Next month, I’m going to be attending the Global Atheist Convention in Melbourne, and originally, I had planned to make this a grand tour and was even thinking about a side trip to New Zealand. Plans have changed — one of the consequences of my long journey to California and Ireland, lovely as it was, is that too much travel at once, with all the confinement and awkwardness, is that I’ve wracked up my back rather severely — I’m trying to get some mobility and quiet the shrieking agony right now so I can cope again, but I’m just afraid that another string of non-stop pinioning to airplane seats will end with me in even worse shape.
So I had to squelch the New Zealand detour. Sorry, gang, I’ll try again some other time, and give you my full attention.
Anyway, so here’s the current, greatly reduced and I hope survivable plan. I’ll be in Melbourne from 11-14th of March (or maybe a day or two longer). I’m going to be in Canberra 19-20th of March, where I’ll be getting together with some notorious luminaries of the Australian anti-creationism movement, John Wilkins, Chris Nedin, Jim Foley, and Ian Musgrave. I’ve got some flexibility in my schedule, obviously, but I’m going to moderate my travel…which means I’m going to stay around the southeast part of the country (sorry, Perth and Darwin and Alice Springs). If anyone wants to draft me to give a talk somewhere in that week in that general neighborhood, get in touch with me. I can easily give a bit of talk with amusing anecdotes about those crazy American creationists, like Ken Ham and Ray Comfort.
But be gentle. I’ve got knives in my spine right now, and so I’m not going to go too wild with long distance excursions once I get there.
I’m praying for your back.
While in Canberra, you must make a visit to the Wig & Pen!
If you want, I can organise a Canberra atheist gathering for the time.
Oh, yeah — as long as I’m somewhere, gatherings of the godless would be welcome.
I recently got over a bad back and live in fear of it acting up again. For a few weeks, it took almost an hour in the morning to warm up my back enough just to stand up and walk. You have my sympathy and I hope you can get through your trip.
I do not envy you.
I’m really sorry to hear about your back, PZ. I live with that pain daily and I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Take good care of yourself.
The Wig & Pen will indeed be a great place to gather, so definatly count me in for that. I’ll be able to bring a few people along with me. I can also whisper around the ANU biology department if your interested in doing a biology related talk while you’re here. And I’ll pass on the info to the campus atheist group.
PZ, a hint for next time:
If you’re breaking bad news to a Kiwi that means they will be denied something they want, try not to mention the fact that Aussies will still get it. A post titled “Australia 1, New Zealand 0” will only enrage us further!
Best of luck with the recovery.
Changing the subject,
have you seen this:
http://www.atheistcartoons.com/?p=3042 ?
Maybe you can find a good Aussie chiropractor while there.
***Ducks and runs for cover***
It was deliberate. Now you’ll have to invite me out at some other date so I’ll have to post something titled “Australia 0, New Zealand 1”.
Nooooo!!!! You win this time Australia!
Scroll down further ;)
For the godless hordes living in Canberra, there’s always the meetup group.
I’m really sorry to hear about your back. I have three things wrong with my back and when it starts acting up I take Robax Platinum. Surprisingly, I find that works really well, much better in fact, than the prescription drugs and doesn’t leave me drowsy. Enjoy Australia and watch out for the nasty critters.
Darn you Aussies and Kiwis, why couldn’t you send them further south?
Here is proof positive that no good ever came from riding dinosaurs. My sympathies.
Damnit PZ – I really wanted someone to come to NZ and speak about one of our most embarrassing national exports: Ray Comfort. Usually the only time he comes up in conversation publicly is when a media source is gushing over how well a Kiwi is doing overseas. *shudders*
I was hoping you could come down here and annoy people enough to get some kind of minor mention in the local press. It would make me feel better.
All the best for the back. Get well soon.
Because you bloody well owe us one now. ^_^
I thought our colossal squid exhibit just counted as an open invitation.
Oh: Beware ‘Bishop’ Brian Tamaki.
If and when you make it to New Zealand, ensure you get to Christchurch – the city which blessed the world with Ray Comfort…
That’s lucky for me – moving from NZ to Canberra in early march…would be interesting to attend an atheist gaggle if there is one being organised?
@Tim D #1
Funny, that’s what the priests used to say to me.
