The research was published in the international peer-reviewed journal Acupuncture in Medicine, and was carried out by eight dentists, including the research leader Dr Palle Rosted. It involved twenty people, each of whom spent five minutes recieving treatment in the chair prior to their check-up, with needles placed at two specific acupuncture points on their head reputed to aid relaxation(for those who care, the points were GV20 and EX6). The patients were asked to rate how anxious they felt before and after the acupuncture using a scale known as the Beck Anxiety Inventory (how much of an experimental Beck album you can listen to before you start to prefer going to the dentist’s). Scores on the BIA typically fell from 26.5 to 11.5 after the acupuncture.

All patients were in their forties, and had had the phobia for between two and thirty years. Many had tried other methods, including hypnosis and relaxation techniques, but none had apparently worked for them. I have to wonder whether these were done right before the check-up like the acupuncture was? It seems to me that this could make all the difference in drawing a qualified conclusion.

The small sample size is also a problem, although Dr Rosted does acknowledge this:

“Although it’s a small number of patients that we’ve looked at, all of the patients benefited. These were patients who would have previously run screaming out of the door or would have to have been held down by a dental assistant to have their teeth checked.”

Bloody hell, I’d be scared of the dentist’s if they forcibly held me down!

The big problem for me here apart from the small sample size is the reliability of the patients’ self-assessment. Simply asking them how they felt doesn’t seem to me to be solid enough as evidence. However, all twenty patients were apparently able to go through with the check-up following the acupuncture and I don’t think it would be unskeptical to accept the researchers’ claims that bigger studies are now warranted. If something is potentially going on here other than placebo, we need to attempt to know for sure, even if it’s just to rule it out.

What I would like to know is over how many years this study was carried out, and how many visits it covered. To emphasise how badly the patients suffered from their phobia, the report points out that on dentist visits prior to the study, three of the patients had to be knocked out with general anaesthetic, six needed strong sedatives, and on fourteen occasions treatment had to be cancelled because the patient could not go through with it. What we don’t hear is how many times it wasn’t cancelled. Maybe some of these patients had successfully visited the dentist more often than they’d had to leave. Maybe all fourteen cancellations were the same person. Also, was the treatment on each of these occasions different? Were they all just check-ups or did they involve fillings or other more intrusive procedures: there’s a big difference between a metal stick in your mouth and a drill. Other small but important facts we need to know are whether the cancellations were early visits or later ones. The patients may have chickened out the first few times, but made many subsequent successful visits since. We are not being given enough information to make a realistic judgement.

The news report claims that Dr Rosted denies the results were due to the placebo effect, and that the acupuncture was ‘doing something’. It also claims that Rosted says that anecdotal evidence suggests acupuncture could help even when patients need more complex treatments like extractions or fillings, not just check-ups. Although it may not be suitable for those who also have a fear of needles!! 

Silliness aside, the news report doesn’t present Rosted as the most scientifically minded person. However, on researching various reports on the same story I quickly realised that not once anywhere is there a direct quote from Dr Rosted putting forth these more debatable claims, and I suspect that this is probably a case of journalistic misrepresentation and that Dr Rosted has actually done nothing more than conduct a reasonable study in a reasonable manner. The woo in this article seems to be wafting from the journalist’s direction. It’s worth pointing out that it is Rosted himself who says that more study is needed, too.

Ah, journalism, where did you go?

Researchers are now planning a randomised controlled trial with more patients to test the therapy against sham acupuncture. I for one welcome any attempt to further our knowledge. It is the only way you can excise bunk from medicine and science. Personally, I’m not convinced there’s anything to acupuncture beyond placebo, and I think there’s some wishful thinking going on here, but these kind of trials need to be done. Researchers’ jobs would be a lot easier though if it wasn’t for needlessly subjective and suggestive ‘journalism’ such as this. But that’s a rant for another day.

Often, the contents of a MBWBS event tend to vary from the silly, to the deceptive, to the outright ridiculous and offensive – that’s relatively standard fare, really. Sometimes, however, an exhibitor is thrown up that’s simply and utterly dangerous – and it was the charming practitioners from Innersound that filled the role at the last festival I visited. (Listeners to our Skeptics With A K podcast will already know all about Innersound and their needle-free ‘Qi’ therapy).

