Bending the mind, bending the data? – report on claims of alternative therapies author Herbert Benson
C. Eugene Emery, Jr.
It’s ironic when a pioneer in mind/body medicine acknowledges that the field of alternative therapies suffers from a lapse of scientific standards, and then allegedly proceeds to misrepresent scientific studies, including some of his own research.
But that is what biologist Irwin Tessman of Purdue University and physicist Jack Tessman of Tufts University say they found when they looked into some of the claims of Herbert Benson, founder of Harvard’s Mind/Body Institute at Deaconess Hospital, whose latest book, Timeless Healing: The Power and Biology of Belief, asserts that humans are genetically “wired for God.”
In the book, Benson cites a study in which “women who endured persistent nausea and vomiting during pregnancy were given a drug they were told would cure the problem [while] in fact they were given the opposite – syrup of ipecac [which induces vomiting] – [and] remarkably, the patients’ nausea and vomiting ceased entirely because they believed they received anti-nausea medicine.”
The Tessman brothers, in a review of Timeless Healing in the April 18, 1997, issue of Science (276: 369-70), say the study was cited to show the power of the placebo effect. But according to their review, when they checked the original paper, they discovered that it involved only one pregnant woman.
Citing another study, one that he coauthored, Benson explains how “thirty-six percent of women with unexplained infertility became pregnant within six months” of completing a program that taught infertile women to relax through meditation.
But when the Tessmans checked the original study, they say they discovered that there were no matched controls, as the study’s authors had properly pointed out, and “several” women became pregnant after they had been accepted into the program but before they had been taught meditative relaxation. “Assuming that ‘several’ means at least three,” the brothers say in their review, “we calculate that (with a large statistical error) the conception rate before treatment began was at least equal to and possibly higher than the rate after treatment began.”
Benson cites another study, of which he was also a coauthor, that supposedly found that “[p]atients who had open-heart surgery had fewer postoperative arrhythmias and less anxiety following surgery” if they had been taught relaxation techniques. Once again, the original research “demonstrated no significant evidence of benefits,” the Tessmans conclude in their Science review.
One of the best-known claims surrounding the mind/body debate involves the ability of Tibetan monks to wrap themselves in wet, frigid, cotton sheets without shivering violently, as most people would do, according to Benson.
It turns out that Irwin Tessman tried the experiment using swimming trunks and a white cotton tennis shirt soaked with 9 [degrees] C water. “The immediate effect was mildly bracing, but not truly uncomfortable (try it in still air, as the monks reportedly did). For the abbreviated 15-minute duration of a first-time trial, this aged beginner experienced no violent shivering or even serious discomfort,” according to the review. “None of this would surprise wacky Green Bay Packers fans cavorting bare-chested in wintry Lambeau Field.”
“People forget,” said Irwin in an interview, “that the wet shirt actually insulates you.”
Gene Emery writes the SKEPTICAL INQUIRER’s “Media Watch” column.
COPYRIGHT 1997 Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group
