Add Homonym Attacks! #6
Ad Hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason.
Ad Hominem Attack: An argument that focuses on a personal attack as opposed to the subject in question.
Add Homonym Attacks!: The process by which one inserts a homophone and it bites you.
(It also serves as the title to Inside Pulse’s representative column in the world of Critical Thinking, Science and Skepticism.)
Developing your Bullshit detector
Reflexology
Reflexology is a method of giving a foot massage to diagnose diseases and subsequently cure them.
If you have a keenly developed bullstuff detector it should be sounding like a car alarm already.
Reflexology professes pathways that exist from the feet (and sometimes the hands) to each and every part of the body. Somehow rubbing the foot at the end of the pathway enables the reflexologist to see medical problems in his/her victim/client. A few more rubs makes it all go away.
My aunt actually is a reflexologist. She was rubbing the feet of another aunt of mine. The second aunt’s feet started to sweat. The first aunt says, “That is the cholesterol leaving your body.”
You see toxins that f*ck with your chi leak out of your feet after a good toe groping.
Thankfully I wasn’t there when my aunts shared that moment. In my family it is frowned upon to slap a family member sharply and without apology.
Anyways, according to reflexology, each part of the foot corresponds to a different part of the body.
For a chart of this nonsense, you can check out here
http://www.themassagestudio.ca/images/reflexology-chart-sm.gif
or here
http://www.institutoeuropeodelbienestar.com/images/products/rollingmass-reflexology-eng.jpg
or here
http://www.handsonsupply.com/media/chart%20reflexology.jpg
or here
http://www.reflexology-usa.net/Images/sg10.jpg
Now, if you’re paying attention, you might notice something special about these charts.
They are all different.
This is a good algorithm to add to your bullshit detector. If the basic facts of a “science” vary greatly from one source to the next, it’s probably not a real science.
I’m pondering now.
One wonders which part is rubbed when the foot is injured. One also wonders why we don’t just rub all of our feet all of the time as preventative medicine. Perhaps special shoes.
Of course there is a reflexology steering wheel cover, but not all reflexologists treat the hands. I betcha there are shoes out there somewhere. There’s gotta be.
If I am being subtle in all this, I would like to state for the record: reflexology doesn’t work. There is no way it could work. It’s just silly.
The reflexologist is a con artist. Granted some are con-artists that believe their own lies, but that doesn’t really excuse any of it. They work like psychics do. Review past AHA!s for info on Cold, Warm, and Hot Reading, and apply them here.
It also might be good to go to How To Make Decisions #3 on the regressive fallacy.
Add that knowledge to your bullshit detector, as well.
Killing it dead! with research
Quackwatch.org is a great site to find out about nonsense such as reflexology. They have a nice little recap of the research done about it: (added emphasis mine)
Although the claims of reflexology are so far removed from scientific reality that testing them might seem a waste of time, a few competent researchers have conducted investigations.
The first study I know of was supervised by William T. Jarvis, Ph.D., a professor who taught research methods to graduate students at Loma Linda University. Using questionnaires, 70 subjects were asked to state whether they had had health problems during the previous two years in any of 43 anatomical areas. These data were then compared with the findings of a reflexologist as recorded on a report form. The results did not differ from what would be expected by blind guessing. To prevent the reflexologist from asking questions or observing subtle clues, the experimental subjects were asked to remain silent and a curtain was placed so that their feet were the only part of their body visible to the reflexologist [12].
(SNIP)
In another study, three experienced reflexologists examined 18 adults with one or more 6 specified conditions identified from their medical records. The data showed no significant relationship between the patient’s medical diagnoses and the reflexologists’ findings [14].
(Snip)
Another study examined the popular claim that reflexology treatment benefits bronchial asthma. Ten weeks of active or simulated (placebo) reflexology were compared in a controlled trial of 40 outpatients with asthma. Objective lung function tests (peak flow morning and evening, and weekly spirometry at the clinic) did not change. Subjective scores (describing symptoms, beta2-inhalations and quality of life) and also bronchial sensitivity to histamine improved on both regimens, but no significant differences were found between groups receiving active or placebo reflexology. The researchers concluded that they had found no evidence that reflexology has a specific effect on asthma beyond placebo influence [16].
Their whole article is pretty good. Check it out at: http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/reflex.html
The Dr. Jarvis mentioned also has a website on reflexology over at:
http://www.ncahf.org/articles/o-r/reflexology.html
But is there anything to it?
Anything real? No. Refelxology is an invention. It is a collection of unsubstantiated claims. Eunice Ingham (1889-1974) made it up in the 1930s as a specialization of the equally stupid “zone therapy.”
However, a foot massage can feel really nice. It can relax. It cannot cure cancer.
Sometimes foot massages can feel really good. Many seem to find the foot a source of eroticism. V.S. Ramachandran, neuroscientist, offers an explanation of such things:”The genitals are right next to the foot in the body’s brain maps,”(1998: 36-37).
See the difference there? Some random woman develops a “holistic healing system” by making shit up vs. a scientist developing a hypothesis using real anatomy as a possible explanation for a known phenomenon.
Or maybe Ramachandran is just making excuses for kinky folks. You can never be too sure.
This stuff is just frustrating. Let’s end on a happy note.
JULES
Look, just because I wouldn’t give no man a foot massage, don’t make it right for Marsellus to throw Antwan off a building into a glass- motherf*ckin-house, f*ckin’ up the way the nigger talks. That ain’t right, man. Motherf*cker do that to me, he better paralyze my ass, ’cause I’d kill’a motherf*cker.VINCENT
I’m not sayin’ he was right, but you’re sayin’ a foot massage don’t mean nothing, and I’m sayin’ it does. I’ve given a million ladies a million foot massages and they all meant somethin’. We act like they don’t, but they do. That’s what’s so f*ckin’ cool about ’em. This sensual thing’s goin’ on that nobody’s talkin about, but you know it and she knows it, f*ckin’ Marsellus knew it, and Antwan shoulda known f*ckin’ better. That’s his f*ckin’ wife, man. He ain’t gonna have a sense of humor about that shit.
Bonus Noise
For those of you who just check out this column to laugh at religious fanaticism, here is a po-mo treat for you.
http://www.christiananswers.net/q-aig/aig-jw-creationism.html
-Kennedy