Before you all dash off to Google Innersound and check out their woo-filled website (don’t worry, I’ll be doing that for you in a bit anyway), let me first explain to you how I came across them initially. Wandering around said MBWBS event, checking out the various stalls, I got chatting to an elderly Korean woman with a massage table. She explained to me that, due to fear in the West over the use of needles, she was giving people the chance to try needle-free acupuncture. Or ‘acu’, you might call it. Obviously, I was intrigued, I was mystified, and above all I was skeptical. “How do you do acupuncture without needles?”, I thought.

“How do you do acupuncture without needles?” I asked her.

“Oh, it’s simple – we use sound vibrations applied along acupressure points, which resonate with the frequencies of our own bodies, so that they interact with the healing centre of our inner core and unlock the healing energy within”, she replied (or words to that effect – her knowledge of English was relatively poor. Although, relative to her knowledge of medicine, she was Stephen Fry-fluent).

Following that *slight* hint of bullshit, I inevitably asked her a few questions, the usual go-to skeptical questions when faced with nonsense pseudo-medicine: Can you cure cancer? (Answer: “We can, but we usually don’t, but if you came to us with cancer we would”). What’s your greatest success to date? (Answer: “We’re a charity, and we’ve sent people around Africa to help with HIV AIDS”).

At this point, you might be wondering what Innersound actually is – I know I was. The wishy-washy descriptions of needle-free Qi and sound vibrations sounded… well, far from sound. So I stuck around, visited a few stalls, and waited until the next poor sucker got taken in by her, so I could witness it for myself. It was around 15 minutes later when I heard the practitioner at work…

Pssht. Pssst. Pssssssht.

“Excellent”, I thought, “They’re using some kind of mechanical device to make the noise. Perhaps it’s like a little motor, pressing against the skin, making that noise as it spins.”

Oh no. No, no no. I was wrong.

I walked over to the table, to see the masseuse feeling a woman’s back for acupressure points, before pushing his thumb into the acupressure point hard… and saying ‘Psssht’. With his mouth. And his lips. Psssht.

Now, just to be clear, this isn’t a valid therapy. In case I needed to point it out – it’s bullshit. Where’s the harm? Insomnia. Cancer. AIDS. Pssht! Pssht! Pssht!

Unsurprisingly, the company’s website stays clear backing up the claims made in person to help cure cancer. Instead, we’re offered standard, vague case studies, such as:

My name is Patricia and I am 50 years of age.

I was diagnosed and underwent lumpectomy and axilor limph removal. I had 6 months of chemotherapy treatment.During this period I started to receive Qi Treatments which I found really helpful. I felt more energetic and more at peace. I was really surprised at how easy the rest of chemotherapy went and I did not have any side effects. Even my back pains went away completely.

I am now going through radiotherapy treatments and I am receiving Ki Treatments again once a week. It is helping me a lot. I have no side effects and I am feeling happy and full of energy.

Patricia  50 – London

The best we’re given is the idea that the treatments offer ‘peace’ and ‘energy’ – all very nebulous and unquantifiable. Not so for the HIV claim, where we’re offered quantifiable proof that the Pssshting is beneficial:

Has been HIV+ for 12 years.  Normal CD4 count for the last 12 years has been 320 3 weeks ago after a blood test it was 590.

This result is after 8 Qi Treatments and 7 training classes. It is incredible!

Physically I feel more energised, happier and content with life. I would like to carry on further treatments and training class to improve my health and avoid infections to my body in the future.

- Anonymous

Needle-free acupuncture and magic-breathing increases CD4 levels dramatically, it seems! If only there were something more than a badly-written 3 paragraph testimonial attributed to an anonymous source to back that up, before this ‘charity’ started taking their show on the road. Like, for example, science? Plausibility? Proof?

Looking through the other areas where Innersound can help, we see a rag-tag mix of the nonsensical, dangerous and downright baffling. I can understand how the mind-over-matter elements of a mystical placebo-activator could help with Back Pain, Asthma and Tired(ness), but it’s dangerous to believe this mystical-thinking can help prevent allergic reactions, and it’s shockingly exploitative to promote it for help with Grief (really fucking disturbing stuff), Hepatitis (see first anecdote) and severe Heart Conditions in an 8-month old baby. Digest that – an 8-month old baby with severe heart conditions. Pssht. Sickening.

