The first programme in the series looks at hypnotherapy and will be shown on Monday, 17th March 2008, at 9.00pm on BBC Two.
http://www.fih.org.uk/news/alternative.html
Alternative Therapies, a three-part documentary series due to air on BBC Two from Monday 17 March, will follow the personal and scientific journey of Professor Kathy Sykes as she explores three fast-growing alternative therapies: meditation, hypnotherapy and reflexology.
The series, for which a trustee of the Foundation [for Integrated Health] has worked on an advisory capacity, travels to locations around the globe to uncover where these therapies come from, why they are so popular and if and how they actually work.
As her journey unfolds, Professor Sykes looks at some of the impressive claims made by advocates of each therapy and with help of expert scientists, examines how such claims square with clinical and scientific results. She also experiences the therapies for herself and shares her honest reactions.
Alternative Therapies has been fully funded by the Open University. There will be follow-up debates and web-based blogs set up to discuss the issues raised in the programmes. You can reach the discussion sites via www.Open2.net.
Blue Wode
That a "definite" for me. Thanks for the info - I might just have missed it.
the shortest serise ever;
interveiwer= "does alternative medicen work?"
scientist="no."
THE END...
I wonder if we'll see open-heart surgery with the patient conscious but getting reflexology instead of anaesthetic this series?
I'm kind of hoping it will be every bit as bad as the last series as I want to read all the blogging that will be done about it.
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I just hope they do a third series which looks at homeopathy and chiropractic. Then we'd really have a field day.
Well, I thought the first episode of the new series wasn’t terribly exciting.
Basically, it began by taking a long look at popular hypnotherapy (the unconvincing results of which could be entirely due to demand characteristics) - all of which led up to a segment in which we witnessed a middle-aged lady having her two upper front teeth extracted and replaced with implants under hypnosis (and with the ‘minimal’ help of two ibuprofen tablets).
What we weren’t told was how loose her teeth were to begin with - something which could have gone a long way to explaining why the hypnosis may not have been as "deeply impressive" as Kathy Sykes thought it was (especially since it was recently reported in our news that some people have had to resort to pulling out their own teeth due to the shortage of NHS dentists).
All in all, the whole tooth extraction/implants procedure seemed to be quite time-consuming and costly since the hypnotist didn’t seem to be the one performing the surgery. IMO, novocaine has to be cheaper and more convenient.
The programme’s conclusion was equally disappointing with its suggestion that more research is needed into the brain activity which occurs during trances (states of highly focused attention) to see if hypnosis might perform better than a placebo for pain relief.
As Bob (Voodoo Science) Park said about the efficacy of acupuncture - why not just take an aspirin instead?
Hopefully, the next two programmes will be a little more enthralling.
For those interested, there’s a synopsis of the first episode here:
http://open2.net/alternativetherapies/hypnothereapyprogsummary.html
The programme can now be viewed here (approx. 60 minutes):
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009jcrj.shtml?filter=txdate%3A17-03&filter=txslot%3Aevening&start=1&scope=iplayerla st7days&version_pid=b009jclh
I thought the programme was extremely poor and simply followed the same formula used in the first series:The 'amazing ooh and ah' demonstration this week was a woman having two front teeth extracted and replaced with false ones whilst using hypnotherapy as the anaesthesia. There was plenty of histrionics from Kathy whilst present at this operation, but no mention of the fact that it is actually possible to have dental work done without anaesthesia or how painful this particular procedure was likely to be without it.
- Claims are made for an alternative therapy;
- Lots of anecdotes are shown in support of it;
- Kathy then decides to look at the scientific evidence base;
- There's no scientific evidence to support it;
- Kathy introduces the 'placebo effect' to explain what might be going on;
- Then we see a demonstration of the alternative therapy in action;
- We get an 'argument from personal incredulity' as Kathy oohs and ahs at the 'amazing' demonstration taking place;
- We're given a reason why, despite the fact that there's no evidence to support it, the alternative therapy might just work anyway.
Demonstrations like this imply that the procedure without anaesthesia would be excruciatingly painful, but it's not necessarily the case. Until anaesthesia was available, dental work, and operations like caesarian births, were done routinely without anaesthetic. The amount of pain a person can tolerate with appropriate distraction is vastly underestimated.
I guess the Open University, like other educational institutions, is offering these courses because there's a demand for them and they make money. So it seems that despite the fact that we know that nothing is going on with these alternative medicines other than placebo effects, they have to pretend that there is something more to it.
Although this is presented under the façade of science, it's nothing more than an exercise in active ignorance.
God, I can't wait to see the one on reflexology!
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Interesting what Madeleine Bunting has to say about tonight’s Reflexology programme:
Sykes is too good a scientist to give complementary medicine an easy run. Tonight she examines reflexology, and gives it pretty short shrift.
The rest of the article is also ‘interesting’:
‘It is unscientific to pour wholesale scorn on complementary medicine’
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/24/medicalresearch.pseudoscience
For a synopsis of tonight’s programme, see here:
http://open2.net/alternativetherapies/reflexology.html
Kathy Sykes has discovered the Placebo Effect!!!
Again.
The overall conclusion seemed to be that a bit of pampering and attention can make you feel a bit better when you're under the weather.
Yes, another programme on stating the bleedin' obvious. An utterly pointless programme that 'discovered' what we already knew anyway.
Again.
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It wasn't on in Scotland so I nearly forgot about it.
That was really poor - she made no attempt to take reflexology to task on all the healing claims it was making, rather she was looking for the science behind reflexology when there was nothing to prove.
Why couldn't she just come out and say that all the claims being made for reflexology are garbage, and that the theory behind it was invented by complete cranks? Because that's what she clearly should have said.
I can only imagine that the amount of superfluous filler in that programme was to spin it out for an hour, because they only realised once they started how dreadful a subject it was.
And that healing fair at the beginning -
How strange that BBC2 Scotland broadcast the first episode last week, but not this week’s episode. Fortunately, it’s available here for the next 6 days:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b009nlx6.shtml?filter=txdate%3A24-03&filter=txslot%3Aevening&start=1&scope=iplayerla st7days&version_pid=b009nlww
I’m off to watch it.
There was a programme about a deaf school moving from Edinburgh to Linlithgow in it's place. The wife wanted to watch it cos she knew someone who was going to be in the programme, but then decided she was too busy on the computer, so I watched Alternative Therapies which I was Sky Plusing on BBC2 NI.Originally Posted by Blue Wode
That’s good to know, FarSide, thanks for the tip.I watched Alternative Therapies which I was Sky Plusing on BBC2 NI.
As for the second episode, I thought that Professor Raymond Tallis summed up reflexology very well with his suggestion that its benefits are attributable to a placebo effect – in essence, a response to “hope, attention, and care”. To me, the ‘Hugging Stop’ at the Quest Natural Health Show in Devon and the cuddle party in Los Angeles showed a more honest way of eliciting that response – although, understandably, they wouldn’t be for everyone.
As usual, the programme could have been condensed into about 10 minutes. For example, did we really need to see Kathy Sykes on a jet bound for the USA, wandering across an enormous, deserted beach in California, and trying to fathom reflexology’s elusive mechanism on a pebble shore beside the Humber Bridge on a particularly overcast day? At times it looked more like a holiday show than a science programme.
Presumably, we can expect more of the same next week.
Next weeks programme is on meditation, so perhaps the BBC will be paying for her to jet off to Thailand to spend some time with Buddhist monks?
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