An integrative health journal has retracted a 2019 paper two months after issuing an expression of concern about the article distancing itself from the work.
The paper, which appeared in Global Advances in Health and Medicine, was a review of “energy medicine” by Christina Ross, of Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C.
As we reported in March, Ross told us that a reader in England complained to the journal for her suggestion in the paper:
that human biology has a biofield. He also said strange things like “quantum mechanics only works on the subatomic level” and “there is no direct relationship between energy and matter”. These sound like the ramblings of someone stuck in 1930’s theories of physics and refused to believe Einstein and Neils Bohr’s theories.
For more on the critique, check out this post by Les Rose, on a blog hosted by Edzard Ernst, a physician in England. As Rose details, he and Ernst had been pushing the journal to retract the paper. (Rose also wrote a scathing post about it on his own blog.) Among the pair’s questions for the editors was whether a physicist had reviewed the manuscript — a question to which they never received an answer.
We raised eyebrows at the expression of concern when we saw it, noting that GAHM has published several other papers on the human biofield, like this one and this one. It’s hard to argue that it was somehow blindsided by Ross’ article.
Still, it’s also hard to argue with Rose and Ernst, among others, when they say that the paper did not deserve to be published in a scientific journal.
Here’s the retraction notice, the last part of which sounds a bit like a bus being driven by a law firm:
This article has been retracted after several concerns that were brought to the attention of the Editors. To evaluate the concerns that were raised, the Editors arranged for three additional independent peer reviews of the article. These reviewers identified the following concerns:
Numerous statements in the article were not supported by references, or else were supported by references that were not from peer-supported sources.
The conclusions stated in the article were not based on peer-reviewed literature.
After careful consideration of the identified concerns and determination that the article’s findings were insufficiently supported and therefore unreliable, the Editors have determined that retraction is necessary.
The journal apologizes to the author and to readers that these concerns were not identified prior to publication. Further, the Editors wish to clearly state for the record that this retraction is based solely on the article’s content and honest error. At no time were the actions of the author in preparing the article called into question or under review.
To its credit, the journal does nod to the fact that it bears some — and perhaps all — of the blame here. But that’s little consolation to Ross, who in comments last week stood by the validity of her article and expressed frustration with the journal’s failure to apply its own standards from the beginning:
they said that a book reference and an article reference in the paper were not peer reviewed so they retracted it. They did not say the retraction was due to the science which was first questioned. According to the editors of Global Advances in Health and Medicine (GAHM), the SAGE publishing guidelines they publish under require all references cited to be peer reviewed. In my opinion if that was a hard line criteria they should have caught it before they published it. That retraction has not stopped people from downloading it (as of this week it has been downloaded close to 1500 times). People are still emailing me and telling me how much they appreciate the article. Schools are using it as required reading.
As far as my experience with this journal I was hesitant to submit either paper I have published in GAHM because I had a feeling their review team would have difficulty reviewing highly technical material. In fact one reviewer on the other paper we published in GAHM titled Evaluation of Cytotoxic and Genotoxic Effects of Extremely Low-frequency on Mesenchymal Stromal Cells questioned the expertise of one of the authors, Mark Pettenati, who runs the medical genetics department at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center, who stated there were no genotoxic effects.
Needless to say I will NEVER submit another article to that journal, but will definitely continue to publish information regarding Energy Medicine, due to the increased interest and feedback I am getting.
Like Retraction Watch? You can make a one-time tax-deductible contribution or a monthly tax-deductible donation to support our work, follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook, add us to your RSS reader, or subscribe to our daily digest. If you find a retraction that’s not in our database, you can let us know here. For comments or feedback, email us at [email protected].
Re: GAHM Biofield papers. An independent co-author from Berlin is one Paul D Hewson, to be sure.
I just want to acknowledge the invaluable technical input from my co-author Richard Rasker, who wrote the bulk of the critique on my blog. I do find it very strange that Ms Ross declined to respond either to ourselves directly or to our letter to the journal. If she still “stands by the science” in the article, why does she not defend it in the normal way as a scientist? I am astonished at her hubris. She seems to think she knows more physics than a real physicist. Perhaps this is what attends the award of a PhD by a non-accredited university.
She is not writing for a scientific or evidence-based practice audience. She is writing for a audience that wants to hear someone endorse their belief system. The sort of person who says, in a solemn voice, “science doesn’t know everything, you know”. And as Dara O’Briain remarks, “Of course it doesn’t – otherwise scientists wouldn’t have to go to work in the mornings. And just because science doesn’t know everything you can’t go round filling the holes with stuff you made up”.
“Perhaps this is what attends the award of an on-line, course-based PhD by a non-accredited university that has no research facilities and offers no research training.” Fixed it for you.
The web footprints of Akamai University and the people who run its Energy Medicine “PhD” program are unintentionally hilarious, and just about what you’d expect from the, um, institution that “trained” the author of that retracted paper.
Apologies for all the scare quotes.