Oh, the insult. Not only doesn’t Queensland get a visit, we don’t get an apology. And the Northern Territory gets two!!! :-P
PZ, to make up for not coming to NZ, do me a favour and accuse the creationists of “underarm bowling” as often as you can during your speeches.
I’ve got knives in my spine right now
Pinched nerves. There’s no reason to put up with it.
A naprapath can fix it in one visit (google naprapath).
Naprapaths are much more effective than idiot chiropractors who want unnecessary xrays and who never fix the problem.
The best naprapath in the world is Dr. Paul Maguire at 5330 W Devon Ave Chicago IL 773-631-9090, not far from Minnesota.
No matter how much I screwed up my back, Dr. Maguire could fix it, usually in one visit. Naprapaths never bother with xrays. They just fix the problem.
“Naprapaths never bother with x-rays”. Says it all really. Do they provide free wheelchairs to the people they paralyze?
Too bad you can’t put on a few more pounds (kilos; stones) and fly on southwest air. Then you could get yourself kicked off the flight and save your back! Flawless victory!
Not only is PZ a great proponent of evolution inside and out of the lecture hall, he’s also happy to exhibit first hand one of the biggest fuck ups in our own evolution! Try to visualise every (hopefully diminishing) twinge as evidence against design!
Get well soon PZ
B
But what about the The Colossal Squid exhibition in Wellington!
a.human.ape @ 25:
Uh huh. Let’s see:
Right. Just the same old dangerous woo. I’ll stick with my neurologist.
I will not be seeing a quack about the problem.
Oh nooooooooooooooooooo
I used to think tall people like me were the only ones who suffered from this design problem. Obviously not. Stay away from the quacks, PZ. In my case, riding my bicycle a lot does wonders for the back. Airplane seats are torture – they were probably designed by Dick Cheney….
I suggest a coordinated worldwide team of qualified massage therapists to provide regular back therapy wherever PZ travels.
PZ, it should be part of your fee.
Baby your back as much as you can, PZ. If all the problems we humans have with our backs isn’t disproof of “intelligent design”, I don’t know what is…
“Naprapathy (Czech náprava, correction – from napravit, to correct) – is a branch of alternative medicine, a manipulative therapy, that focuses on the evaluation and treatment of neuro-musculoskeletal conditions.” – Wikipedia
Yeah… I’d stay away from them PZ. Though I’m sure you already knew that.
And just FYI, my experience is that massage therapists are NOT quacks.
PZ,
since sitting is the worst position for a spine designed for 4 legged creatures, I suggest avoiding sitting in the coming days as much as you can.If you have a lot of spasm and/or pins and needles down the leg, a course of oral steroid + low dose Valium might settle things down.
I once flew coach from Australia to Germany with a disc protrusion, that was decidedly not a bright idea.
If you can hang around in Canberra until the 21st, you can come to the new Canberra Skeptics In The Pub, which will be having its second meetup on that day.
Antipodean fail!
Those Aussies get all the good stuff – like Brian Houston, Pauline Hanson, Crocodile Dundee etc.
Hope your back is better soon though :)
FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU-
Looking forward to the first one this weekend, even if it is as King O’Malleys.
That should say “is at King O’Malleys”.
For God’s Sake! Stop blaming evolution… Could it be that a total lack of exercise, interspersed with late night drinking sessions, did you in?
I know from whence I speak. :-) do some exercise, get some sleep!!
Wait! Isn’t Ray Confort from Australia?
I’ve found that back problems, especially ones that are do to sitting too much, and not getting a variety of exercise, are best treated by sucking it up, get back to good exercise, regardless of how sore you are. You’ll probably find that as hard as it is to get started, after a few minutes, you’ll warm up, the pain will lessen, and after 20 minutes you’ll feel good. It will last for a few hour after, and the next day, it will be just as hard or worst to get started, but the loosening up will come faster, and after a week or two, you’ll have forgotten that you even had a sore back. I think the best thing to do, is not to lay around miserable, just try to forget about it, and get back to your normal activities as soon as possible, and if anything pick up the pace, and get more exercise. Fish oil is a pretty good anti-inflammatory(it inhibits prostaglandins), plus it’s good for your heart, but I wouldn’t take anything else.
It would be just terrible, wouldn’t it, if early in the flight you had a back attack and they had to put you in first class so you could stretch out…
Welcome to middle age, PZ.
