Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 18, 2001, Page 138
and even graduate courses in the techniques. In-service and CEU-approved seminars
popped up from Albuquerque to Yakima. A few hospitals established ―departments of
energy‖ with TT at their hearts. The National League for Nursing, which accredits nursing
schools, produced and sold promotional videotapes on TT. The establishmentarian
American Nursing Association had TT workshops at its national conventions. The nascent
American Holistic Nursing Association, a motley crew devoted to eclecticism in nursing,
latched onto a schismatic form of TT which called itself ―Healing Touch.‖ The North
American Nursing Diagnosis Association included ―energy-field disturbances‖ as one of their
official diagnoses, with TT as the only recognized treatment thereof. A host of popular
imitators popped up with manual ―aura‖ readings, ―hands of light,‖ channelled angels, and
similar knock-offs. Even the ghost of Blavatsky‘s contemporary, Florence Nightingale, was
academically conjured to give her blessing to the ―caring‖ aspects of the enterprise. In all,
nurses got to think of themselves as ―healers,‖ on a par with physicians. TT was a winner.
There was just one little nagging fly in the soup: TT had no basis in reality. Nursing
academics, particularly the Rogerians, had only been playing at science. Their supporting
scientific research was sparse and specious. The theoretical underpinnings were
Theosophical double-talk, ignorant of the physical sciences it evoked, though facile in term-
dropping. And Nightingale, who was actually a hard-nosed empiricist, had been slandered
historical revisionists had looked past the reasons for her enduring fame—her commitment
to hygiene and germ theory—in a search for any pontifical sanction they could find.
No one seemed to mind the Drosophila—except for a few skeptics, who would take potshots
at TT from time to time—apparently it never seemed problematical or threatening. Then,
without warning, things changed in a single day. On April 1, 1998, the prestigious Journal
of the American Medical Association (JAMA) decided to weigh in. It published a review of
the scientific literature on TT by Linda Rosa, RN, and a report on an experiment by her
daughter, Emily. It started out as a fourth-grade science-fair experiment, with 9-year-old
Emily asking fifteen TT practitioners to demonstrate their abilities. They would rest their
hands, palms up, on a table, while Emily would hold one of her hands approximately four
inches (TT healing distance) over one of theirs (randomly chosen by a flip of a coin). Each
practitioner was asked to ―sense‖ which of their hands was closest to Emily‘s there was a
cardboard barrier placed between the subject and Emily so that the subject couldn‘t see her
hands or Emily‘s. Each subject got 10 tries. Just by guessing, the average subject should
get 5 right. These TTPs averaged 4.7. A year later, another 13 trials were run, and the
average that time was 4.1. Overall, they averaged 4.4, consistent with just guessing. The
odds were only 3 in 10,000 that the TTPs would have failed the test if they could actually
feel Emily‘s energy field at least three times out every four.
Emily‘s experiment showed that TT practitioners, when put to the test, couldn‘t tell the
difference between a real person and empty air. Linda‘s literature review showed that they
never had. In a parsimonious assessment with classical scientific understatement, they
together concluded, ―These facts…suggest that TT claims are groundless and that further
use of TT by health professionals is unjustified.‖
The power of the JAMA cachet is awesome. Literally millions of people heard about TT for
the first—and only—time, and simultaneously heard it was nonsense. Krieger and her
followers tried mightily to explain away their quarter-century failure to validate their
practice, but there was little to say when JAMA reports that your PhD has just been trumped
by a sixth grader. But they tried anyway. They attacked the statistics, but JAMA‘s
reviewers had done their work and the calculations held up. They attacked the sample size,
but the number of subjects exceeded the number found in most pro-TT clinical experiments.
