When you play with pseudoscience- one day we will become one.

The UGC under the direction of PMO has said yoga should be in PT curriculum.  Some time back there was talk we are part of AYUSH (the department of fairies for medicine) and some of the PTs also thought it is good idea.

Even though I think the idea of yoga in our curriculum should have come from some right wing nut, I also blame this on us. For the last 3-4 decade we have been running bachelor course and in the last 5 years every idiot with master’s degree (which most of them got it by not stepping into the collage) is doing or finished Phd (again most of them, without doing the actual thesis).  But we have not done anything to promote our worthiness as serious people of science. We have sporadic diligent people doing good work- shut down by other – and serious research. As noted earlier our MPT went from the toughest course to pass to the easiest course to pass in less than 5 years (well you don’t even have to come to collage what more to say) and we are using the same model for Phd.

The course done outside the college- those “workshops” are just flourishing which you would think would have made us all smarter. Well hell no one idiot is teaching the whole of India to put needles, other one is selling stickers and we have my perennial favorites- NDT (the treatment which never works but it cost 4 lakhs- when taught by vellakaran and 25 thousand when taught by your neighborhood Indian therapist). Add to this we are the growing market for the junk of the medical world like osteopathy and chiropractic (which I am pretty sure is illegal to practice in India) and experts in this crap (home grown and vellakaran).

Well all this leads to a big bullshit that is PT education today.  if you have any doubt search for sticker (k-tape), NDT, chiropractic and any other bullshit which is trough at us- the answer is always same- these are outdated science, these are not science these are not legible sentence will be the answerers. We have not promoted science, we have not promoted motor control, learning etc in neurology, and we have not promoted pain science in ortho and what we are left with people selling snake oil.

The newest threat to my beloved science is introducing yoga- not just the postures which are exercise but the philosophy – including study of Bhagavat Gita, Upanishads and what not.  Well happy to have known you all folks as PTs folks in the next few years we will be treating imaginary disease with imaginary breathing power. Come to think about it we are already doing it.

Love

K. Hariohm

I have seen it in my practice

Galileo's Leaning Tower of Pisa experiment and clinical experience

One of the common arguments I encounter from PTs (probably also from patients and others) is personal experience and “i have seen it” argument.

Why is I have seen it argument flawed most of the time:

One of the common notions in Indian and eastern philosophies is the idea of “mayai” or illusion.  An illusion as we are well aware is – what you see is not the truth. I am not going in the philosophical arguments (you may read J. K if you really want to understand) but the scientific one.
I am going to use a simple example which we all learn in school

When you drop a feather (a lighter object) and a ball (heavier object) you will see the ball dropping to the ground faster than feather. The observer may conclude the heaver object falls faster than a lighter.  However anyone who has done 6^th standard physics will know the gravitational force is a is a constant- hence the above statement cannot be true.
So you end up tearing yourself- whether what I have seen is untrue or whether the physics I have read has an “alternative”.  Well the physicist does not tear themselves- they look into the flaws and the confounding factors in the observation – they just don’t say- sometimes the G force is behaving badly.

 Well the physicist do not tear themselves- they look into the flaws and the confounding factors in the observation – they just don’t say- sometimes the G force is behaving badly (for this observation)

Well when the same thing happens in clinical setting to most of us. We see our patient getting better with IFT, traction, the K-tape, SI and all the other one hundred things people are selling. But most of the time the justification for all these treatments are flawed, pseudoscience or plain ridiculous.

In medicine most of see something happening to our patient and when it is good, we look for justification. When the physiology or the science is not able to justify we fall back on the alternate ridiculous answer.

These are the top 5 ridiculous statements i like:

1.       Jane Ayres – sensory diet- can’t stop laughing even now

2.       The internal organs are all in the hand and feet- just a insult to one’s own brain

3.       K-tape will facilitate muscle action- really the brain, the psychological factors, the social factors etc is just a joke?

4.       Hands are the physiotherapists most important organ- he touched the patient and he got better- really?

5.       Last but the most ridiculous – Cranio-sacral therapy- should check with your neurologist if you think this is “therapy”

I can hear people screaming- I have seen these being done, seen patient getting better with these magic (could not get to type therapy). Remember the G force is constant – lighter objects don’t fall slower; it is just that we have not controlled the n- number of factors in our observation. That is why you need experiments- with controlling all these parameters in medicine and science in general. Don’t take the easy route in finding alternates to why it happened- rather question first did it happen?- that is did my patient get better or is it an illusion because of the “n” factors- including natural recovery, fooling your brain, fooling patients brain or just wishful thinking. Then think of explanation for what you have observed and not the “alternative one”- the real answer which is hard, cumbersome and hard to come by. Then we will call ourselves as practitioner of science we call Physiotherapy.

PS- the Galileo thought experiments and the moon experiments gives us the right answer why the feather falls down and the remove the illusion and help us see clearly

watch the hammer and feather drop experiment on the moon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_15_feather_and_hammer_drop.ogg

one of the most interesting videos

love
Hariohm