Category Archives: Chiropractic

While rigorous scientific research is the best way to evaluate most proposed medical treatments, there are circumstances in which scientific study can actually be quite misleading. Studies of implausible therapies using unreliable methods rife with uncontrolled bias serve only to … Continue reading →

I’ve written extensively about the use of chiropractic in animals as well as humans. The bottom line is that the underlying theory is nonsense, and at best the evidence suggests it might offer some benefit for people with back pain, though no … Continue reading →

In my previous articles about chiropractic, including a recent review of veterinary spinal manipulation for Science-Based Medicine, I have acknowledged that despite the nonsense of the theory behind chiropractic (the non-existent “vertebral subluxation”), there is at least some evidence in … Continue reading →

People are sometimes surprised to learn that all the heavy hitters of alternative medicine, such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, etc., are inflicted on animals as well as humans. I’ve written about veterinary homeopathy, and the associated manufactroversy, in a previous post, … Continue reading →

The defining characteristic of pseudoscience is an idea which sounds scientific, which claims to be scientific, but which isn’t actually based on legitimate scientific research or is theoretically inconsistent which established scientific knowledge. There can be some subjectivity in the … Continue reading →

Edzard Ernst recently commented on two Cochrane reviews involving chiropractic, which drew my attention to these reviews. I have to admit finding the results a little surprising. In general, the total body of evidence fails to support most of the … Continue reading →

A new study by Edzard Ernst and Andrew Gilbey recently appeared in the New Zealand Medical Journal surveying Internet advertising claims made by individual chiropractors and major chiropractic organizations from Canada, the U.S., New Zealand, and The U.K. They divided … Continue reading →

At last, the definitive nail in the coffin of chiropractic? Hardly. A recent study in the journal Chiropractic and Osteopathy uses an epidemiological approach to examine the question of whether the founding “lesion” of the chiropractic philosophy, the vertebral subluxation, … Continue reading →