Quackery and pseudoscience have
been infiltrating academic medicine for a while, and we have covered the phenomenon before. The University of Connecticut
Health Center is another example. The Department of Surgery there is the home
of Gloria Gronowicz, who for years now have been looking into the effects of
energy healing on tumor growth and metastasis. “Let us use everything to help patients,” says Gronowicz to justify spending efforts and resources for years on funneling resources to study
the most ridiculous, medieval magic nonsense that will, of course, not help a
single patient. Energy medicine, of course, encompasses things like Reiki,
qigong and Therapeutic Touch (TT), and Gronowicz is focused primarily on the latter – basically, the idea is
that practitioners emit energy or spirit matter, which they call “biofields”, from their hands and can thereby
cure patients without even touching them. Yes, it’s magic, nothing less.
But Gronowicz has produced “results”;
she’s made posters and published articles in places like the Journal of Alternative and Complementary
Medicine (JACM) and even low-ranked “real” journals like the Journal of Orthopedic Research (the
latter one is reviewed here).
And in 2015 she produced “Therapeutic Touch Has Significant Effects on Mouse
Breast Cancer Metastasis and Immune Responses but Not Primary Tumor Size,” which managed to achieve statistically significant results on a small sample by
removing the outliers).
It’s worth noting that the latter study was funded by the Trivedi Foundation:
“The Trivedi Effect® is a natural phenomenon that is harnessed from the
universe and is capable of transforming living organisms and non-living
materials to operate at a higher level and serve a greater purpose for the
welfare of humanity.”
Diagnosis: Pseudoscientific
nonsense. Give it up Gloria, and spend your resources and energy on something
to help patients.
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