You have my sympathies with your back. I’m still recovering from an incident on MLK Day (after four hours in the car). I spend a lot of time flat on my back on the floor as a result.
“For God’s Sake! Stop blaming evolution…”
If it follows entirely that our bipedalism coupled with longer life expectancy results in spine problems, why not?
god isn’t there and evolution doesn’t mind one bit!
New Zealanders, don’t take it too hard, he’s clearly just sucking up to the aussies.
As an aussie, and furthermore, a Canberran, I fully endorse this behaviour.
What a shame for the Enzedders and for us New South Welshpeople. Incidentally, I’d heard that Smoggy and Floyd were over there in the Land of the Long White Cloud, quietly preparing you a welcome you’d not soon forget! Ahem.
Sure you don’t want to reconsider leaving NZ out of your plans?
The one thing I’ll never forgive Richard Dawkins for, is that once he said in an interview about “the Greatest Show on Earth” that the Banana Man (Ray Comfort) talks in an Australian accent. I’m almost prepared to accept Ken Ham as one of ours, but not Ray Comfort.
How’s the book coming. Will I be able to buy a copy in Melbourne?
Sorry to say it, but my tricky back only got un-tricked when I finally lost my belly and gained abdominal strength. Diet and exercise: that pair of cringe-inducing horrors are what keep me participating in such quotidian pastimes as walking and…being able to put my knees in my ears, as it were. I doubt those are the exact details that would motivate you,and are doubtless TMI, but the Trophy Wife might just start looking around for a Trophy Husband.
No, I know what caused it: reduced exercise, long periods of limited movement. What I’m doing to get back in shape is regularly getting out of my chair and stretching and walking.
And getting the Trophy Wife™ to give me massages.
Following #46 line of thinking … consider a brisk one-hour walk everyday. I know you are very busy, but if you don’t take care of yourself, you will not be the only one to suffer – civil, reason-based society needs you.
It’s probably already been brought up here…but there is a great article in yesterdays New York Times Magazine titled “How Christian Were the Founders?”..about how religious kooks are succeeding in rewriting American history. It’s scary stuff that PZ has howled about quite a bit.
At any rate , it clearly shows why the work PZ is doing is so important.
Link:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/14/magazine/14texbooks-t.html?pagewanted=1&ref=magazine&adxnnlx=1266005956-KdwVDre8CY2eC7oZYYkaEw
PZ, while you’re in Canberra it would be great if you could do a talk at the ANU. I don’t know how to go about organising this, but I’m sure another Pharyngulite would be able to.
PZ, can you get an RMA number for Ken Ham while you are in Australia?
Maybe it’s time to get that Pilates training video, after all. (Or perhaps you did?) Glad to hear you’re doing some exercising. I don’t know how in tune you are with your body, but here’s a tip: learn to focus your attention on your skeletal structure—especially your spine—and feel out the mechanics of lining up your bones correctly as you exercise. Your body will tell you what it needs if you listen to it. And if you need some incentive just think about the fact that centuries of disconnect with our bodies (at least in the West) has been cultivated in large part by religious thinking and its bias towards mind-body dualism. This mindset is so pervasive that our entire western culture is afflicted with an appalling lack physical awareness. Pisses me off every time I think about it.
Hey PZ,
When you get here to Melbourne, can you let us know if you’re up for a pub crawl with us godless Aussies and expats? And be sure to stretch on the plane every few hours. I can tell you it’s a long flight from the states.
I sniff a red herring here. Lets face it, NZ is not that far away from Australia, and the flight from Sydney or Melbourne to Los Angeles is longer than from Auckland to Los Angeles, so, it seems to me, that for his back’s sake, PZ should break his return journey and stop over a few days in NZ.
Just spoke to the seminar organisers here in the research school of biology at ANU, they seems pretty interested in organising a talk if time permits. I think we have Jim Foley running a seminar here on the Thursday as well.
Hi All
With regards to organising Pharyngulite things in Melbourne sorry for me being a bit “missing”. I have only this afternoon submitted my Masters thesis ( oh, I can’t believe I just said that- finally its over, woot!)so I’ve been pulling a few hours on that.
The current thinking is to have a Friday arvo drinks fairly close to the convention centre as those with weekend passes have to PO about 5 to register but also some are going to the drinks evening that night also.
