I’ll continue the hijack by pointing out that “normal controls” are inappropriate for comparison to CFS patients. What is needed is a control group of people without CFS (of course) but who are as depressed and as sedentary as CFS patients.
It would hardly be surprising to find differences, even in gene expression, when comparing an energetic young woman who exercises regularly to a sedentary one with CFS who is depressed by the intractable nature of her “illness”.
“worrisome indicators” – Thanks, Jackmanii.
Nope. That’s out of context.
Here, let me help.
From my first post
And from my second post (in response to Askance’s understandable dubiousness that such a slight movement could be felt)
See, I said that that tiny fraction of an inch of movement feels like the bone is moving a couple of inches. Which is not the same as saying I felt the bone move a couple of inches.
Context isn’t everything- it’s the only thing.
And after sitting there for several minutes wanting to feel it move, your brain made you think it did.
There’s no way a human being could actually feel a movement of a hundredth of an inch. This has to be like ghost sightings and canals on Mars. Suggestible minds seeing, hearing and feeling what they’re told to.
And you want us to believe the testimony of your senses?
‘I felt an impossible and clearly false sensation. Therefore, the bone movement is real.’
So feeling like something moves 2 inches is not the same as feeling something actually move 2 inches? What? This makes no sense. In both cases your guage, as it were, is your sense of touch. In what other context would someone say “it felt like it moved 2 inches” but really mean “it moved a hundredth of an inch”? You would have to have independent verification of the actual movement, which you do not have.
You do realize that what all of you are saying is "personal experience (a/k/a empirical evidence) counts for nothing, give us evidence from a double blind study for something the very nature of which a double blind study is impossible.
Or, OK, we do a double blind study for a touch-based modality. One group was actually touched, the other group was told they were being touched, but actually weren’t. Compare results.
Err, yeah.
In other words, if the only available means of gathering evidence is to ask the practitioners and clients, “OK, what happened to you?” and they tell you, then you just up and say, “Nope, sorry, I don’t think that could have happened, therefore it didn’t, your mind is playing tricks on you”.
OK, now that we’ve established that what I felt with my own two hands was only my mind playing tricks on me (ditto for those who posted saying they tried CST and it worked) explain why, since I’m so suggestible, my mind wasn’t also tricking me into believing that the Polarity Therapy was doing something as well.
Or for that matter, why it didn’t trick me into believing Prozac was helping me a few years back when I was severely depressed. Or why it didn’t trick me into believing that the muscle relaxant/anti-inflammatory combo the doctor prescribed for the back pain I was suffering last year was working…
Or why the clinical hypnotist couldn’t “put me under”…
You said it felt like the bone move several inches. If any of the plates in the skull were to actually move several inches, emergency surgery would be required. Assuming, of course, that the person in question does not die on the spot. If the bone had moved several inches inward, the parts of the brain in the direct path of the bone would be lacerated, crushed, or severed. The rest of the brain would be damaged as the interior of the skull was suddenly made much smaller and pressure increased dramatically. If the bone moved several inches outward, things would be much better. Skin is elastic, but not that elastic. The bone would tear a jagged hole through the skin and connective tissue as it exited the head. If the mater is not torn, the patient’s brain should be fine. If the mater is torn, the brain will begin losing moisture and there’s a risk of infection.
Clearly, the bone you were touching did NOT move several inches. But, it felt like it did. Therefore, your tactile impression in this instance is false.
Indeed, Quo et demonstratum.
Too many variables. Suggestibility varies with mood, time of day, the amount of sleep you’ve been getting, the immediate environment, the actions and expressions of those around you etc. Some things are easier to suggest than others.
Besides the above factors, the level of skill of anybody doing anything varies wildly. It’s possible that the hypnotist you saw just sucked.
According to CST theory, one has to touch the bones at specific places to realign them, i.e. random touching on the skull shouldn’t do anything. So you could have trained CST practitioners work on one group of subjects, and untrained people randomly tap the skulls of another group. Other controls would probably be a good idea, as well – make sure the subjects have no prior experience with CST, have their face covered so they can’t see who is working on them, that sort of thing. This would be rather easy to double-blind test, actually.
I don’t think anybody was claiming you are 100 percent susceptible to suggestion, in every case.
Don’t take it personally, nobody is accusing you of being stupid or gullible. Everybody on earth is capable of feeling (or seeing or hearing) things that aren’t there.
CST is actually the only touch modality I can think of that could be tested in this way.
Here’s an interesting website with evaluations of various modalities, with a good discussion on double-blind studies and why they’re extremely difficult to do with a lot of alternative therapies. It also discusses the fact that many unproven therapies (many surgeries, physical therapy, etc.) are conventionally accepted despite the fact that there are no double blind studies proving their effectiveness.
As to the issue of my senses deceiving me because a minute movement felt like a very dramatic one- well, how many people have lived in an apartment building with a neighbor who didn’t see the fact that other people shared a wall or floor with them as a reason not to crank their uber-powerful subwoofer to eleven (or just had the owner of a car so equipped drive by the house).
Kinda feels like an earthquake…
If these therapies and surgeries are unproven, they should also be subject of double-blind studies. Until and unless they are proven to work, proffesionals should not perform them, and insurers should not cover them.
