Mayo Clinic is a prestigious medical institution with a well-deserved international reputation. It also promotes rank pseudoscience.
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I have seen firsthand how one or a few true believers can promote so-called alternative medicine in a facility with little resistance from colleagues and administrators who “shrug their shoulders.” They do not really understand this phenomenon and are content to leave the initiative to the “experts”.
In this case, an article was published on the Mayo Clinic website promoting the pseudoscientific practice of Reiki. Like me and others, [Science Based Medicine, or] SBM As we have discussed many times before, Reiki is an Asian faith form of healing and laying on of hands. It claims to manipulate the invisible energy field that surrounds living things. Proponents often make vague claims about “healing” and “health,” and that the practice reduces stress and symptoms.
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Reiki is a microcosm of this entire struggle. Here, there were practices that were not based on basic science. It is based on magic and faith healing. Proponents have not established the basic claim that life energy exists, has some connection to health, disease, or symptoms, and can be manipulated by practitioners. Instead, they study subjective outcomes in small, poorly designed studies, the kinds of studies designed to produce false-positive results.
This is an excerpt.Read the full article here