So, I will send out an email but give me clue- is everyone kind of keen to meet at Young and Jacksons around 3 ish? I know it’s a bit “touristy” but it’s close by and I thought given the pearl clutching that went on there in the early 1900’s re Chloe it might be fitting for a bunch of atheists to take over. Having said that I haven’t been in there in years so it may be too expensive/too busy/too crap so let me know!
Regarding the dinner tables I’ve not heard back from the organisers yet so I’ve just sent another email. Hopefully we’ll know by the weekend what our seating configuration is.
PZ, if you’re reading this I’ll send you a personal email but we’d be honoured if you’d sit with us ( if you can stand the mangy hoard).
Hey !!!
I resemble that mangy hoard ;-)
Looking forward to getting down to Melbourne but I will be coming down with cowcakes so I don’t know the travel plans as yet.
that reminds me, I better get him some money.
Knives in your back? So you’re combining chiropractic treatment with acupuncture? I never thought you’d come around, PZ! Al you need now is a tiny, tiny dose of 100C homeopathic back curative (don’t overdose, or it won’t work).
Wig and Pen! Favourite Pub! (KelOM, I sense that you spend a little bit of time there)
PZ! Favourite blogger!
I will be there!
For those in Canberra (sorry about the promotion PZed) This Sunday is the first Canberra sceptics in the pub.
http://www.meetup.com/Canberra-Skeptics-Meetup/calendar/12569182/
I don’t get there as much as I’d like to. Usually with friends I end up at either PJs or The Phoenix.
Australia 1, New Zealand 0
That is not possible. AUS 3:0 NZL would be possible.
Unlikely, but possible.
Hey PZ,
I would love to see you as a panellist on our premiere, nationally televised, weekly, politics/current affairs audience participatory news show called Q and A.
Panellists are usually politicians but they also have scientists, social commentators, economists, journalists, etc.
If the convention gets national news coverage, which it should, it will be a candidate for discussion on that week’s episode, making you a good candidate for a panellist.
I have no idea how to influence the selection process, but I can investigate.
Interested?
This post title kinda makes me want to sing
I’m really disappointed you won’t be coming to PZ, We would have loved to have you here.
Is Ian Plimer still a leading Australian anti-creationist? I wonder whether you like climate change “skeptics” more than evolution skeptics?
PZ, you have the right plan. You can totally do Australia in a few days; New Zealand takes weeks. So save your NZ trip until you can do it properly.
Now I’ve taken some flak here before for sticking up for basic, no frills chiropractic manipulation (because it did wonders for my back) so yeah, yeah, I know, but think of it this way, PZ… wouldn’t it be interesting to give it a shot? Go on, try 2 or 3 sessions getting cracked at a recommended chiro and let us know how you get on.
You may be surprised. Or not. But either way you get some actual hands-on (literally) experience of it and possibly a couple of amusing posts… :-)
*This* time? Every time. :)
Wait, what? Sunday 4pm Kingos??? OK! I’ll bring my squid so you can recognise me.
My friend’s actual, hands-on (literally) experience with a chiropractor resulted in him being bedridden for 8 months and contributed to the collapse of his business and his marriage. He went in for a stiff neck and came out crippled.
Of course the chiropractor couldn’t tell him what went wrong because the guy never knew what he was doing in the first place.
Fuck chiropractors and all magic ‘medicine’.
*developing fondness for speedweasel*
Diclofenac is your friend, unless you are also taking blood pressure medication, otherwise paracetomol. Probably both called something else in the US.
Sadly, time is the greatest healer of all.
Oh and don’t lift anything heavier than a glass…
I’m really glad your coming to canberra. I will be sure to make it if you have a talk or godless gathering. Also im quite glad i read the comments. I might make it to a few of these “Skeptics in the pub” gatherings as well.
Paracetamol is to a sore back like speaking in tongues is to summoning jebus, it aint going to work.
;)
I would love to meet the man … what is your plan while in Canberra ?