You admit “a minute movement felt like a very dramatic one.”? You admit that your senses registered a stimulus as being an order of magnitude greater than it could have possibly been, yet you still claim your senses do not deceive you?
So, you further admit that human senses cannot be relied upon to distinguish between different stimuli? If your point is ‘My senses are as reliable as everybody else’s.’, I agree with you. Human senses are unreliable in many areas, hence the need for measuring devices and double blind tests.
Your analogy is faulty. A powerful enough stereo system could indeed cause vibrations equal to those caused by a low magnitude earthquake. Remember that the Richter scale goes to 1 and below.
Chiropractic and acupuncture are two other “modalities” that come to mind that can be tested via “sham” procedures which feel like the real thing to the patient. Results can later be evaluated by physicians and patients who do not know the recipients of the “real” therapy.
It is common in the alt med field for enthusiasts to argue that their particular therapy cannot be adequately evaluated by standard research procedures - due to alleged inabilities to conduct double blind studies, individual variation etc. These typically are excuses for foregoing valid research in favor of marketing via sweeping, unsupported claims and testimonials.
As to conventional medical treatments and surgeries, some indeed have not been validated by double blind studies. In a number of cases these may not be feasible (i.e. doing double blind studies on cardiac arrest patients to see if a particular resuscitation strategy is valid), but generally there are either studies of varying types to support a treatment, or a body of close clinical observation that supports it. Some therapies have been dropped or modified due to continuing surveillance and emergence of data that refutes their effectiveness.
Contrast that state of affairs with the world of alt med - where once a treatment or drug gets publicized, it becomes part of the dogma of alternative cures forevermore. In this way you can find scores of alleged alternative treatments for cancer (on one site I counted 38 separate wonder cures. No one ever seems to question why you would need to tout 38 different cancer cures, if any given one of them is the Natural Miracle That Doctors Don’t Want You To Know About). :rolleyes:
Asbestos Mango,
I am still at a loss as to how you can distinguish between feeling a bone that moves two inches, and feeling a bone that feels like it moves two inches but really only moves one hundreth of an inch. In both cases the bone feels like it moves two inches, so I assume that your sensory impression is identical in both cases. What else are you relying on to make your diagnosis of movement?
I am at a loss as to how you can be at a loss. Seems self-explanatory to me. Even though the movement was very slight, at the moment the bone shifted, it felt quite dramatic, as if it had moved a much greater distance than it actually had. Chalk it up to surprise. At the moment it shifted (during the practical portion of the test), the instructor had wandered over and was questioning me about the technique I was using, what’s it for, etc., generally making sure I had absorbed what I had learned in class, and as I was giving my answer, pop, the frontal bone shifted.
Also, if it had moved two inches, I think that visually, things would have been very messy, what with all the blood and cerebrospinal fluid leaking out all over the place, and torn skin and a disembodied frontal bone between my fingers, and myself, the instructor, and several of my classmates all tossing our cookies…
So, let’s get this straight. Without the benefit of any external measurement, you “know” that a bone moved by exactly 1/00th of an inch. OTOH, your perception was that the bone moved 2 inches. That’s an error of 20000%. And yet, you believe it. You chalk up the error to “surprise”. And you still trust your perception.
I’m more than sceptical. YMMV.
I think you’re missing my point. Actually, I think you’re deliberately aiming wide of my point in order to find reason to discredit my experience.
I “know” that the movement was 1/100 of an inch because this is the information I was taught in class, and also learned from a video I later purchased and viewed on the subject. You know, without any external measurement, that a paramecium is a single-celled organism in much the same way- you read it in your biology textbook. Nor did I say the movement was exactly 1/100th of an inch. It may have been a few microns more or less, it may have been 1/50th. We are after all talking about an individual human body which would naturally have some variation from the ones John Upledger studied.
Also, as far as my perceptions of how large the movement was, since I never actually believed that my classmate’s frontal bone moved more than a tiny fraction of an inch, there was no 20000% error.
My point is, (I’m getting tired of repeating myself on this) was that even though the movement was very slight, it felt very dramatic.
I really don’t know why I’m even belaboring the point. I promised myself a long time ago that I wasn’t going to argue anymore with people who only read as much of my posts as it took to find something to take out of context and misrepresent what I was trying to say.
You could not possibly have actually felt any movement whatsoever, as human perception is not capable of registering such minute distances. The same would apply if you claimed to hear a sound of 44.1khz or see into the far infra-red.
We know flat-out this is not possible, so your claim to have done so means you yourself have proven your own senses are capable of fooling you. Which is no surprise as this is so for everyone.
The above applies regardless of the issue of whether there was any actual movement at all.
Actually, I highly doubt that, judging simply from your post, you seem to be bending over backwards trying to believe in CST rather than be skeptical about it.
How would this be -
Get a cadaveric skull. Draw a whole bunch of fine lines crossing the cranial sutures. Use a stylus or something so the lines are fine enough. Then do CST on the skull. You can warm it with your hands or something if you think it necessary. (Or put it on a stand and put a light bulb inside.)
But then you should be able to see if the lines you drew are no longer aligned across the sutures. Use a magnifying glass if necessary.
You can take pictures and show that the plates moved; you don’t need to expect anyone to take your word for it.
Yes?
Regards,
Shodan