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Aura Testing

dann

Penultimate Amazing
D
Joined
Feb 2, 2004
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A few years ago I read about a young girl who won some kind of prize for having devised a simple way of testing healers or aura readers. They simply had to put their hands through a hole in a partition and decide if there was a hand on the other side.
Can somebody provide me with a link to an article about this?
 
It was Emily Rosa, and she tested therapeutic touch.

Her mother is a member of the Questionable Nurse Practices Task Force of the National Council Against Health Fraud Inc. Needless to say not hip to therapeutic touch.

There are some critiques of Rosa's experiment that have been published.
 
In the spirit of skepticism, let's examine those. Please present the arguments. What do you think?

What I believe is not relevant to what is in the criticism that was not authored by me, information about which can easily be found on PubMed by searching for

Emily Rosa therapeutic touch
 
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T'ai Chi said:
What I believe is not relevant to what is in the criticism that was not authored by me, information about which can easily be found on PubMed by searching for

Emily Rosa therapeutic touch
Click to expand...
I searched PubMed and all I found was the abstract to a paper that was supposed to reanalyize the data from Emily's experiment. Maybe I am not doing it right.

In the interest of not sending people all over the internet just to have a simple discussion about therapeutic touch, here is a url to a list of criticisms:

quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/ttresponse.html
(Sorry, I am not allowed to post links since I haven't made 15 posts yet.:mad:)

The only one of those 10 that I see having any merit is that the experiment wasn't double blinded. Emily's mother was certainly opinionated about this, and as such probably gave her daughter a bias against TT. This bias could have affected her results. However, I think even if she did have a large bias, they should have gotten atleast a LITTLE bit better than guessing, say 55% correct. They didn't even come up with 50%, which was what was expected by guessing. Overall, I think this is a solid experiment that provides strong evidence that TT is bunk.
 
HappyCat said:
Overall, I think this is a solid experiment that provides strong evidence that TT is bunk.
Click to expand...

I too think it is, overall, a pretty good test, but one that has some very good criticisms in the literature.
 
T'ai Chi said:
In the spirit of skepticism, let's examine those. Please present the arguments. What do you think?

What I believe is not relevant to what is in the criticism that was not authored by me, information about which can easily be found on PubMed by searching for

Emily Rosa therapeutic touch
Click to expand...

Searches do not constitute evidence.

What are the arguments?

You do know them, don't you?
 
If you know them, why not share them? Why this need for secrecy?

You do know them, don't you?

Instead of focusing on me, get a hold of the article you've been informed of.
 
T'ai Chi said:
Instead of focusing on me, get a hold of the article you've been informed of.
Click to expand...

I'm not focusing on you. I'm focusing on your claim that there are "very good criticisms".

T'ai Chi said:
What I believe is not relevant to what is in the criticism that was not authored by me, information about which can easily be found on PubMed by searching for

Emily Rosa therapeutic touch
Click to expand...

Searching for "Emily Rosa therapeutic touch" PubMed shows up nothing. "Rosa therapeutic touch" however yields two hits:

Altern Ther Health Med. 2003 Jan-Feb;9(1):38-9. Related Articles, Links

Therapeutic touch at the crossroads: observations on the Rosa study.

Dossey L.
Click to expand...

Altern Ther Health Med. 2003 Jan-Feb;9(1):58-64. Related Articles, Links

A nurse-statistician reanalyzes data from the Rosa therapeutic touch study.

Cox T.

Virginia Commonwealth University School of Nursing, Richmond, USA.

This article presents a reanalysis of data used to support the work of Emily Rosa's Therapeutic Touch (TT) science fair project published as an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in 1998. The purpose of this article is to take a closer look at the assumptions, data, statistical procedures, and conclusions of the JAMA article. This is accomplished by focusing on (1) the conclusion that there was no overall effect of TT, (2) the conclusion that TT practitioners did not perform better depending on which hand was used, and (3) the assumptions about the capability of Rosa's experiment to validate an existing skill. Reanalysis of the Rosa data suggests contradictions to the authors' conclusions. Based on this reanalysis, the authors' recommendations against the use of TT can and should be challenged because of inappropriate design and analysis as well as incorrect statistical assumptions and conclusions.
Click to expand...

That's it. The only one who mentions that there are criticisms is Cox, but he doesn't say what they are.

What are Cox' criticisms? Can you list a few of them?
 

PubMed shows up nothing. "Rosa therapeutic touch" however yields two hits:


Congrats.

Now you have to get a hold of the articles and read them.

I suggest trying your local library first.
 
T'ai Chi said:

PubMed shows up nothing. "Rosa therapeutic touch" however yields two hits:


Congrats.

Now you have to get a hold of the articles and read them.

I suggest trying your local library first.
Click to expand...
It was your claim, you should back it up or withdraw it.
 
RichardR said:
It was your claim, you should back it up or withdraw it.
Click to expand...

Feel free to please show me what claim you are referring to.

The "claim" of

"There are some critiques of Rosa's experiment that have been published." ?

(which he did end up finding).

I just claimed existence, which was already shown.
 
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There are also critiques available of Darwin, Einstein, and anyone else you might wish to name. That there are critiques available is usually so universal a trait that it is not worth mentioning.

But you do mention it. Can you not see that your reader might infer that you believe these particular critiques hold some special merit? Isn't it perfectly expected that you would be asked about these critiques, given what is (tacitly, admittedly) apparently your support of them?

I have read quite a few critiques of Rosa's work. I have also read responses to those critiques. I have a thick folder on it at my office. I'd be happy to discuss any critique you are familiar with.

Dann--it is my informed opinion (and since you don't know me from anyone else, you can give my opinion the appropriate lack of weight) that Rosa's experiment was perfectly adequate to test her hypothesis. It was not double-blind, no. There are other possible sources of bias, too; I am sure T'ai Chi will be happy to explore those. But for the question Emily was asking, the test was more than adequate. In my opinion, the critiques are much more sour grapes than science. If the critics put the effort into designing an experiment that they do in trying to discredit one after the fact, they would be better off.
 
T'ai Chi said:
Feel free to please show me what claim you are referring to.

The "claim" of

"There are some critiques of Rosa's experiment that have been published." ?

(which he did end up finding).

I just claimed existence, which was already shown.
Click to expand...

The same old semantic games. You're still 100% the same troll you always were. As I said to one of your earlier incarnations:[FONT=&quot]

bugs1.gif


[/FONT] (Chews carrot.) What a maroon.

...bye
 
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