Well for what it is worth, here is my take on this. I popped a disk nearly 40 yearss ago, when that happens the pain is a combination of nerve endings firing up at the rupture site, and if you are unlucky, nerve root irritation which gives you sciatica. After a few years the protrusions scar up and get smaller. From then on unless the disc and/or associated bony spurs (osteophytes) continue to irritate the nerve root most local pain is usually simple muscle spasm. If any of you have ever had a torticollis (wry neck was the old charming name) that was pretty much always spasm, and for what it is worth the suggestions below also apply to that.
Given that treatment is best thought of local and aimed at relieving the muscle spasm ASAP. If done quickly, #1 may prevent the spasm from establishing in the first place. So here is the cheap and mostly effective recipe.
1. Locally applied cold pack, try double ziplocked ice cubes wrapped in a small towel for 20 minutes or so. I tend to be pretty aggressive with this but I would suggest 3 or 4 times a day is probably tops.
2. Muscle relaxant, there are prescription drugs, but ingested alcohol works pretty darned well (I like scotch 8^) ).
3. Reasonable analgesia, generic ibuprofen is my choice, but whatever you have at hand should be OK except remember Tylenol in any of it’s generic and branded flavors is mildly hepatotoxic, and should NOT be used with my choice for #2. Generally prescription dosages are higher than those on the packets, you can chesck this out in a PDR for yourselves, most local libraries carry a copy.
4. Local massage, you will need help with this unless unless you have long arms.
5. Stretching exercises.
Long term as others have noted weight loss and reasonable age and weight appropriate exercise may help reduce the frequency of adverse evemts, but alas once we made the decision to come down from the trees without asking for a redisign ;^) we were probably fated to get back pain.
Sorry for the long post, but I hope this will prove helpful.
BB
Jajaja, I missed the video completely. I passed from Allah to the metazoans.
For all that I agree with Speedweasel @78 about chiropractors, I’m not certain I’d summarily dismiss chiropractic (the technique; the “theory” is utter bollocks).
Where I live (Germany) there are, so far as I can tell, no chiropractors. (Possibly there are one or two somewhere, but it’s just really not a concept here. Almost all Germans would react to the word with a blank and puzzled stare.*) But it is common for orthopaedists — real doctors — to use chiropractic manipulation as one treatment among many.
They’ve done it to me. Every so often I throw out my back and end up with a “pinched nerve” (whatever that might actually mean). Untreated, they typically take a week or more to go away. Some of them are so bad that I am in significant discomfort or even outright pain when standing, sitting, lying down or shifting from one of those positions to another (though I am otherwise just fine). And in most of those cases, the doctor did sonme kind of chiropractic popping thing to my spine, followed by injections of an anti-inflammatory. And when he did, the popping provided immediate partial relief (say 50%-60%) that increased to about 90% by the evening (I presume the continued improvement was down to the injection); and when I woke up the next morning I was fine.
The doctors don’t pretend that these manipulations do anything more than provide temporary relief for some kinds of back pain (and they certainly don’t believe in “subluxations”). And to Peter G.’s excellent point @26, they do an x-ray before they do anything else.
PZ shouldn’t take his problem to a quack. But it’s a pity if a therapeutic technique that (done by somebody properly trained and with proper precautions) can bring real relief is, in the USA, available only from quacks.
* It’s not that Germans are any less credulous than Americans; chiropractors as pseudotherapists have simply never caught on here. Germans are more than happy to lap up home-grown woo; cf. homoeopathy, which is practically respectable here.
Every tried the injection without the “manipulation”?
PZ
How would you feel about presenting to about 500 children (5 to 12 years old) on Monday, 15 March, at a State primary school in Melbourne?
hs
Bernard @87,
no, but the relief came immediately after the popping and before the injection. I don’t think there was anything “magical” about it — maybe the doctor snapped something back into alignment, more likely the movement just stopped something pressing against something else, or possibly even the real benefit was from a controlled stretch, the popping being just a side effect. But whatever it was, the popping had an obivous effect; the additional effect from the injection came more slowly, over the following several hours.
Fuck MDs and the muscle relaxers and pain killers they give you for back problems. Get up off your fat ass and try working out PZ. Chiropractic adjustment is safe and effective. I’ve had back problems that were referred to Orthopedic surgeons that all wanted to do surgery. I used an alternative approach. The Ma-Roller along with an occasional adjustment by a good chiroprator has kept my back pain free. And no I don’t have to keep going back every other day. Fuck all of you retards who actully believe that MDs are the only ones who can help. Alternative medicine should not be confused with intelligent design. I’m pretty sure that most of you dumb fucks have never heard of the Ma-Roller. It’s a crafted wooden device that is shaped to position vertabrae back to where they belong.