As for the supporting evidence for preventing Strokes, we’re told:

I visited the Mind Body and Spirit exhibition where I met Innersound.  On that day I knew that I had raised blood pressure because I was feeling very dazed.  I was very sure that I was having a stroke.

Since joining Innersound I have not had a raised blood pressure episode.  I would like to say my job is now more stressful than it ever was, but I am convinced that the reason I have not gone under is because of the treatment, training classes and support I get from the masters at the centre.

So, essentially, her story is: “I thought I was going to have a stroke, and then I didn’t have a stroke, and I put that down to the magic man and his pssshting.”

As for the outright baffling, how do they suggest needle-free acupuncture will help cure Broken Bones, Fractures, Eyesight problems, old age, Outstanding Performance (?!) and Pregnancy. What’s more, I don’t want to know where they press to help deal with Infertility.

What theory is Innersound Qi based on? You’ll not be surprised to hear it’s based on the usual unscientific nonsense. Specifically:

A healthy human body has an abundant and continuous flow of energy which supports all the physical functions. This energy is pumped through a network of energy channels similar to the way that blood is pumped by the heart and flows through the veins. Energy is pumped by the human battery, located just beneath the navel, and flows through energy meridians to all organs and cells.

Suffice to say, nothing has ever suggested there’s a ‘human battery’ located beneath the navel. That’s gibberish of the highest, most unscientific order.

From an eastern point of view, there are only two causes of ill-health – a shortage of energy and energy blockages. When we are short of energy, our body doesn’t have the energy it needs to function effectively bringing fatigue, pain and stress and leading to increasing imbalances and symptoms of ill-health.

Note – neither of the ‘only’ causes of ill-health include disease, germs, bacteria, viruses, genetic defects and predispositions, bad diet, lack of exercise, environmental factors, radiation or the million other ways we know ill-health comes about. This is ancient, disproven, childish gibberish. That they’re exporting to Africa to cure AIDS, and that they’re using here in the UK to offer alternatives to people generally desperate for help.

This might all sound like grumpy, curmudgeonly banging on a drum against something harmless, or silly. Perhaps you’re right. However, I witnessed people being Pssshted, falling for this ludicrous claptrappery, and if even one person with cancer, HIV, hepatitis or something similarly serious is convinced to believe in this Qi, then it’s one person too many.

Speaking of the Daily Mail and my own relative silence of late, here’s something uber-old-hat by now (news these days moves so fast) but I felt I had to write it up partly because a) it’s batshit insane, b) it’s a good example of how fallacious arguments are entirely interchangeably applicable to a whole range of topics and c) it gives me a chance to make some cheap gags:

Vaccines ‘are making our dogs sick as vets cash in’ - Source: Daily Mail (obviously).

See what I mean? Replace ‘dogs’ for ‘babies’ and ‘vets’ for ‘doctors’, and you’ve got a textbook anti-vaccination statement, a la Miss McCarthy. And it doesn’t stop there:

“Vaccines given to dogs are making them ill, a pet charity claimed yesterday. Profit-hungry drug companies and vets are ‘frightening’ dog owners into inoculating their pets more often than necessary, according to Canine Health Concern.”

If this isn’t PR for the Canine Health Concern charity, I don’t know what is. And it doesn’t stop there, either:

“Some puppies have developed conditions including autism and epilepsy after a raft of injections, it warns”

Yep – doggie autism. Doggie vaccines cause doggie autism, or so says the Canine Health Concern charity. Now, a few things to bear in mind:

• Vaccines don’t cause autism. That’s established fact.
• Dogs don’t have autism, or at least if they do it’s not caused by vaccines.
• Canine Health Concern is not a very large charity, and does not often get national news coverage the size their ‘Vaccines cause autism’ story has.

Those facts established, let’s continue in the Mail:

“Catherine O’Driscoll, from the charity, said: ‘We are not anti-vaccination. What we are saying is that currently our pets are receiving far too many. The latest scientific research shows that after the first course of injections as a puppy most dogs are immune against these diseases for at least seven years, if not for life. Every year pet vaccination companies hold National Vaccination Month, a national campaign when pet owners whose boosters have lapsed by 18 months or more are terrified into having their pet jabbed.”