Oh thank you for the tip! I’ve been grading assignments and spent a lovely coffee break drinking in the moonbeams on the Akamai University website.
Have a look at the PhD programmes in energy psychology and energy therapy:
http://www.akamaiuniversity.us/PhD%20Energy%20Therapy%20%2004%20March%202019.pdf
http://www.akamaiuniversity.us/PhD%20Energy%20Psychology%2004%20March%202019.pdf
Timeless lines like “Energy Psychology blends the best of psychology with advances in energy therapies creating magical resources to elusive problems that face the mental health industry”
Fun fact: because Akamai University is not accredited by any accrediting organization that meets the absurdly low standards of the US Department of Education, their web site can’t be hosted using a “.edu” domain name.
My favorite bit from the Akamai University FAQ page
http://www.akamaiuniversity.us/faq.html
“Under Hawaii law HRS446E, universities not yet accredited within the USA must publish the following disclaimer relative to its accreditation, even when highly recognized accreditation is achieved overseas. Akamai respects the State of Hawaii Office of Consumer Protection, in its attempt to protect the public and our potential students, and therefore Akamai shall continue to publish the disclaimer, now, even with ASIC Premier University accreditation.
“Akamai University is not accredited by an accrediting agency or association recognized by the US Department of Education. Before undertaking any program of studies in higher education or training, Akamai University strongly advises interested applicants to consult with licensing authorities, professional associations, colleges and universities, and prospective employers to determine with clarity if the desired degree program will meet their professional requirements.”
The “not yet accredited” part is particularly good. One admires their ambition. Caveat emptor.
As the author of most part of the review, I’ll take this opportunity to address some of Mrs. Ross’ commentary.
“… an MD who chastised me for suggesting that human biology has a biofield.”
And indeed, human biology has no ‘biofield’ as posited by proponents of ‘energy medicine’. Those who beg to differ are asked to provide a proper definition and characterization of said ‘biofield’, and a procedure by which to reliably observe and measure it. I can’t find any such definition – and as someone with 30+ years experience in designing and researching biomedical electronics, I think I know pretty well what kind of fields are and aren’t involved in biological functioning.
“He also said strange things like “quantum mechanics only works on the subatomic level” ”
This is an untruth. I said that with the exception of MRI, quantum mechanics is not directly involved in any medical procedures. This was in response to Mrs. Ross’ own ramblings about medical diagnostics ‘measuring different types of energy in the human body by using quantum field dynamics’.
… “and “there is no direct relationship between energy and matter”.”
This is another untruth. Mrs. Ross literally stated that “Quantum physics teaches us there is no difference between energy and matter”, and that is what I contested – and because I already expected that I wouldn’t be taken on my word, I linked to an excellent explanation from an expert in the field, physicist Prof. Matt Strassler: https://profmattstrassler.com/articles-and-posts/particle-physics-basics/mass-energy-matter-etc/matter-and-energy-a-false-dichotomy/
” These sound like the ramblings of someone stuck in 1930’s theories of physics and refused to believe Einstein and Neils Bohr’s theories.”
Mrs. Ross probably refers to Einstein’s mass-energy equivalence e=mc² – but she fails to understand that this formula does NOT mean that there is no difference between energy and matter. It means that mass can be converted into energy, and vice versa. In our universe, energy is the capability to do work, whereas mass is ‘stuff’ on which energy can have all sorts of effects. The two aren’t interchangeable.
(And it is also completely unclear why Mrs. Ross invokes quantum physics in her paper, other than as a sort of window dressing to make the many pseudoscientific claims more palatable. It certainly is not used in any rigorous way to explain things.)
“It’s by far the most down-loaded paper I’ve published. Hundreds (over 1,000) downloads. I have received rave reviews from energy medicine practitioners and instructors.”
And nothing but scorn from real scientists. In the words of another esteemed physicist, Jim Al-Khalili:
“To buy into any of the notions in this paper would mean that the whole edifice of modern physics has to be demolished and rebuilt. And if anyone thinks that may be necessary then I would argue they really have not studied science at all and do not understand the scientific method.”
All one has to do is look up the work of Emily Rosa, who pretty much put “paid” to the idiotic concept of “therapeutic touch” and “energy medicine” with her ground-breaking science fair project that debunked it, and her subsequent JAMA paper:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/187390
Christina Ross is yet another charlatan pushing disinformation.
Christina Ross’ work may be rightly classified as pseudoscientific and any healing derived from Therapeutic Touch (TT) may just be another form of placebo effect, but I would not form my conclusion of the latter based on the results of the JAMA study by Emily Rosa. As Long, et al., 1999 had pointed out soon after the JAMA study appeared, Rosa’s subjects should have been able to detect something, most likely radiant body heat, at the distance in which TT practitioners’ hands had hovered over the investigator’s hands, but they didn’t (see https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230683042_Perception_of_Conventional_Sensory_Cues_as_an_Alternative_to_the_Postulated'Human_Energy_Field'of_Therapeutic_Touch).
