Media

The Difference Between Scientific Evidence And The Scientific Method

By John Wiens DC|April 23, 2012|Legal Issues|

Scientists, even those in the “hard” sciences that are based primarily on empirical observations and mathematical analysis, have their own dogmas, prejudices, incentives, and conventions. That’s of course not to say that science is bad or wrong or useless — the only reason you can read this on your computers is because thousands of scientists over the years came to exactly the right conclusions about electricity, metallurgy, chemistry, mathematics, quantum theory, and information theory — but just to admit the obvious, which is that scientists are people and science happens under many of the same constraints as every other social endeavor. As much as we’d like to trust scientists as objective experts whose assertions should be accepted ipse dixit (a phrase that dates back to Pythagorus and is today routinely used by lawyers trying to discredit their opponent’s expert), the truth is that courts shouldn’t be afraid to look at scientists as people and evaluate them accordingly.

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Chiropractic on NPR Radio

By John Wiens DC|February 28, 2010|Media|

From WNYC (radio) the Leonard Lopate Show on Feb 19th was about chiropractic. Leonard interviews Christine Goertz, D.C., Ph.D, Vice Chancellor for Research and Health Policy at Palmer College of Chiropractic in Davenport, Iowa, and James N. Dillard, M.D., D.C., C.Ac. who used to run Columbia Med School’s CAM clinic.

RADIOTIME LINK

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Fake Conferences Alert!! Beware of E-mail Invitations

By stevev|November 25, 2009|Fraud, Legal Issues, News|

The newest type of internet scam is looking like ID theft attempts. The imagination of these jokers is getting rather sophisticated. The authors of The Scientist Blog have reported two of them just in the last 4 months!! The first was on Aug, 19th 2009. It had reported;

A month or two ago, David Iovannisci, a geneticist studying heart disease at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California, received an email invitation to speak at the “1st International Cardiology Conngress” in Shanghai, to be held on 5-7 December of this year. The email, signed by Alex Li, provided a (now defunct) link to the conference program at www.internationalcardiologycongress.com, which listed several speakers from well-known institutions, both in the US and abroad.

The second, posted just yesterday, Nov 24th 2009, asks the question, “Are phony academic conferences the new Nigerian princes of the internet?” Well they just might be, only time will tell. The post goes on to say;

Last week, I received an email from someone going by the name of Alyssa Logan, who claimed to be “Youth Leader” at a group called the Action World International Organization (AWIO) and a member of the International Committee of the Red Cross. In the message, Logan invited me to the “Seventh Annual International Global combine Conference on Global Economy and Human Welfare” that AWIO was hosting.

To read more on these scam reports you will need to register for a free account on The Scientist Blog’s website. They will not end up sending you out a bunch of spam email, only email alerts that you decide you wish to see. So don’t let the fear of that prevent you from using this excellent resource. The two posts can be accessed directly below.

Another fake conference?
[24th November 2009]

Conference kerfuffle hits scientists
[19th August 2009]

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2 and 2 is? [Humor Alert!]

By Frank M. Painter|September 22, 2009|Education, Health Care, Media, News, Politics, Safety|

2 and 2 is? [Humor Alert!]

The Chiro.Org Blog

The news media has been having a LOT of fun reporting on the Congressional Health Care Overhaul lately, so I will too.

Chiropractic’s *scientific critics* state we don’t have the kind of statistics they (grin) rely on, so we shouldn’t toot our own horn like they do. Hmmm? Well, let’s take a closer look at them. Here’s some amazing scientific statistics about modern medicine:

1. The total number of iatrogenic deaths caused by conventional medicine is an astounding 783,936 deaths per year at a cost of $282 billion dollars. That is a mind-boggling 2147 people killed every day. That’s as if 7 jumbo jet planes crashed every day. That’s a 9-11 incident, happening every other day…FOREVER. God help us all. [1]

2. A report by the British Medical Journal correlated a strike by medical doctors with lower death rates during the strike. Hmmm?

3. Recent surveys suggest that “45% Of Doctors (MDs) Would Consider Quitting If Congress Passes Health Care Overhaul.” [3]

So, if we put that all those facts together, supporting Congress’s new Health Care Plan could reduce the medical population by up to 45%, thus significantly reducing the incidence of medically-induced iatrogenic illness and death, and all the money they would save ($126.9 billion dollars) would help to pay for the new Plan.