Well, I’m sorry, Catherine, but that sounds pretty anti-vaccine to me. And it’s surely easy to see just how pot/kettle/black it is to speak of animal owners who are being terrified by Big Pharma into having their pet jabbed… with stuff that will give them AUTISM!!!!1!!11!!

This, of course, is the same non-anti-vaccination Catherine O’Driscoll who has written two anti-vaccination and anti-medicine books (‘What Vets Don’t Tell You about Vaccines‘ and ‘Shock to the System: The Facts about Animal Vaccination, Pet Food and How to Keep Your Pets Healthy‘) - the first page of one mentions going to a homeopathic vet who opened her eyes to how things really are; page two of the other book has Catherine admit she was a ‘science virgin’ and that ‘most of us – even the scientists – are science virgins’. Not to mention this beauty on page three:

“What nobody understands, and nobody seems to know, is how great the vaccination risk is. Will my dog die if I give him a vaccine? Will my child have brain damage if I give her a vaccine?” – Source: Shock to the System

Answer: No, Catherine, he won’t, and she won’t, and thanks for equating your dog’s life to that of your child’s.

So it’s hard to take Catherine seriously as a genuine source of unbiased, educated information. Well, it’s hard, unless you’re the Mail I mean. But then again, the Mail also ran with the back-up, super-proof tale of Charlie the Autistic Spaniel, whose owner told of his personality post-vaccination:

“Shutting a door or moving the washing basket terrified him. Then sometimes, despite calling his name, he wouldn’t even come to you… I simply cannot think of another explanation for the sudden change in his personality”

I can: He’s a fucking dog.

Elsewhere in the article, the Mail merrily quotes the letter produced by the crazy CHC and signed by ’17 vets and other pet experts’. Note that’s 17 total, not 17 vets AND other pet experts. And Catherine counts as a pet expert, remember. I wonder how many vets would sign a letter backing the use of vaccines… Fortunately, I know a vet, who I got straight onto the phone to – MSS member and sometime-blogger ‘Redwinelover‘, who quickly put paid to the notion that, as O’Driscoll suggests, a simple blood test would determine whether an animal needed a booster shot:

“It would actually be much more expensive to pay for the blood test to see if the dog is covered for the various diseases than it is to give one booster, as the booster shot can cover all the necessary vaccinations. There’s a certain percentage of dogs that will need the vaccination each time, so the best practice is to vaccinate yearly – after an extra 6 months past the booster date, 5-10%” of dogs are no longer immune; after an extra 12 months past the booster date that rises to 10-20%.

Also, vets are culpable if they were to forego vaccinating an animal and it develop the illness.”

What’s more, she confirmed to me that dogs don’t develop autism - or at least that there’s nowhere near enough personality work done on dogs to determine what robust diagnostic criteria would be for doggie autism.

So, I’ve been pretty disparaging of the CHC and O’Driscoll so far, and perhaps that seems harsh or ad-hom-y. Well, let’s take a brief look at the CHC website, and see if the criticism is justified.

“CHC advocates real food for dogs.  That is, food that Mother Nature has designed, over millions of years, and which has made the species thrive for millions of years.”

Ooh, an appeal-to-nature fallacy, combined with the sheer idiocy to overlook that ‘Mother Nature’ isn’t the one responsible for how food and vegetables are today – instead millenia of selective breeding by humans have moulded crops into the food we know today.

“Emotional Freedom Techniques - Based on impressive new discoveries involving the body’s subtle energies, Emotional Freedom Techniques (EFT) has been clinically effective in thousands of cases for Trauma & Abuse, Stress & Anxiety, Fears & Phobias, Depression, Addictive Cravings, Children’s Issues and hundreds of physical symptoms including headaches, body pains and breathing difficulties.”

Ooh, some mystical reference to ‘subtle energies’ and a healing system so completely bonkers in adults that we’ve featured it several times.

And what’s this in their ‘Complementary Healthcare’ list?

Animal Life and Death:

So, when your animals don’t heal, despite what you see as your best efforts, it is not that you are failing in your duty, or seeming not to be capable of healing anyone or keeping anyone safe, it is just that they see their going as the next best step, their own path to healing of the spirit rather than of the physical body.

