Emily Rosa Explained

Emily Rosa
Birth Date:6 February 1987
Birth Place:Loveland, Colorado
Occupation:Psychologist, scientist
Parents:Linda Rosa, Larry Sarner
Nationality:American

Emily Rosa (born February 6, 1987) is the youngest person to have a research paper published in a peer reviewed medical journal. At age nine Rosa conceived and executed a scientific study of therapeutic touch which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 1998. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Denver in 2009 with a major in psychology. Her parents, Larry Sarner and Linda Rosa, are leaders of the advocacy group Advocates for Children in Therapy.

Therapeutic Touch study

In 1996, Rosa saw a video of Therapeutic Touch (TT) practitioners claiming they could feel a "Human Energy Field" (HEF) emanating from a human body and could use their hands to manipulate the HEF in order to diagnose and treat disease. She heard Dolores Krieger, the co-inventor of Therapeutic Touch, claim that everyone had the ability to feel the HEF, and Rosa heard other nurses say the HEF felt to them "warm as Jell-O" and "tactile as taffy." Rosa was impressed by how certain these nurses were about their abilities. She said, "I wanted to see if they really could feel something."

Using a standard science fair display board, Rosa devised a single-blind protocol, later described by other scientists as "simple and elegant", for a study she conducted at age nine for her 4th grade science fair. There were two series of tests. In 1996, 15 practitioners were tested at their home or office on different days over a period of several months. In 1997, 13 practitioners, including 7 from the first series, were tested on a single day. The second series was observed and videotaped by the producers of Scientific American Frontiers. Stephen Barrett, MD, of Quackwatch was senior author, her mother (Linda Rosa, RN) was lead author, and her stepfather (Larry Sarner) served as statistician when the experiment was written up for the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study, which included an extensive literature search, was published on April 1, 1998. George Lundberg, editor of JAMA, aware of the uniqueness of the situation, said: "Age doesn't matter. It's good science that matters, and this is good science".[1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14]

The study tested the ability of 21 TT practitioners to detect the HEF when they were not looking. Rosa asked each of the practitioners to sit at a table and extend their hands through a screen. On the other side of the screen, Rosa randomly selected one of the TT practitioners' hands and held her own hand over it. The TT practitioners were then asked which of their hands detected Rosa's HEF. Subjects were each given ten tries, but they correctly located Rosa's hand an average of only 4.4 times. Some subjects were asked before testing to examine Rosa's hands and select which of her hands they thought produced the strongest HEF. Rosa then used that hand during the experiment, but those subjects performed no better. The results showed that TT practitioners could not detect the hand more often than chance, and Rosa and her co-authors therefore concluded that there was no empirical basis to the HEF and by extension therapeutic touch:

Reaction

Publication of Rosa's experiment in JAMA was an international media sensation. In an article in The New York Times, Rosa was likened to the child in the short tale "The Emperor's New Clothes". The article noted that Rosa's parents and helpers on the project were Linda Rosa, a registered nurse who had been campaigning against TT for nearly a decade, and Larry Sarner, chairman of the National Therapeutic Touch Study Group, an anti-TT organization.

David J Hufford claimed that the study presented ethical problems because the authors of the study enlisted the cooperation of the TT operators by presenting the study as just a "fourth grade science fair project." Hufford wrote that this was failure of full disclosure and deceit. But Hufford's analysis did not acknowledge that the first round of tests was, in fact, only a fourth grade science fair project done with no thought of future publication. Publication was suggested by Dr. Stephen Barrett months afterward when he learned that the study had taken place.[15] The second round of tests was done at the request of Scientific American Frontiers, with the participants fully aware that they were being videotaped. No subsequent experiment has been undertaken overturning her findings.[16] However, one published study clarified some of the issues that were raised at the time in parts of the skeptical community[17] [18] about the method and analysis of the data.[19] Specifically, that study found that people should be expected to detect the presence of a hand at better than chance levels, most likely due to radiant heat because interposing heat blocking materials reduced accuracy to chance levels.

