Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 18, 2001, Page 139
couldn‘t explain away its applicability to their claims for TT practice. They took aim at Emily
(and Linda) for being skeptically biased, but had to admit that all of their own experiments
were done by biased experimenters, too. They claimed JAMA broke its own rules in
publishing the work of an elementary-school student, but the scientific community agreed
with JAMA editor George Lundberg, who declared, ―Age is irrelevant it‘s the quality of the
science that matters.‖ Lundberg had gotten to the heart of the embarrassment for TT:
what Emily did was good science—of the sort that the proponents should have done
themselves right from the start back in the early 70s. Emily later concisely explained their
dilemma to a Harvard audience: ―Imagine, I was given my first big break fifteen years
before I was born!‖
Somebody had finally swatted the fly—and spattered the soup on the walls to boot. TT
never recovered. To be sure, there was a flurry of post-JAMA pro-TT publications, mostly in
nursing journals, but nothing scientifically challenged the Rosas‘ conclusion. Tellingly, all the
new papers were more of the same pre- JAMA—inadequate and expensive clinical outcome
studies in the succeeding three years, no TT proponent apparently dared a refutation-by-
attempted-replication of the experiment that took Emily less than 20 hours and ten dollars
to complete. TT is now fading into history, and Theosophy is out beating the bushes for
something else to revive its own fading fortunes.
Though it is no longer of contemporary importance, the colorful origins, atavistic philosophy,
and silly practices of TT, and especially the story of its slow rise and sudden fall in nursing
over the space of 35 years, could still make for a fascinating book. So why didn‘t
Therapeutic Touch, edited by Béla Scheiber and Carla Selby (Prometheus, 2000), try to be
that?
It is not clear what the putatively skeptical Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) had in mind when it published Therapeutic Touch. Was
it supposed to be a popular exposé, a scientific contribution to the literature, a skeptical
review, or a reference/source-book? It is certainly a failure, whichever of these, if any, was
intended.
Scheiber and Selby squander their opportunities with a puzzling mish-mash of 23 reprints
and original essays that gives no particular enlightment to the uninitiated on TT. Indeed,
someone who comes upon the book, without any prior knowledge of the subject,
doubtlessly comes away from it with a great deal of confusion about just what TT—and all
the hubbub—is about. The 31-page ―brief‖ history of TT manages simultaneously to outline
all of TT‘s precursors in plodding detail and yet misses all of the really interesting bits it‘s
uninformed, too—the part that details skeptics‘ activism is revisionist and written without
interviewing many of the real players. The only thing the editor‘s introduction describes is
the editors‘ own story of how they came to be introduced to the practice the foreword by
CSICOP‘s Ray Hyman is of more value, but that, too, is limited. There is no other editorial
assistance to help the reader through the book and its welter of reprints. There is not even
a cogent description of how TT is performed. As a consequence readers are left to float in a
gravity-less vacuum without any handholds. To make matters worse, the book‘s
organization is arbitrary and maze-like related pieces are scattered and have no rational
sequencing.
The book won‘t help the TT-initiated either: Its 360 pages add nothing at all significant to
the body of literature about TT and its skepticism is delusory. There is a report on the
―examination‖ of a single practitioner, which is worthless even as a case study the
―practitioner‖ did not even claim to do TT. There is another report, with parodic imitation of
the JAMA experiment, which claims to explain what TT practitioners really feel during their
practice, but without testing a single TT practioner (and totally missing the point of the
JAMA paper that TTers have never shown an ability to feel anything). In a surprising move,
couldn‘t explain away its applicability to their claims for TT practice. They took aim at Emily
(and Linda) for being skeptically biased, but had to admit that all of their own experiments
were done by biased experimenters, too. They claimed JAMA broke its own rules in
publishing the work of an elementary-school student, but the scientific community agreed
with JAMA editor George Lundberg, who declared, ―Age is irrelevant it‘s the quality of the
science that matters.‖ Lundberg had gotten to the heart of the embarrassment for TT:
what Emily did was good science—of the sort that the proponents should have done
themselves right from the start back in the early 70s. Emily later concisely explained their
dilemma to a Harvard audience: ―Imagine, I was given my first big break fifteen years
before I was born!‖
Somebody had finally swatted the fly—and spattered the soup on the walls to boot. TT
never recovered. To be sure, there was a flurry of post-JAMA pro-TT publications, mostly in
nursing journals, but nothing scientifically challenged the Rosas‘ conclusion. Tellingly, all the
new papers were more of the same pre- JAMA—inadequate and expensive clinical outcome
studies in the succeeding three years, no TT proponent apparently dared a refutation-by-
attempted-replication of the experiment that took Emily less than 20 hours and ten dollars
to complete. TT is now fading into history, and Theosophy is out beating the bushes for
something else to revive its own fading fortunes.
Though it is no longer of contemporary importance, the colorful origins, atavistic philosophy,
and silly practices of TT, and especially the story of its slow rise and sudden fall in nursing
over the space of 35 years, could still make for a fascinating book. So why didn‘t
Therapeutic Touch, edited by Béla Scheiber and Carla Selby (Prometheus, 2000), try to be
that?
It is not clear what the putatively skeptical Committee for the Scientific Investigation of
Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) had in mind when it published Therapeutic Touch. Was
it supposed to be a popular exposé, a scientific contribution to the literature, a skeptical
review, or a reference/source-book? It is certainly a failure, whichever of these, if any, was
intended.
Scheiber and Selby squander their opportunities with a puzzling mish-mash of 23 reprints
and original essays that gives no particular enlightment to the uninitiated on TT. Indeed,
someone who comes upon the book, without any prior knowledge of the subject,
doubtlessly comes away from it with a great deal of confusion about just what TT—and all
the hubbub—is about. The 31-page ―brief‖ history of TT manages simultaneously to outline
all of TT‘s precursors in plodding detail and yet misses all of the really interesting bits it‘s
uninformed, too—the part that details skeptics‘ activism is revisionist and written without
interviewing many of the real players. The only thing the editor‘s introduction describes is
the editors‘ own story of how they came to be introduced to the practice the foreword by
CSICOP‘s Ray Hyman is of more value, but that, too, is limited. There is no other editorial
assistance to help the reader through the book and its welter of reprints. There is not even
a cogent description of how TT is performed. As a consequence readers are left to float in a
gravity-less vacuum without any handholds. To make matters worse, the book‘s
organization is arbitrary and maze-like related pieces are scattered and have no rational
sequencing.
The book won‘t help the TT-initiated either: Its 360 pages add nothing at all significant to
the body of literature about TT and its skepticism is delusory. There is a report on the
―examination‖ of a single practitioner, which is worthless even as a case study the
―practitioner‖ did not even claim to do TT. There is another report, with parodic imitation of
the JAMA experiment, which claims to explain what TT practitioners really feel during their
practice, but without testing a single TT practioner (and totally missing the point of the
JAMA paper that TTers have never shown an ability to feel anything). In a surprising move,
