Energy medicine
[22] In the early 20th century, health claims for radio-active materials put lives at risk;[23] recently, quantum mechanics and grand unification theory have provided similar opportunities for commercial exploitation.
[14] They have also proposed that healers act as a channel passing on a kind of bioelectromagnetism which shares similarities to vitalistic pseudosciences such as orgone or qi.
[15][16] Writing in the Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, James Oschman[38] introduced the concept of healer-sourced electromagnetic fields which change in frequency.
Oschman believes that "healing energy" derives from electromagnetic frequencies generated by a medical device, projected from the hands of the healer, or by electrons acting as antioxidants.
[39] Beverly Rubik, in an article in the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, justified her belief with references to biophysical systems theory, bioelectromagnetics, and chaos theory that provide her with a "...scientific foundation for the biofield..."[40] Drew Leder remarked in a paper in the same journal that such ideas were attempts to "make sense of, interpret, and explore 'psi' and distant healing."
"[41] Physicists and sceptics criticise these explanations as pseudophysics – a branch of pseudoscience which explains magical thinking by using irrelevant jargon from modern physics to exploit scientific illiteracy and to impress the unsophisticated.
[32] A systematic review of 23 trials of distant healing published in 2000 did not draw definitive conclusions because of the methodological limitations among the studies.
[42] In 2001 the lead author of that study, Edzard Ernst, published a primer on complementary therapies in cancer care in which he explained that though "about half of these trials suggested that healing is effective", the evidence was "highly conflicting" and that "methodological shortcomings prevented firm conclusions."
[8] A 2003 review by Ernst updating previous work concluded that the weight of evidence had shifted against the use of distant healing, and that it can be associated with adverse effects.
[8] A systematic review in 2008 concluded that the evidence for a specific effect of spiritual healing on relieving neuropathic or neuralgic pain was not convincing.
[11] In their 2008 book Trick or Treatment, Simon Singh and Edzard Ernst concluded that "spiritual healing is biologically implausible and its effects rely on a placebo response.
At best it may offer comfort; at worst it can result in charlatans taking money from patients with serious conditions who require urgent conventional medicine.
He concluded that "[s]piritual healing continues to be promoted despite the absence of biological plausibility or convincing clinical evidence ... that these methods work therapeutically and plenty to demonstrate that they do not.
"[59] Proven cases of online fraud have occurred,[60] with a practitioner making false claims that he had the ability to cure cancer, and that his clients did not need to follow the chemotherapy or surgery recommended by medical doctors, which can be life-saving.
Ben Goldacre ridiculed the BBC when it reported as fact a clinic's claim that the treatment had the ability to stop 70% of clients smoking, a better result than any conventional therapy.
[55] There are several, primarily psychological, explanations for positive reports after energy therapy, including placebo effects, spontaneous remission, and cognitive dissonance.
The report concluded that "[p]sychologists and researchers should be wary of using such techniques, and make efforts to inform the public about the ill effects of therapies that advertise miraculous claims.