Walking upright = back problems. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. Your benevolent designer is now accepting worship. That is all.
PZ,
Watch this first.
Now you know why that guy in that Twilight Zone(? or was it Outer Limits?) episode was hanging onto the wing of the plane—it’s much more comfortable than being squished into a pretzel and then strapped into an airline
seatbucket.Hey Rorschach, paracetomol is Tylenol. Quite effective pain relief for mild arthritis and muscle aches. You must be on the other side of the pond, or maybe a retarded Brit.
Fellow back pain sufferer here, PZ.
I won’t bother making suggestions for treatment — you seem to have a good handle on it.
However, the cruel streak in me wants to say :
“nyaa nyaa! it’s GAwEDuh! Punishin yew for Mocking Ken Ham! ”
Hope you feel better soon. Wish I were going along to Oz.
When addressing truth claims, it’s important to assess the evidence using logic, reasoning and critical thinking. Science.
If you know that intelligent design is bollocks but youre a fan of alternative medicine, I submit that you aren’t thinking critically and you aren’t arriving at your answers for the right reasons.
It makes me wonder how the hell you think you know anything.
Gutted. I was so hoping to see you in NZ! Next time, I suppose.
BoS: I’m wondering if your emails to the organisers included everyone’s order number? They sent out an email this morning saying that everyone’s order number must be included in table seating arrangements. I’ve just emailed you mine.
Lewis Black said that after an air trip to New Zealand, you are so numbed that all you want to do is get on the plane and fly home. (“You watch three in-flight movies, speak to the stewardess and find out you still have 12 hours to go!”)
He suggests that if New Zealanders want people to visit their country, they should move it closer to the USA.
Why fly? Bring the Trophy Wife™ and take a cruise from one island to the other the third.
Hell, I suspect ‘Tis would be more than happy to chauffeur you (or whatever the Belgium one does with a boat).
Do be careful about the drop bears. I don’t think they have those in Aotearoa.
Noooooo, not only do we bear the shame of producing Ray Comfort, we’re denied the succour of exposure to the antidote! Getting… progressively… stupider…
Back pain is the one area in which chiropractic treatment has been shown to have some benefit, if I remember my Singh & Ernst correctly. There is a subset of chiropractors who limit their practice to this, and doesn’t buy into the rest of the woo. How you might find such a chiro in the midst of all the quacks, I don’t know.
PZ, if you are planning on traveling up to Canberra, will you be leaving Australia via Melbourne or Sydney? If Sydney, would you be happy to visit a skeptics group there?
Cheers,
Richard
I find amazing the number of otherwise critical thinkers actually advocating dangerous magic.
The benefit/risk ratio for useless interventions is close to zero, unlike medicine that actually works.
Just when I was thinking it’d be great if you could pay us a visit in NZ after hearing of your exploits in CA and Ireland you set us up for a fall. Sorry to hear about your back. Perhaps you could consider flying Air New Zealand, they have fold down beds in economy now.
Would love to see you here some time soon.
https etc. @103,
your comment is a bit delphic, but I expect I’m one of those you believe to be advocating “magic” instead of “medicine that actually works”.
I’m not, though, and nor are at least some of the other commenters who are unwilling to say that chiropractic manipulations cannot do some good.
I don’t think it’s at all magic. I don’t know why it does what it does (though I do suspect the “bone-popping” element is a side-effect, indeed a side-show). My own pet hypothesis is that all it really does is stretch muscles, tendons, fasciae etc. in ways that one couldn’t accomplish without help. (If you’ve ever had a badly pinched nerve, and I hope you haven’t, you probably spent a lot of time trying to stretch in ways that you thought might create relief, but didn’t manage it.)
None of which is to defend “chiropractic” as a pseudo-school of health-care. That “theory” is, as I noted above, a rancid steaming heap of old bollocks, and there are no good reasons to think even the pure mechanical technique useful for most medical complaints.
But for a sharply limited field of complaints, it does seem to do some good. And I have good reason to think that; namely, on several occasions when I have had severe back pain, a manipulation brought immediate and significant relief. In other words, for the problems I’ve had for which it’s been used, it does in fact actually work.
