study was conducted by Dr. Daniel C. Cherkin and others from
the University of Washington in Seattle. Read an abstract and findings of the
study by going to:
<A HREF="http://www.nejm.org/content/1998/0339/0015/1021.asp">
http://www.nejm.org/content/1998/0339/0015/1021.asp</A>
Chiropractic medicine comes under fire from skeptics and members of the
medical community because unlike pharmaceuticals and most procedures in
scientific medicine, chiropractic methods have not undergone rigorous
scientific review and evaluation. Probably the most notable outcome of the
NEJM study on chiropractic treatment of low back pain is that scientific
research was conducted and published in a respected peer-reviewed scientific
journal.
This week's edition of NEJM also publishes a study evaluating chiropractic
treatment of childhood asthma. Chiropractors believe that some diseases,
including asthma, result from lack of proper nerve function, and can be
corrected by manipulating the spine.
Eighty children with mild to moderate symptoms were treated by 11
chiropractors and given either standard chiropractic treatments or sham
manipulations. The results found that chiropractic care was worthless in
treating asthma. While both groups of children saw slight improvement, there
was no difference between them.
In editorializing on the role of chiropractic care in medical care, Dr. Paul
G. Shekelle of West Los Angeles Veterans Affairs Medical Center writes that "I
think it is currently inappropriate to consider chiropractic as a broad-based
alternative to traditional medical care.... The challenge for chiropractors is
to demonstrate that they can achieve this benefit at a cost that patients or
health insurers are willing to bear." To read the full editorial go to:
<A HREF="http://www.nejm.org/content/1998/0339/0015/1074.asp">http://www.nejm.
org/content/1998/0339/0015/1074.asp</A>
Currently in states where chiropractic care receives mandated health
coverage, the decision on chiropractic's cost effectiveness has been reached
not on the basis of scientific evaluation but on political efforts. In
January, the New York State legislature and Governor George Pataki passed and
signed into law a requirement that state insurance carriers cover a minimum of
fifteen chiropractic visits annually per patient. The New York State Business
Council estimated that the new law has an annual price tag of $200 million, a
cost that will be borne almost entirely by municipalities and small business.
Could heavy lobbying by state chiropractors had an effect on the decision?
An analysis conducted by the Buffalo News of state political contributions
found that in late August, at the time of Governor Pataki's signing of the new
state law, New York chiropractors donated $27,500 to Pataki's campaign fund.
For critical perspectives on chiropractic, visit the web's best resource for
valid information on alternative medicine:
<A HREF="http://www.quackwatch.com/">http://www.quackwatch.com/</A> .
Also see "Chiropractic: Science and Antiscience and Pseudoscience Side by
Side" by Joseph Keating in Skeptical Inquirer, July/August 1997, pages 37-43.
You can order the article by calling 1800-634-1610.
A good text on the subject of chiropractic is _Chiropractic: A Victim's
Perspective_ published by Prometheus Books. Call 1800-421-0351.
Prometheus also publishes The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine, the
only peer-reviewed science journal in the world focused exclusively on
alternative medicine.
CSICOP CONTINUES EFFORTS ON CAMPUSES
In an effort to promote skepticism, science and critical thinking on college
campuses, over the last two weeks CSICOP visited Cornell University and the
University of Toronto. In Ithaca, as part of the Skeptical Inquirer Lecture
series at Cornell sponsored by the newly launched Cornell Skeptics, Matt
Nisbet spoke on "Skeptics Confront the X-Files: The Paranormal and the Media."
Attended by over forty students, faculty and staff, the event received
prominent coverage in the Cornell Sun daily newspaper. The Cornell Skeptics
plan to invite several speakers to campus each semester and a campus skeptics
publication is in the works.
Meanwhile, at the University of Toronto, CSICOP Senior Research Fellow and
leading paranormal investigator Joe Nickell interrupted classes on a Thursday
afternoon as he drew a large crowd to his lecture on "Investigating the
Paranormal." The event was part of preliminary efforts to start a student
skeptics group at the University of Toronto.
Last weekend, Nickell and Nisbet ventured to the Syracuse Museum of Science
and Technology as part of a presentation on "Investigating UFO Claims."
