Like Rip Van Winkle, I must have awoken from a deep sleep and still am not getting things. They tell me this is the Information Age, yet in several forums that are supposedly at a high, evidence-based level, I am finding more misinformation than ever. At the height of the fishing season, some would say I have been blessed with good luck with the proliferation of whoppers I have seen - only these ones are in print.
Let me start at the beginning. Two coauthors and I have just finished a lengthy and detailed rebuttal of a boatload of distortions that have been printed in several scientific journals by Edzard Ernst, who directs a program of Alternative Medicine at the University of Exeter, in the United Kingdom. The misrepresentations were numerous and clearly detrimental to the practice of chiropractic as we know it,1 raising the bizarre, but oft-quoted specter of the fox guarding the chickens. Rather than rehash the article, I want to share with you several choice tidbits that Ernst offered in rebuttal to justify his transgressions. In reality, they will impress you as being outrageously self-incriminating, if not downright ludicrous. With each falsehood building upon its predecessor, you will find an intriguing resemblance to the growth of Pinocchio's nose:
"Take any review paper...[mine, Morley's, or one chosen at random], tear it to pieces, and you will probably find some minor inaccuracies."The authors repeatedly accuse me of shortening quotes. It is the nature of a quote that it does not include the full text.
"The authors claim that the advertisement cited in my paper is not representative of typical chiropractic practice. I did not state that it was, nor do I know of any advertising that can be representative of anything - it is simply not the nature of advertisements to be representative.
"Morley, et al., accuse me of omitting from my sentence the citation 'fortunately this practice is in decline.'
"Had I quoted this, Morley, et al., might have accused me of citing unsubstantiated claims, because no hard evidence was supplied in support of this statement.
"Morley and colleagues are surprised that the error regarding the dose of x-rays has 'escaped the detection during peer review.' If my memory serves me correctly, it was actually included through peer-review.
"One review asked me to insert it; my first submission did not contain any dose calculation at all.
"To put it bluntly: I have nothing whatsoever against chiropractic or any other profession, but it is my task to establish the safety of complementary therapies.
"When reading all this, I had an uncomfortable feeling that Morley, et al., uses ad hominum arguments...to distract from the real."2
"Judging from the language used by these authors, I get the impression that their motives might not be entirely rational."3
"Neither of these studies reports a single case of serious, more permanent injury. This might suggest that such events are rare. Applying the 'rule of three' to the collective figures of the investigations cited above [~7400 treatments without a single serious adverse event] one can estimate that we can be 95-percent confident that the worst incidence of serious adverse effects is three per 7400, or one in 2500."4
Elsewhere, Ernst suggests that adverse events are really in fact underreported:
"One could, however, also postulate that, even if serious adverse events had occurred in this series of investigations, they might have been missed. Only patients who returned for treatment were asked about adverse reactions after the previous intervention. Patients who did not return were not recorded, yet they might have been those suffering from serious complications."4
Geez; and here I thought that people who ran into trouble like this would only be too anxious to share it with its presumed perpetrator. Kids, can you spell "attorney?"
Hold on, it gets better. Here's another whopper:
"Three of these cases [1.3% of all AEs (adverse events) reported] led to bone fractures, and two to neurological damage, such as spinal cord transaction."5
Unfortunately, to paraphrase what is said in so many science fiction movies - Ernst is "not alone." The legendary Canoe website, full of attacks on chiropractic health care, which I find practically unreadable, contains such nuggets as these:
"The results of the Stroke journal study are close to the conclusions of a 1996 Danish study of stroke after spinal manipulation. That study, which examined Danish data from 1978 to 1988, found that one in every 120,000 neck manipulations resulted in stroke."6
And finally:
"A 1999 RAND Corporation study of cervical manipulation concluded that only 11 percent of all cervical manipulations were appropriate and found little evidence of benefit."8
With this proliferation of whoppers, you can see how this particular column has essentially written itself. As your loyal scribe, I have obviously set my receiver for chiropractic research - and yet a lot of what I hear is static - or is that "jamming," in response to the gratifyingly increasing volume of high-quality research pertaining to chiropractic health care? Put in other terms, I am going through a period of severe cognitive dissonance when it comes to objective reporting of scientific information in certain journals.
References
When sports chiropractors first appeared at the Olympic Games in the 1980s, it was alongside individual athletes who had experienced the benefits of chiropractic care in their training and recovery processes at home. Fast forward to Paris 2024, where chiropractic care was available in the polyclinic for all athletes, and the attitude has now evolved to recognize that “every athlete deserves access to sports chiropractic."
It is estimated that 61% of patients with CTS avoid taking surgical options due to postoperative complications and costly surgical procedures. Chiropractic care offers a comprehensive and effective treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome, addressing the condition from multiple angles. Recent studies also have unveiled a game-changing adjunct to chiropractic treatments for CTS: nerve flossing.
Some doctors thrive in a personality-based clinic and have a loyal following no matter what services or equipment they offer, but for most chiropractic offices who are trying to grow and expand, new equipment purchases help us stay relevant and continue to service our client base in the best, most up-to-date manner possible. So, regarding equipment purchasing: should you lease, get a bank loan, or pay cash?
