The plot thickens

It’s late already, and I don’t have time to get into this as much as I’d like, but that just means you’ll have to read what smarter, better-informed people than me have written about it instead.

I’d never heard of the McTimoney Chiropractic Association before today, but you can guess their general purpose from the name. And, in fact, that might be about the best you can do, because their own website seems to have more or less vanished. A leaked message sent out to the members of their organisation explains why they’ve taken it down, and advises them to do the same, and urgently remove all kinds of potentially actionable information, by expunging it completely from the interwebs. So, good luck with that.

I’m not sure what’s prompted this sudden panic, but I imagine it’s at least partially related to the BCA’s recent lawsuit against Simon Singh, which has been doing much to boost the level of attention being paid to chiropractic therapy lately, and may have led some people to start wondering just how legally justifiable some of the medical claims being made for it really are.

The target of the campaigners is now any claims for treatment that cannot be substantiated with chiropractic research.

Use of words like “target” make it sound like they think they’re the subject of some sort of conspiracy against them, but criticising claims for treatment unsubstantiated by evidence is something that goes on constantly in every area of conventional medicine. And a bloody good thing too, if we want to have a clue what works and isn’t dangerous. This is why we’re not blood-letting everyone with the sniffles anymore. Why haven’t you been targeting claims that “cannot be substantiated” within your own discipline? Shouldn’t you being trying to make sure you’re also only doing what works and isn’t dangerous? (Note that there’s no advice about changing their practices, only the claims they make on their websites.)

And if you think this characterisation as whiny conspiracy theorist victims is unfair, the letter used the phrase “a witch hunt against chiropractors” in the previous sentence. Dude. The chiropractors are the ones suing the guy.

I particularly like this piece of advice:

Be wary of ‘mystery shopper’ phone calls and ‘drop ins’ to your practice, especially if they start asking about your care of children, or whiplash, or your evidence base for practice.

Yeah, because if you inadvertently say something true and it gets out, you might be in real trouble. Doesn’t this really look like metaphorically shredding the incriminating documents?

Well, now it’s even later, a condition which definitely calls for more tea, then bed. But you can read those other, better analyses I promised at:

gimpy’s blog
The Quackometer
The Lay Scientist
DC’s Improbable Science
jdc325’s Weblog
Pharyngula
Bad Astronomy