Awards

Therapeutic Touch experiment

Other work

Appearances

Publications

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: The 'Emily Event' - Emily Rosa and the Therapeutic Touch Wars. September 7, 2015. November 17, 2010. Skepticality. Sarner. Larry.
  2. News: A Child's Paper Poses a Medical Challenge. The New York Times. April 1, 1998. September 7, 2015. 0362-4331. Gina. Kolata.
  3. Web site: Therapeutic Touch: Responses to Objections to the JAMA Paper. quackwatch.org. September 7, 2015. Sarner. Larry.
  4. Web site: Therapeutic Touch Study Data. quackwatch.org. September 7, 2015. Sarner. Larry. December 2007.
  5. Web site: Why Therapeutic Touch Should Be Considered Quackery. quackwatch.com. September 7, 2015. Barrett. Stephen. February 3, 2008.
  6. News: Roger Ebert. Slate. April 11, 1998. September 7, 2015. 1091-2339.
  7. Book: Mook, Douglas G.. Psychological Research: The Ideas Behind the Methods. Norton. January 1, 2001. 9780393976205.
  8. Book: Shermer, Michael. The skeptic encyclopedia of pseudoscience. ABC-Clio. January 1, 2002. Santa Barbara, Calif, Oxford. 18380420M.
  9. Book: How to Measure Anything: Finding the Value of "Intangibles" in Business. Wiley. August 3, 2007. 7596184M.
  10. Web site: Gary Schwartz's Energy Healing Experiments: The Emperor's New Clothes? - CSI. csicop.org. September 7, 2015. September 29, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170929140601/https://www.csicop.org/si/show/gary_schwartzrsquos_energy_healing_experiments_the_emperorrsquos_new_clothe. dead.
  11. Web site: Touched by a Touched Healing Toucher « Science-Based Medicine. sciencebasedmedicine.org. September 7, 2015. 2008-06-06.
  12. Web site: 21stC Special Section: Medicine and the Media / controversies in research publication. columbia.edu. September 7, 2015.
  13. Web site: State-Sponsored Quackery: Feng Shui and Snake Oil for California Nurses - CSI. November 2009. csicop.org. September 7, 2015.
  14. Web site: Scheiber, Selby - Therapeutic Touch. skeptic.de. September 7, 2015.
  15. L Rosa . E Rosa . L Sarner . S Barrett . A Close Look at Therapeutic Touch . Journal of the American Medical Association . 279 . 13 . 1005–1010 . April 1, 1998 . 10.1001/jama.279.13.1005 . 9533499. free . 10.1.1.592.8130 .
  16. .
  17. Selby, C. . The JAMA TT Article Critiqued . Rocky Mountain Skeptic . March 1998 .
  18. Rocky Mountain Skeptics . Editorial . Rocky Mountain Skeptic . March 1998 .
  19. Long, R. . Bernhardt, P.C. . Williams, E. . Perception of Conventional Sensory Cues as an Alternative to the Postulated 'Human Energy Field' of Therapeutic Touch . The Scientific Review of Alternative Medicine . 3 . 53–61 . 1999 .
  20. Web site: October 19, 2015 . Youngest person to have research results published . Guinness World Records . https://web.archive.org/web/20150924132447/http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/youngest-person-to-have-research-results-published . September 24, 2015 . dead .
  21. Web site: 2000 Grand Award Winners. October 19, 2015. Colorado State Science Fair, Inc.. September 6, 2015. https://web.archive.org/web/20150906071326/http://www.csef.colostate.edu/2000CSEF/2000_Grand_Award_Winners.htm. dead.
  22. Web site: Ig Nobels honor best of technology's dreck . October 26, 2016 . Design News.
  23. Gibson . Sheila . 1998 . All Duct Out In the Name of Science . . U.S. . . https://web.archive.org/web/20011125171414/https://www.improbable.com/airchives/press/1998/skeptic-magazine-1198.html . 2001-11-25 . 2019-09-26 . subscription.
  24. Web site: January 13, 2016 . Penn & Teller: Bullshit!: Season 6, Episode 2 New Age Medicine. IMDb.

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