A Girl's Touch

By Peter Lloyd

At age 11, Emily Rosa staged a rather simple science project which ended up in the prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association. In doing so, she became the youngest person to land a research paper published in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Not bad for a fourth-grader. How did such a young girl make such a big splash?

Emily set out to determine whether or not therapeutic touch practitioners can, as they claim, actually sense what they call "human energy fields." Based on this claim, practitioners purport to heal and relieve pain as they move their hands inches from a patient's body and--here's where it gets nuts--adjust the patient's body's energy. Whatever that means.

Anyone with a lick of sense or the most fundamental understanding of what energy actually means should be skeptical of such a claim. But Emily figured out a way to test it. Her method stands out in its elegant simplicity. She invited each of 21 practitioners to put both hands, palms-up, through a screen. On the other side, Emily placed her hand an inch above one of the practitioner's palms. She flipped a coin to determine over which palm to place hers.

Unable to see Emily's hand, but obviously convinced of their abilities, the practitioners reported if and where they felt Emily's energy. After 280 trials the practitioners reported correctly only 44% of the time. You or I could have done better simply guessing or flipping a coin.

Here's hoping Emily's JAMA study will go a long way in discouraging this particular form of quackery from spreading further than it already has. Well meaning nurses, eager to do whatever they can to help their patients, have actually taken therapeutic touch courses at reputable universities. Some have begun to practice it in hospitals. One doctor reports anesthesiologists forced to work around therapeutic touch practitioners as they hover their hands over the patient's body.

That Emily wants her test replicated by other researchers gives further evidence of her intellectual and scientific integrity. Maybe, following her example, other kids will take on any number of dubious medical or therapeutic practices, which would be just ask easy to debunk. Emily plans to take on magnets and scientology next.

Put your hands together and let's give it up for Emily Rosa!

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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