And, perhaps with some of those savings, they could even consider adding conservative chiropractic care as another cost-saving option. [4, 5]

REFERENCES

1. http://www.chiro.org/LINKS/FULL/Death_By_Medicine.html

2. http://tinyurl.com/lzdq7a

3. http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=506199

4. http://www.chiro.org/LINKS/Cost_Effectiveness.shtml

5. http://www.chiro.org/LINKS/Safety.shtml

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Sept. 18, 1895: Is There a Chiropractor in the House?

By John Wiens DC|September 18, 2009|Media|

An interesting perspective from Wired
This Week In Tech
Events that Shaped the Wired World
by Tony Long

September 18th, 1895: The first chiropractic adjustment is performed, and a new field of medicine is born, along with a healthy number of skeptics.

It was the age of the talented dilettante, and the world’s first chiropractor certainly qualified on that score. Daniel David Palmer, variously a beekeeper, school teacher and grocery store owner, dabbled in magnetic healing and mysticism on the side, while perusing the medical journals to keep abreast of developments in physiology. He began practicing magnetic healing during the 1880s, while living in Davenport, Iowa, but his big break came in 1895, when a deaf janitor with a back problem happily came his way.

Upon examination, Palmer located a lump in Harvey Lillard’s back. Palmer had already advanced the theory that spinal abnormalities caused most, if not all, diseases and conditions by virtue of disrupting normal nerve flow. When he performed an adjustment on Lillard, which involved the manual manipulation of the spine and surrounding joints, the man’s deafness vanished. Palmer knew he was onto something big.

Buoyed by this success, he founded the Palmer School of Chiropractic in 1897, which, by 1902, had unleashed 15 chiropractors on an unsuspecting world. The state of Iowa, meanwhile, was tightening up its laws regarding the practice of medicine without a license, and in 1906 Palmer took the fall.

Rather than pay a fine he elected to go to jail, but after 17 days of that, Palmer changed his mind and coughed up the dough. He then sold the school to his son, B.J., and lit out for the West Coast.

He established chiropractic schools in California and Oregon, as well as in Oklahoma.

Traditional medical practitioners tended to dismiss Palmer’s discipline. In a sense you couldn’t blame them, given Palmer’s sketchy past, his penchant for self-promotion and his habit of trumpeting chiropractic with a fervor approaching religious proselytizing. He also didn’t lack for brass. Here he is in a letter dated May 1911:

[W]e must have a religious head, one who is the founder, as did Christ, Mohammed, Jo[seph] Smith, Mrs. Eddy, Martin Luther and others who have founded religions. I am the fountain head. I am the founder of chiropractic in its science, in its art, in its philosophy and in its religious phase.

He also claimed to have answered the question, what is life?

It’s not hard to see why the more-staid docs wouldn’t be lining up to buy this guy drinks at the annual convention.

Palmer died in 1913, of typhoid fever. But chiropractic lived on and gradually shed most of its mystical, quasi-religious characteristics for a more holistic, yet science-based, philosophy. It remains, however, out on the fringe, and its effectiveness continues to be debated. Whatever chiropractic can or can’t do regarding the healing of disease, with an able chiropractor in charge spinal manipulation does appear effective in easing some forms of chronic back pain.

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Class Action Suit Filed in NJ US District Court

By stevev|August 1, 2009|Legal Action, Legal Issues, Media|

A class action suit was filed July 29, 2009 in U.S. District Court, District of New Jersey by Buttaci & Leardi, LLC and the renowned class action law firm of Pomerantz Haudek Grossman & Gross LLP. These firms have been retained by the Association of New Jersey Chiropractors (ANJC) on behalf of it’s membership, chiropractors and other health care providers. The suit alleges that Aetna’s post-payment audit process is violative of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (‘ERISA’). It further alleges that Aetna’s post-payment audit process and its pre-payment claim review process violate the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (‘RICO’) and calls into question the retroactive application of Aetna’s clinical policy bulletins in order to deny provided services previously paid under their claims. These clinical policy bulletins are being used as the basis for demanding refunds of payments for services rendered, and previously determined as payable, as experimental and/or unproven to be clinically effective.

Further information about the suit (case # 3:09-CV-03761-JAP-TJB) can be found through the following links;

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