They actually thought Emily‘s ―energy field‖ could have been throwing off the experiment‘s
subjects, by being variously too small, too large, too healthy, too sick, or—ahem—too
pubescent. They called the experimental protocol simplistic, a mere ―parlor trick,‖ but
and even graduate courses in the techniques. In-service and CEU-approved seminars
popped up from Albuquerque to Yakima. A few hospitals established ―departments of
energy‖ with TT at their hearts. The National League for Nursing, which accredits nursing
schools, produced and sold promotional videotapes on TT. The establishmentarian
American Nursing Association had TT workshops at its national conventions. The nascent
American Holistic Nursing Association, a motley crew devoted to eclecticism in nursing,
latched onto a schismatic form of TT which called itself ―Healing Touch.‖ The North
American Nursing Diagnosis Association included ―energy-field disturbances‖ as one of their
official diagnoses, with TT as the only recognized treatment thereof. A host of popular
imitators popped up with manual ―aura‖ readings, ―hands of light,‖ channelled angels, and
similar knock-offs. Even the ghost of Blavatsky‘s contemporary, Florence Nightingale, was
academically conjured to give her blessing to the ―caring‖ aspects of the enterprise. In all,
nurses got to think of themselves as ―healers,‖ on a par with physicians. TT was a winner.
There was just one little nagging fly in the soup: TT had no basis in reality. Nursing
academics, particularly the Rogerians, had only been playing at science. Their supporting
scientific research was sparse and specious. The theoretical underpinnings were
Theosophical double-talk, ignorant of the physical sciences it evoked, though facile in term-
dropping. And Nightingale, who was actually a hard-nosed empiricist, had been slandered
historical revisionists had looked past the reasons for her enduring fame—her commitment
to hygiene and germ theory—in a search for any pontifical sanction they could find.
No one seemed to mind the Drosophila—except for a few skeptics, who would take potshots
at TT from time to time—apparently it never seemed problematical or threatening. Then,
without warning, things changed in a single day. On April 1, 1998, the prestigious Journal
of the American Medical Association (JAMA) decided to weigh in. It published a review of
the scientific literature on TT by Linda Rosa, RN, and a report on an experiment by her
daughter, Emily. It started out as a fourth-grade science-fair experiment, with 9-year-old
Emily asking fifteen TT practitioners to demonstrate their abilities. They would rest their
hands, palms up, on a table, while Emily would hold one of her hands approximately four
inches (TT healing distance) over one of theirs (randomly chosen by a flip of a coin). Each
practitioner was asked to ―sense‖ which of their hands was closest to Emily‘s there was a
cardboard barrier placed between the subject and Emily so that the subject couldn‘t see her
hands or Emily‘s. Each subject got 10 tries. Just by guessing, the average subject should
get 5 right. These TTPs averaged 4.7. A year later, another 13 trials were run, and the
average that time was 4.1. Overall, they averaged 4.4, consistent with just guessing. The
odds were only 3 in 10,000 that the TTPs would have failed the test if they could actually
feel Emily‘s energy field at least three times out every four.
Emily‘s experiment showed that TT practitioners, when put to the test, couldn‘t tell the
difference between a real person and empty air. Linda‘s literature review showed that they
never had. In a parsimonious assessment with classical scientific understatement, they
together concluded, ―These facts…suggest that TT claims are groundless and that further
use of TT by health professionals is unjustified.‖
The power of the JAMA cachet is awesome. Literally millions of people heard about TT for
the first—and only—time, and simultaneously heard it was nonsense. Krieger and her
followers tried mightily to explain away their quarter-century failure to validate their
practice, but there was little to say when JAMA reports that your PhD has just been trumped
by a sixth grader. But they tried anyway. They attacked the statistics, but JAMA‘s
reviewers had done their work and the calculations held up. They attacked the sample size,
but the number of subjects exceeded the number found in most pro-TT clinical experiments.
They actually thought Emily‘s ―energy field‖ could have been throwing off the experiment‘s
subjects, by being variously too small, too large, too healthy, too sick, or—ahem—too
pubescent. They called the experimental protocol simplistic, a mere ―parlor trick,‖ but