Back Flower Remedies:

There are 38 Flower Remedies, developed by Dr Bach with the aim of raising our vibrations so that we can hear our Spiritual Selves and fulfil our life purposes… If the dog becomes fixated on something that happened – for example, he heard a loud bang outside and now refuses to go into the garden, then White Chestnut can help him get the distressing event out of his mind and carry on with life.

Contacts – including details for:

I think it’s fair to say O’Driscoll and the Canine Health Concern charity aren’t the most reliable, sensible, sane sources of animal health information. Quick, someone call the Mail and tell them they’ve made a mistake, I’m positive they’ll issue a correction…

Enter our hero of the hour, Ms/iss/rs(?) Beverley Turner, and her little excursion into something one or two of you will recognise…

“Even though I have this feeling, I deeply and completely accept myself.”

Got it yet?

*Taps Karate Chop Point 7 times*

“This Feeling” – including this wonderful comment by helloish123:

“Thank You…. This really works… I did this tapping today, $1200 cash all in $100 bills came to me unexpectedly. I had others ask to borrow money from me and I paid them both cash of what they asked me for and SOLD a house as well… I focused on releasing blockage of money flow. This works….enjoy jamie”

Yes, that’s it…  I can see the wide-eyed look of incredulity spreading like across your face like warm butter across hot toast:  The one and only – the 100% totally not “woo-woo or anything new-agey like that”, oh no – Emotional Freedom Technique and its merry entailment of gobshitery, insanity (“It could be long line in the fast food restaurant (sic) and I would feel like ripping slow people’s heads off – straight to EFT I go.”) and outrageous claims of efficacy over anything ranging from feeling a bit under the weather, to a lack of mathematical ability, to headaches, to short-sightedness (with added, extra quantum-woo) and, of course, the big one that they have to be able to claim:  Cancer.

Yes, this article – no relation to “This Feeling” – published in the Telegraph-ing horseshit to the masses – and penned by that presenter off of ‘Taste’, apparently, on Sky3 (does that channel really exist, or is it a barely noticed apparition in our collective subconscious?), is married to an Olympic gold medal winner, apparently, and now, apparently, qualified to flood the national psyche with healthcare advice which, in her own words, makes you “feel a bit of a wally” undertaking it.  I know, Bev, you must have felt a bit of a wally picking up that cheque as well…

Still.. It’s only about a bit of tapping, giggling and sticking it to The Man and his pesky Treatments-That-Actually-Work-But-I-Don’t-Understand in London’s LaLaLand of  well-monied, but missing-a-screw-or-two set, isn’t it?  No harm done, eh?  Of course not.

Apart from the harm you’re doing in directing people towards a nonsense non-treatment that, with a laugh and a joke, a nod and a wink, tells the credulous mass who have been conditioned to taking all manner of advice from ‘celebrities’, even homeopathic celebrities (almost certainly no celeb…  you see where I’m going), that they can stop taking their medication, because “…it (EFT) may may (sic) substantially reduce or eliminate diabetes symptoms….”

This insane article doesn’t, in itself, promote the use of EFT for severe physical conditions, but it does recommend this treatment for severe psychological trauma, with nothing but scant, ridiculously biased and credulous anecdotes as ‘evidence’.  The person doing this promotion has absolutely no right, no qualification and no hard facts to fall back on in defence of this piece.  It reeks of advertising dressed up as journalism, written with the force of semi-celebrity behind it, and immediately creditable via its publication in a broadsheet with a circulation close to 1.9 million readers per day.

Beverley Turner writes silly, trite books about her terrible time in the really, terribly machismo, anti-feminist world of F1 (dog bites man, news at 11); presents a terribly pro-feminist, err, middle-class TV cookery show and comments on healthcare that a good portion of almost 2,000,000 readers/day will ingest uncritically.  This person has a dream-like life, apparently untouched by the heinous tragedies that she then uses as pseudo-evidence for this PR piece, or to give it the old-fashioned name ’propaganda’, for people who want to sell 21^st Century Snake-Oil-as-Talk-Therapy to the masses.

I wonder if she’s happy to Telegraph credibility towards EFT for diabetes as promoted by its founder, Mr Gary – Slugbrows – Craig?

She, and the Telegraph are living in fantasyland, but not everyone can join them.  Most of us are stuck in the real world.

And what is it to have your middle-class, fashionable food fantasies brought, nodding and winking into the real world?

As most of our attempts at recreating Delia will testify:  A Nightmare.

