I've read with amusement, in the recent digests of this list, the tangle
that list subscribers have gotten into in trying to define a "test" of
Therapeutic Touch or of its practice by real people.

I have been involved with TT for almost 8 years now and have more than a
passing familiarity with it.  About 3-1/2 years ago, my stepdaughter
watched a video of Dolores Krieger and other TTPs at work, and asked a
simple question, "I wonder if they can really do that?"  Afterwards, she
came up with a simple, yet unquestionably scientifically sound, test of
ability and proceeded to administer it to 21 TTPs.  The results gave her an
answer to her original question:  "In a word, no."

When we published Emily's experiments in JAMA, along with some analysis of
TT literature, we generalized Emily's question and answer to the following
carefully worded (and quite conservative) conclusion:  "To our knowledge,
no other objective, quantitative study involving more than a few TT
practitioners has been published, and no well-designed study demonstrates
any health benefit from TT.  These facts, together with our experimental
findings, suggest that TT claims are groundless and that further use of TT
by health professionals is unjustified."

After more than 15 months of controversy, a couple round of letters in JAMA
(the latest a couple of weeks ago), and despite several ex cathedra
pronouncements by Delores Krieger et al., our conclusion has held up.  TT
claims remain groundless.  The use of TT by health professionals remains
unjustified.  Krieger and other TT apologists can blather all they want
about the alleged "parlor-game" inadequacies of Emily's protocol, but at
the moment it, and the conclusion derived in part from it, stands unrefuted
in the literature.  They will remain so until someone can produce
persuasive evidence that supports the practice of TT as a "unique and
efficacious modality".

Nothing else will do.  Elmer Green's fallacious (and inconclusive)
"copper-wall" experiments aren't going to do it.  Innumerable testimonies
of TTPs or their "patients" aren't going to do it, either.  Rudolf
Steiner-like ravings against the evils of reductionism, materialism, and
determinism aren't going to make TT any more plausible.  Pretending that TT
is too noble an undertaking to muck after Randi's million bucks definitely
doesn't wash.  The health-consuming public now has a fixed image of TT as
nurse quackery.  We are seeing signs that TT is withering on the vine, and
it is simply because its practitioners do not even attempt to refute the
simple challenge posed to them by a nine- (now twelve-) year-old child.
They are showing themselves up as being close-minded to evidence, objective
reality, and the scientific method.

The problem with the suggestions for testing made in recent threads on this
list is that they've obviously been made by TT proponents who are hedging
their bets.  In science you can't do that.  You have to go for broke and
let reality tell you that you're wrong when you are.  That usually means
conducting a scientific experiment on a falsifiable hypothesis.  And that
means that if you believe x causes y, you come up with an experimental
condition where x MUST cause y, then find out if it does.  If it doesn't,
you're wrong.  Real scientists think this way all the time.  Emily thought
this way at age 9.

THAT'S the kind of test you all on this list should be trying to come up
with.  So let me cut to the quick.  I have a challenge to put out to anyone
on this list (or anywhere else) who thinks TT is a unique and efficacious
modality, and who is open-minded to evidence, objective reality, and the
scientific method:

Please publicly state, in clear and unambiguous terms, ANY objectively
observable evidence which would convince you that Therapeutic Touch is NOT
a real phenomenon, or that it can NOT be practiced by living human beings.
Then you, I, Emily, mutually acceptable outside scientists, and perhaps
even James Randi, within the limits of our financial resources, will
devise, conduct, and objectively report the results of an experiment to
obtain such evidence.  If we obtain the experimental evidence sought, you
will then be on public record that TT is not real or cannot be practiced,
as the case may be.  Meanwhile, the significance of any inability on our
part to obtain such experimental evidence depends upon the nature of the
evidence that you yourself have posited; whether our inability qualifies
for you to get Randi's million depends upon a prior, separate agreement
with Randi.

Any takers?  Or do we get bragging rights that no one is confident enough
in their beliefs about the reality of TT or its practice to put it to the
test, or alternatively are not so open-minded that they can think of
anything that can change their minds?

Ball's in your court.

Larry Sarner
Chairman, National Therapeutic Touch Study Group
nttsg@ezlink.com

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