And people routinely use them and are at least largely ignorant that the scientific basis and evidence for the practices is seriously lacking.
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Other examples are a lot of physiotherapy practices, like kinesiology take many professional athletes use, all the recovery nonsense like ice baths, IV vitamin drips. Basically wellness industry writ large has been normalized and is almost all entirely lacking evidence.
sep 10, 2025, 6:32 pm • 0 0 • view
This is one of my favorite examples because chiropractic adjustments and bodywork clearly work. We just don't know how to set up an RCT that proves they work. But RCTs are incredibly limited as sources of epistemology.
sep 10, 2025, 6:33 pm • 0 0 • view
This is news to me! What other sources of evidence shows they work?
sep 10, 2025, 6:34 pm • 0 0 • view
This is the more balanced and science informed account I’ve come across in my reading about chiropractic: www.painscience.com/articles/doe... I think you’d be hard pressed to come to the conclusion that it works but we don't know why on the basis of what it says. Open to reading other sources though
sep 10, 2025, 6:40 pm • 0 0 • view
Yeah, this is when we start to pick at what "work" means. If you can't get your arm to move into position for weeks, and your physical therapist does some pseudoscience on you, and all of a sudden you're back at top performance, did their adjustment work?
sep 10, 2025, 6:38 pm • 0 0 • view
Many issues end up resolving absent treatment, that’s the natural progression of many health problems. But we seek treatment and then think because our condition improved, the treatment must have fixed us.
sep 10, 2025, 6:41 pm • 0 0 • view