I was so overcome with joy when I discovered what I am about to tell you that I am now writing with my eyes full of salty tears, warm and wet with emotion… Friends! I come to you with Good News!

Are you – a beautiful, delicate human soul – suffering from some sort of emotional pain, or physical ailment? Do your unique thoughts blossom as the daisies in the meadow, but often gravitate onto grave issues that induce effects from the mild melancholic to chronic, debilitating depression, perhaps interfering with your mathematical abilities? Do intrusive, perhaps obsessive thoughts on your disruptive encounters with precious friends or beloved family trouble you in your daily life, causing a phobia of lifts or dyslexia? Are the ongoing effects of war and rape pushing up your golf handicap, troubling your urination or just leaving you with an untidy room?

• Would you like to completely overcome all of these problems and many more in just minutes?
• Would you like to harness the completely unverifiable, but incredibly powerful meridian and chakra knowledge of the ancient Chinese? Then…

*shudders* For a minute there, I felt like a Chopra.

Where was I?

Ah yes! What we all really want in these twisted, perverted modern times is the ability to have all of our guilty pleasures without any of the guilt, take heart from our healthy pleasures without spending time on them, in short to have our horseshit without the pressing need for a horse. Sugar-free sweets, fat-free butter, exertion-free exercise, arsenic-free arsenic solution, cure-free cures and, of course, needle-free acupuncture.

Those deliciously died brows, like a pair of slugs engaged in a fireside chat over a light ale, hang upon the gentle brow of the ‘genius’ that is the inventor of our needle-free future, Gary Craig. Gary has brought us the impossible dream, a therapy so advanced that it will literally solve all of humankind’s emotional and physical problems, while leaving those blessed beings touched by this healing only with the lingering effects of being tapped. Yes! Gary – who isn’t the love child of Richard Dawkins and Jackie Stewart, despite those glorious brows – screams at us, though really I’m sure his tapping has calmed him to the point where he barely whispers his message, that the Emotional Freedom Technique (emofree.com – yes. Emofree. And?) is “a powerful new discovery that combines two well-established sciences”. What are these two well-established sciences? Well I’m glad you asked, and so is Gary. Here’s the list:

Mind Body Medicine.

Acupuncture (without needles).

At this point I started to wonder which dictionary this chap uses when he throws around a term like ‘science’ in relation to ‘acupuncture’ (which is surely just ‘acu’ if the puncturing is dropped, no?), leaving aside ‘Mind Body Medicine’ which is as empty and fatuous a term as anyone who spends a few minutes digging around in google is likely to find. Why would anyone think acupuncture is a science?

Well, there are scientific studies that find some benefit from acupuncture, so it might be reasonable to accept that and go along with the wisdom of the ancient Chinese. … Unless you look at the scientific studies that show acupuncture is ineffective, or look to the studies that show sham acupuncture as at least, sometimes more effective than ‘proper’ acupuncture. Acupuncture works by convincing people, through ritual, authority and the fairly scary procedure involved, that it will be effective, producing a classic conditioned response. More salivating dog than salvation from dog-eaters.

So how does it work then? Well, for an ‘authoritative’ guide there’s a free e-book or two floating around and a suite of videos on that there youtube to bring you well up to speed, like this one from tapping.org – that’s right…tapping.org.

What?

Anyway, the video:

It does ask you to suspend your disbelief for a while… perhaps the rest of your life, in fact. The soothing music certainly helps in that regard, but for those of you who are unwilling or unable to invest yourselves in 19 minutes of pure, unadulterated comedy, then here’s your brief, very brief, overview:

1. Cultivate the feeling you wish to work on.
2. Tap on a point on your body (The karate chop point on your hand is mentioned in that video)
3. Repeat a mantra of deeply-meaningful, meaningless nonsense. (“Even though I have this feeling, I deeply and completely accept myself.”)
4. Repeat

Then you need to ‘clear your nerve channels’ – I know that sounds ridiculously new-agey, and of course we wouldn’t want to be spouting anything ridiculously new-agey or “woo-woo” this is just a standing wave in a specific part of your nervous system that needs to be unblocked. No, really. They say this. With a straight face. Standing waves of negative energy blocking your nervous system.