Unfortunately, once on the scene at the museum, the two were dismayed to
discover a traveling UFO exhibit that was uncritical of UFO claims ranging
from Roswell to Crop Circles. Nevertheless, Nickell led an hour-long
discussion of UFO investigations that was attended by fifty museum-goers and
covered by two local television stations.
Coming up on October 19 at Yale University, Steve Novella, founder of the New
England Skeptical Society and associate professor of medicine at Yale, will
give a lecture titled "Alternative Medicine: What Everyone Should Know!" The
talk is part of the Skeptical Inquirer Lecture series at Yale, sponsored by
the newly formed Yale Skeptics group.
And on the heels of the season premiere of Fox's The X-Files, stay tuned for
news of a "Skeptics Confront the X-Files" lecture coming to Harvard University
on Monday, November 2.
***If you would like to find out more information about starting a student
skeptics group at your university or are seeking assistance or possible
speakers, contact Matt Nisbet at SINISBET@aol.com or 716-636-1425 X219***
CFI LECTURE: AUTHOR OF "ALIENS IN AMERICA" STIRS DEBATE
On Friday, October 2, Jody Dean, author of _Aliens in America_(Cornell
University Press) lectured on the themes of her controversial new book at the
Center for Inquiry-International, Amherst, N.Y. Dean, a professor of
political science at Hobart and William Smith Colleges takes a cultural
studies and post-modernist approach to widespread infatuation with alien
abductions.
"This is a book about alien space, about following and creating links from
cultural images of the alien to tales of UFOs and abduction, computer and
communication technologies, to political passivity and conspiracy thinking in
the contemporary United States," Dean writes in her introduction. "It is an
age of aliens, an alien age when alien images and alien copies and copies of
aliens appear unpredictably and unannounced in places they shouldn't, in
places we can't understand, in multiple, contradictory, alien places."
Both Dean and her publisher have come under harsh criticism in the Times
Literary Supplement, The Nation, The New York Review of Books and The New York
Times Review of Books for exhibiting a "slacker" indifference to the veracity
of abduction claims.
In her multi-media presentation, Dean pointed to the 1987 Challenger space
shuttle crash and same year publication of books by Whitley Strieber and Budd
Hopkins as catapulting popular belief in alien abductions. Dean recognized
that alien abduction claims had existed for years, but claimed that with the
Challenger crash, Americans no longer looked to space as a vast frontier for
exploration. Instead, they looked inward. "The message to Americans was 'go
home'" observed Dean. Instead of the American collective mind reaching out and
inquiring about the vast possibilities of space--mass tension and anxiety
precipitated by the disaster brought space to America in the form of
extraterrestrials.
Alien tales grew to be group therapy, providing a release of cultural tension
over distrust of government, science and rapidly developing technology.
"During times of uncertainty and instability, people blame distinct groups"
noted Dean. "Aliens are a safe outlet for a lot of anger and fear."
Dean cited the death in the Challenger crash of New Hampshire teacher-turned-
astronaut Christy McAulliffe as significant. "Abduction stories went from the
guy out in the truck to the woman sexually molested and examined in the
bedroom."
Dean, who holds degrees from Princeton and Columbia University, first came to
be interested in popular culture and alien abductions through her pursuit of
feminist studies. She was a token skeptic at conferences where colleagues
claimed that if a woman merely said she was sexually assaulted, it had to be
accepted as true. In response, Dean would ask her colleagues if a woman
claimed she was abducted by aliens, should it also be considered automatically
true?
Despite her skepticism of feminist dogma, in questioning following her
presentation, Dean refused to weigh-in on the veracity of abduction claims.
After Dean affirmed her post-modernist assessment of a world of multiple
truths, CSICOP chair Paul Kurtz and other audience members challenged Dean to
discuss the evidence for abductions. But Dean responded that in writing
_Aliens in America_ her concern was only in explaining and describing cultural
infatuation with aliens, and it was not to assess the evidence for or against
abductions or visitation.
The Center for Inquiry--International is world headquarters to CSICOP.
Housing a 40,000 volume library, a state-of-the-art conference center as well
as editorial and business offices, the Center for Inquiry sponsors a year-
round lecture series that draws regular crowds numbering over one hundred from
across Southern Ontario and Western New York. Past lecturers have included
UFO investigator Phil Klass, anthropologist Eugenie Scott, philosopher Antony
Flew and psychologist James Alcock.
--30--