Maybe I’m not as allergic to the idea because it is not as tainted with woo over here. We have no pseudo-profession of “chiropractor”; the people who use the technique are MDs (and not “alternative practitioners”, either) who view manipulation as just one more therapeutic option along with pain-killers, physio, just-plain-diet-and-exercise and if necessary surgery; and they certainly don’t believe they’re “correcting subluxations” or whatever it is that chiropractors imagine they are doing.
Personally I think it signifies the fragmented nature of knowledge when it comes to health, to the point that we can only personally rely on what works for us or the recommendations of those we trust. It’s the Dunning-Kruger effect in action.
Honestly, this for me has been a problem. When it comes to health, there’s so much quackery out there and so many people pushing their nonsense that it’s easy to fall into bad habits and take on bad advice. When I get a cold, I usually go straight for the vitamin C. Only found out a few months ago that this was nonsense – yet I’d heard the link all my life and I could swear that it made me feel better.
Kel,OM said,
Kel, I’ll just go ahead and assume I’m misreading you and you aren’t advocating the position that knowledge of medicine is epistemologically different from all other forms of knowledge. It’s just that there is a lot of ‘noise’ out there from hippies broadcasting on the medicine channel, right?
It probably did make you feel better. *cough*Placebo!*cough*
It’s more than just hippies, but yes. I consider medicine a hard science, the problem to me is just how it translates down from real medical research into information to the layperson on the street. It’s not even that there are hippies out there, the kinds of medical advice that make it to the media seem to be information about drug recalls or senstationalist claims, often leading to contradicting information as slight deviations on studies are met with very absolutist headlines.
There’s an overwhelming amount of information, much of it sensationalist and somewhat confusing. Honestly I think it no wonder that so many people shy away from medicine and into quackery, it’s offerring certainty in a tentative and overwhelming sea of knowledge. For me personally, I feel that I’m pretty well trained in recognising snake oil merchants, but I have no idea where I can go for proper advice and learn more beyond getting a relevant medical degree.
Or the body naturally got better and I attributed it to the vitamin C, which would mean it’s not the placebo effect. In either case though, I’d heard some folk wisdom that I thought was genuine and took it on.
Well there is a long standing adage in health care….. I got better with the treatment in 7 days, without it it would have taken a week.
I’m still coming across little, forgotten nuggets of ‘knowledge’ that I haven’t reassessed since I learned to think properly.
Every so often I catch myself applying some supposition and say, “…and how do you know that exactly, speedweasel?”
Nowdays I even enjoy that little shift in perspective these moments offer.
angry retard @ 90,
You, Sir clownshoe, do obviously not have the faintest idea about a) human anatomy and b) what causes back pain.
Instead your mumbling about “position vertebrae back where they belong” is a classic example of muddled magical thinking, that is usually seen to be exhibited from religious or alt-med wooists.My 3-year old thinks clearer than you.
*developing fondness for Rorschach*
ps. I couldn’t be bothered to correct someone so obviously thinking-impaired, but I’m glad someone did.
pss. I have a 3-year old too. We could race ’em!
;)
At this stage, mine prefers to cheer trains leaving the station, or hit his dad in the nuts with a cricket bat…:-)
Rorschach, youre coming to this dinner next month, right? We are so going to drink beer, or maybe cider. 2010 seems to be the Summer of Cider for some reason.
Yup, will be there, live 100m from the convention centre…:-)
I really don’t want to get into the whole chiro argument again but man, it depresses me how readily people are to both use personal anecdote to attack it (“I know someone who was left crippled after chriropractic”) while simultaneously attacking others for using their own personal anecdotes to defend it (or at least, not to dismiss it out of hand).
I’ve never had any injections or any other treatments apart from manipulation when I’ve gone to a chiropractor. What I had was a thrown back so agonisingly painful I could barely stand, let alone walk. The first time this happened to me I did not go to a chiropractor because I knew nothing about them. I took my regular doctor’s advice (and a shedload of painkillers). It was two weeks before the pain even started to become manageable and somewhat longer before I could walk and move relatively normally again.