Genius… Right, err… Clearing the nerve channel. Here we are:

1. Tap the bridge of your nose with two fingers and say “This feeling”.
2. Tap the side of your eye and say “This feeling”.
3. Repeat for under your eye, under the nose, on your chin while saying “This feeling”
4. With the flat of your hand, tap your collar bone and say, guess what?… “This feeling”
5. Back to tapping with your fingers, this time on your fingers and thumb, except for the ring finger (Which can be different in each culture. Strange to skip that… almost as though there’s nothing to this but bs… anyway… ) and, of course… “This feeling”

That’s it! And you don’t have to worry about getting it exactly right in exactly the right spot… it’s all connected and it all works…

So there we are with a debunked list of ‘well-established sciences’, a bizarre ritual and EFT (acu?) is standing proudly, chest puffed, atop the twin pillars of Empty Verbiage and Placebo – the foundations of woo are strong in this one. What mighty, intractable problems of modern life could possibly resist it?

Clearly, this isn’t a medical procedure, we want to make that quite clear from the off… You know, they’d get in trouble for saying that, and Gary goes out of his way to cover his arse on the front page:

“Nothing contained herein should be considered a medical claim or medical advice. For more, read our EFT Info and Disclaimer Document…”

Which is fair and right and just, we wouldn’t want people to think they could skip some of their pills, lotions, scans, samples, biopsies, injections, special dietary requirements, sessions or radiotherapy would we Gary? Of course we wouldn’t Gary. Well said, Gaz.

Hold on, Gary… What the fuck is this?

“…we urge you to bring these procedures to the attention of your physician(s) as they may reduce the need for drugs, surgeries, radiation and the like.”

So come on, what do you reckon this works for Gary?

Weight loss

OCD

ASTHMA

Abuse

Allergies

Bulimia

Smoking

Addictions

ADHD

Depression

Anorexia

DIABETES

PTSD

Phobias

Dyslexia

Detoxing

BLOOD PRESSURE

Headaches

Short/Long

Sightedness

Really, Gary? The root problem with Diabetes, Asthma and Blood Pressure is ‘emotional’? All we need to do to rid ourselves of these modern, killer plagues is tap away on our karate chop point? Is that it? Ahh… but we should remember, shouldn’t we, that you ‘urge’ people to go to their GP as they ’may’ be able to reduce their reliance on medicine that has unequivocal benefits based on the ‘benefits’ of this utter nonsense you’re peddling. These sensible, everyday people who are taking their advice on healthcare from the internet…

…and Short/Long sightedness? Are we supposed to believe that the changing shape of our eyes over time is in part or in whole due to emotional problems? What’s this about…

“At the end of each session, I give the client a one page EFT instruction sheet. I ask her to read it to ensure that the instructions match what we did in our session and I give her the instructions to use on her own. She picked up the sheet and said in astonishment, “I can read it without my glasses; I didn’t realize I was so angry it affected my vision.”

About a week later she gave me this testimonial. “I found that EFT relaxed me enough that my vision improved doing training and has remained as a lasting benefit.”

Rich Block” - Source: Emo Free

Rich Block. Richard Block.

Richard, or ‘Dick’.

Block, or ‘Head’.

This whole thing reads like a wind-up, and the videos seem like a really contrived comedy routine. The great and lasting sadness to all of this, for me, is that there are pharmacies who are involved in pushing this in our midst, there’s one about 100m from my door.

This woo factory: Orrell Park Therapy, is owned by its neighbour: Orrell Park Pharmacy, with Diana Cheung, as the trained pharmacist owner offering such ‘complimentary’ delights (in the medicine, rather than the free mint sense, one presumes):

Acupuncture

Reflexology

Aromatherapy

Hopi [Ear] Candles

Lymphatic Drainage Massage

Alexander Technique Reiki

And….

Emotional Freedom Technique

That’s right folks, you too can indulge yourself with a treatment of tapping karate points around your body while muttering nonsense for JUST 40 of your hard-earned, or ill-gotten, depending on your disposition, pounds.

I leave you with the words of what appears to be a fully qualified MD who pushes EFT. Eric Robins:

“…I’m not really a miracle worker at all, you just get used to seeing patients having really miraculous healings…”

Thanks, Mr Miracleworkerman. Pure. Comedy. Gold.

…and just to let you know, the temptation to misspell dyslexia up at the top was almost overpowering. Almost.