Psychic Healing

In February a Colorado woman was accused of stealing nearly $300,000 from clients and ordered to serve five years in prison and to pay restitution.  According to testimony, she told her clients that she needed their cash to draw out the bad energy and needed to check their credit cards to see how frequently the number 6 appeared.  She kept the cash and used the credit cards at local department stores.  She was found guilty on 14 counts of fraud and 2 of tax evasion. 

Imagine how desperate people must be to consult a psychic healer to help them solve their problems!  Despite articles like this one, and many others besides, that show psychic healing as well as other so-called psychic abilities are unsupported by scientific theory or actual results, Americans still pursue this as an avenue of relief.  In this case they were lucky and may get some of their money back.

Is it fair to paint all psychics with the same brush, labeling them all frauds?  Perhaps not, I’m sure some sincerely believe in the abilities they claim.  Still, James Randi, magician and debunker of things psychic, has for many years offered a $1 million prize to anyone who can demonstrate true psychic powers under controlled conditions.  He has gotten few takers and no winners.  Yet police sometimes call in psychics to help solve crimes.  If they don’t, they risk being accused by victims or their families of not doing “everything possible.”

Back in 1996 a nine-year-old girl for a science project devised a method of testing the validity of therapeutic touch, an “energy medicine” which claims to promote healing and reduce pain and anxiety when therapists move their hands over a patient to manipulate his or her “energy field.”  The girl contacted 21 experienced practitioners, sat them behind a screen and asked them which of their hands was experiencing the energy field from her hand.  Their success in detecting the energy field was no better than random guessing.  Results of this experiment were written up in the Journal of the American Medical Association.  Yet the State of California awards continuing education credits to nurses who learn this technique and “an American Hospital survey conducted in 2005 noted that about 30% of 1400 responding hospitals offered [and presumably charge for] therapeutic touch.”  

What we see here are further examples of uncritical acceptance of alternative practices based on anecdotal evidence rather than scientific testing.  This seems to be the trend.  We are encouraged to be open-minded, but there is a difference between being open-minded and foolish when it comes to our health and how we spend our money in general.