When the same thing happened again someone recommended a chiropractor. After a sweaty-palmed, white-knuckled, tooth-gritted journey over London’s bumpy roads I had the treatment. After one session I could walk out of the place in a style that took over two weeks to achieve on the previous occasion. I still had pain, but far, far less of it. After two treatments I was walking fast and upright. After the third I felt normal and completely pain free.
Personal anecdote? Sure. I am making no scientific claims for chiropractic because the study hasn’t been done (although I seem to recall there *is* a study of sorts that concedes some measurable benefits for a specific subset of back conditions). But it’s also my personal back, and my personal pain, and my personal need to get out of pain and moving again when that damned problem recurs (which it occasionaly has done, although not for a very long time). And the plain fact is that with personal results like I’ve experienced I’m not going to dismiss them casually as magic or placebo or bunk. That shit did wonders for me, whatever the explanation. And anyone who has ever had real, severe back pain ought not to write it off so easily. Unless they like pain, I suppose.
Young and Jackson’s sounds good to me. I can’t wait!
Re: bad backs and treatments. I will put my hand up for osteopathic treatment over chiropractic any day. Works for me, and I am a woo sceptic.
PZ – My brother runs the best osteopathic clinic in Melbourne, and I would be happy to organise a complimentary treatment or two.
Very sorry to hear about your back, PZ – another victim of the current rash of health-problems among Pharyngulistas. Get well soon!
Like about half the population (statistic made up, but not too far off I think), I’ve suffered similarly. Ibuprofen seems to work best among over-the-counter painkillers. A physiotherapist (i.e. someone with proper paramedical training) gave me simple exercises which keep it in check, and others to do if I get trouble. If I neglect the former for more than a few days, it tends to play up. Could all be placebo effect of course.
I did, in my first bout of lower back pain (I’ve had upper too – not so severe but somehow more unpleasant), go to a medically qualified private practitioner who described himself as a “manipulative physician”. Suffice it to say that this title was well-merited.
I bet you could get donated massages in every city you stop in!
Yes, I supplied an anecdote about my friend to glibly highlight the worthlessness of the previous, It Works for Me™ anecdotes in this thread. For everyone that raves about how fantastic one-thing-or-another is, you will find another person that swears it slept with their wife, kicked their dog and still owes them two weeks rent. So how are we going to sort fact from opinion and get to the truth of *any* claim?
Me, I like Science. More importantly, Science works far, far better than any other forms of ‘knowing’, including your (and my) anecdotes. Which leads me to…
I’m sorry? Are you asserting that scientific studies have not been undertaken to determine the effects of chiropractic interventions?
Fuck me. Where to even start with this? You might start with the book, “How to Read a Paper (the basics of evidence based medicine)” by Trisha Greenhalgh. You might then want to move on to the Cochrane Library and the Cochrane Review. You might like to read something by Ben Goldacre or Simon Singh. You might like to ask a Chiropractor about their profession and what they believe and how they support their beliefs. Then you might like to start questioning what you know and how you think you know it because whatever combination of laziness and arrogance led you to assert such garbage as ‘Chiropractic studies have not been done,” in a public forum of largely scientifically educated commentators will surely trip you up again and again in ever more humiliating ways. Sucks to be you I guess.
It’s funny that you recall the evidence that confirms your opinions, but you forget, ignore or never seek the evidence that contradicts them. Don’t worry; this is more common than you might think.
Personal experience is powerful, I get it. You went, the pain stopped and that was good enough for you. What you haven’t considered is that not everyone will be as lazy or incurious as you appear to be. Simple people might love simple answers but some of us *love* the details and we work hard to understand what we can of complex systems.
It’s pretty clear to me from your uninsightful comments that you haven’t thought very deeply about your Chiropractic experience and you’ll have to forgive me if I remain unmoved by the bush-league quality of your argument for it.
Ps. Look forward to seeing you in Melbourne next month. We’ll have a drink and you can tell me all about your astrologer and how you don’t know anything about astrology, but the paper told you that you would meet a new person and come into some money and 18 months later, it came true so there must be something to it!
Hi PZ, Are you planning to visit Sydney? Would you be able to give a talk for Sydney Atheists? (sydneyatheists.org and meetup.com/sydneyatheists)
It’d be an appreciative audience for your hilarious creationist stories. Most of our events are held in a pub and I guarantee you won’t have to buy a drink all evening (or your dinner for that matter).
Cheers,
Nathan