Regular readers of this blog will be well aware of the trouble chiropractors have been getting into of late.
The backlash from the BCA decision to sue Simon Singh back in 2009 resulted in a huge Streisand Effect for the profession. Attempting to silence Singh with legal chill had many knock-on effects including one in every four chiropractors in the UK being investigated for making false claims in their advertising. To avoid prosecution, the McTimoney chiropractors emailed all their members and instructed them to take down their websites and “remove information leaflets that state you treat whiplash, colic or other childhood problems in your clinic..”.
Here in Australia we haven’t seen anything as hysterical as this, but our paranoid friends over at the AVN were clearly worried, issuing a warning in their Nov 2010 newsletter that sceptics were posing as clients and reporting chiros to the authorities.
To me, this seems like a silly way to go about reporting chiros – paying them. It’s much simpler to just take a look at their websites or promotional material. Just like the anti-vax handouts I was given by Nimrod “I’m not anti-vaccine, i just don’t recommend it” Weiner, whom I’ve blogged about previously.
Of course, none of this would be a problem if they simply operated within their code of conduct and stuck to cracking backs.
So I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised to see this claim in a leaflet sent to me by a friend earlier today:
The text says; IQ – A study demonstrated an increase in visual perception, motivation, performance and 100% of the sample group showed an increase in IQ.
One hundred percent of the sample group showed an increase in IQ? Wow, what an extraordinary claim! You’ll note there is no reference provide for this “study”, but if you want one, why not contact them through their website. (The page above is taken from a newsletter from October 2007).
As @cactopos suggested on Twitter; “I guess you could argue that alternative medicine increases everyone else’s IQ thru a process of natural selection?”. Touche Cactopos.
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