Now, I haven’t kept up with this type of literature since these studies appeared, so perhaps there have been replications of Rosa’s or of Long’s work. I would certainly be curious to know why it was that experienced TT practitioners did not even score at chance level under Rosa’s conditions whereas non TT practitioners were able to detect others’ hands under analogous conditions in the Long et al, study. Who knows, answers to these questions could conceivably lead to valuable insights into experimenter and other contextual effects that may ultimately account for replication failures in this and other areas of biomedicine.
“As Long, et al., 1999 had pointed out soon after the JAMA study appeared, Rosa’s subjects should have been able to detect something, most likely radiant body heat, at the distance in which TT practitioners’ hands had hovered over the investigator’s hands, but they didn’t. [link]”
It is indeed plausible that TT practitioners mistake body heat for a ‘human energy field’, but this involves more factors than just distance and ambient temperature as suggested by Long:
– Heat convection may also play an important role, resulting in better sensitivity when the sensing party’s hand is over another person’s body part than underneath it (although both Rosa and Long tested with the investigator’s hand over the sensing party’s hand).
– Radiant heat from someone’s hands of course depends on the temperature of those hands, which can change considerably from person to person and from moment to moment. This is also where the temperature differences with the ambient temperature comes into play.
– Thermal sensitivity differs quite considerably depending on the part of the body; I know that I can sense radiant heat far better with my forearms than with my hands, probably aided by the hair, trapping more air close to the skin. The hand doesn’t appear quite as sensitive – also see https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0360132319306456
In all, I don’t think that Rosa’s experimental results are somehow less valid because TT practitioners did not even appear to sense heat as they should have according to Long.
Also, these experiments are just one reason why Therapeutic Touch can be considered debunked. There are several more general logical arguments against the existence of a ‘human energy field’ with a strong connection to people’s health. The most important arguments are that it is not properly defined or characterized at all, and that its existence can’t be observed by means of a well-defined procedure or experiment. Then there is the inherent contradiction that this ‘field’ is supposedly intricate enough to influence our health in a myriad of subtle ways – yet that it is at the same time so coarse and robust that a few minutes of rather large-scale hand-waving can restore it to its proper state. And that without the practitioner actually feeling it at all. It is as if a car mechanic can fix a subtle problem in a car’s engine by blindly smashing about the engine compartment with a big hammer, fully unable to see or feel what they’re doing.
There are more reasons still than these, e.g. why evolution apparently failed to take advantage of such a hugely simple way to keep organisms healthy and vigorous, and instead resorted to all that messy, complicated business of proteins, enzymes, immune systems and other imperfect chemical processes.
Richard, to me your point that “The most important arguments [against TT] are that it is not properly defined or characterized at all, and that its existence can’t be observed by means of a well-defined procedure or experiment” is key. Indeed, how can research on TT move meaningfully forward if the variable under investigation (i.e., energy field) has never been adequately defined nor has an acceptable procedure developed for detecting or quantifying it? However, in addition to methodological criticisms that have been leveled against the Rosa study, the fact that their data went in the opposite direction particularly during the second test (table 2) suggests to me a strong possibility that some sort of demand characteristics or of some other uncontrolled variable/s were at play in this study. As such, no, I would not form my conclusion on the effectiveness of TT _solely_ based on the results of the Rosa study.
@Anonimito
Still, the main point of Rosa et al. is that TT practitioners failed to detect any ‘human energy field’ at all, even after a successful preliminary control series (i.e. unblinded tests of their purported abilities), regardless of what else they should or should not have felt (e.g. radiant heat, or perhaps even air current deviations).
Unless you can point to actual flaws in Rosa’s experimental setup, I still think that both the experiment and the paper by Rosa et al. are compelling evidence against the claimed ability of TT practitioners to sense anything that could count as a ‘human energy field’.
Or, in simpler words: TT practitioners simply failed the test that should prove their abilities. All of them, all the time. Which, in my book, fully disproves TT already.
Where you are right is that this is trumped by the utter lack of scientific evidence for the mere existence of a ‘human energy field’ – which is more fundamental than just TT or even what TT practitioners think they feel.
All this also means that taking down other articles based on this posited but so far unproven ‘human energy field’ should be trivial – but unfortunately, the journals presenting this kind of pseudoscientific nonsense as ‘peer-reviewed science’ make this quite difficult. It took us almost 5 months and countless e-mails and revised versions to get from submitting our first critique to the point of actual retraction of Mrs. Ross’ article.
And I have dozens more similar articles in my To Do list …
People who receive PhDs from for-profit and/or non-accredited programs should simply not be allowed to use the title, in the same way that one cannot use the title “MD” or “JD” without meeting certain criteria. There should be some kind of disincentive for doing so, like there is in other fields.
The gatekeepers are those who recruit people with worthless qualifications. In this case the buck stops with the dean of the medical school, but there are no contact details and nobody there will disclose them.
https://school.wakehealth.edu/Faculty/F/Julie-Ann-Freischlag