Word: tt
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...experiment by young Emily Rosa, testing whether the medical practice of therapeutic touch is effective [SCIENCE, April 13], underscores the fact that the mind and body combine to contribute to healing. TT may be total nonsense except when the patient believes in it. You can get the same effect by letting a patient pet and cuddle a puppy. The healing is real; it is caused not by waving hands or furry friends but by the power of the human spirit. Should puppies get paid $70 an hour for "therapy"? Doctors can't write a prescription for that--yet. STEVE STOVER...
Even though the experiment seemed to show that the underpinning of TT, the manipulation of human energy fields, is bunk, you said TT nonetheless "sometimes works." Certainly there are anecdotal reports of its effectiveness, just as there are reports that Elvis is still among us. But anecdote is not evidence, and there are simply no credible data to support its continued use. A. CAREY CARPENTER San Marcos, Calif...
...experiment was straightforward: 21 TT therapists stuck their hands, palms up, through a screen. Emily held her own hand over one of theirs--left or right, decided by the flip of a coin--and the practitioners had to say which hand it was. When the results were tallied, they'd done no better than they would have by simply guessing. If there was an energy field, they couldn't feel it. Emily is quick to point out that her test must be replicated before it's considered definitive. But it isn't good news for the TT community...
...TT supporters, predictably, attacked the study. Says Dolores Krieger, professor emerita of nursing at New York University, who founded TT in 1972: "It's a cute idea, but it's not valid. The way her subjects sat is foreign to TT, and our hands are moving, not stationary. You don't just walk into a room and perform--it's a whole process...
That's a pretty weak defense. A stronger one is that many patients really do say they feel better after TT treatment. Emily's experiment shows that TT does not work the way its advocates claim. But what nobody has done--neither Emily nor the die-hard skeptics who were so quick to champion her findings--is try to understand why TT does anything at all. Maybe it's just a placebo effect. Maybe the simple fact that someone is hovering over you, paying attention to you, has therapeutic value. But, if so, that's not such a bad thing...