Study by Nine-Year-Old Debunks Therapeutic Touch, Stirs Controversy
In 1996, when she was 9 years old, Emily Rosa designed-as her fourth-grade science project-a test of the ability of therapeutic touch (TT) practitioners to detect a human energy field.
Two years later, her experiments have earned her both a place as the youngest researcher ever to have a paper published in the Journal of the American Medical Association and the ire of the more than 40,000 caregivers in the United States who practice TT.
Using a towel and a piece of cardboard to blind study participants, Rosa tested 21 practitioners of TT on their ability to detect which of their hands she was holding her hand above. She used a flip of a coin to decide which of the participant's hands to select.
The results? The average correct score was 44%, fewer correct answers than would be expected by guessing alone.
The results were never intended to be published, but word about the tests spread and the PBS show "Scientific American Frontiers" featured Rosa's tests on Nov. 19, 1997. Following the broadcast, Stephen Barrett, MD, of Quackwatch Inc., suggested submitting the findings to JAMA.
The final report, co-authored by Emily; her mother, Linda Rosa, BSN, RN; Larry Sarner; and Barrett, appeared in the April 1, 1998 edition of the medical journal.
In an accompanying comment, JAMA's editor, George D. Lundberg, MD, urged that patients "save their money and refuse to pay for this procedure until or unless additional honest experimentation demonstrates an actual effect."
Proponents of the practice quickly attacked the study as unfairly biased, noting that Linda Rosa is a longtime critic of the practice, who once published an article on TT that was titled "Reach Out and Dupe Someone."
Cynthia Hutchison, research coordinator for Healing Touch International, told CNN that the study was also flawed because practitioners did not need to feel energy to be effective and the key element of TT-the intention of doing good for the patient-was missing in a task as simple as choosing between two hands.
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