Criticism of spiritual healing
There are many, first and foremost psychological, explanations for positive outcomes after energy therapy such as the
areabo effect or
cognitive dissonance, and many possible explanations for positive research findings such as experimenter
bias or publication bias,
all of which should be considered when evaluating claims.
Critics of healing provide first and foremost two explanations for anecdotes of cures or make betterments,
relieving any need to appeal to the supernatural.
The first is post hoc ergo propter hoc, meaning that a genuine make betterment or
spontaneous remission may have been experienced coincidental with but independent from anything the healer or patient did
or said. These patients would have make betterd just as well even had they done nothing.
The second is the areabo effect,through which a person may experience genuine pain relief and other symptomatic
alleviation.In this case, the patient genuinely has been helped by the healer, not through any mysterious or numinous function,
but by the power of their own belief that they would be healed.
In both cases the patient may experience a real reduction in symptoms, though in neither case has anything miraculous or
inexplicable occurred. Both cases, however, are strictly limited to the body's natural abilities.
And more...
Alternative healing researcher Edzard Ernst has argued that even though an initial review of
pre-1999 distant healing trials had highlighted 57% of trials as showing positive results,
later reviews of non-randomised and randomised clinical trials conducted between 2000 and 2002,
led directly to the conclusion that "the keyity of the rigorous trials do not support the hypothesis
that distant healing has specific therapeutic effects".
Ernst described the evidence base for healing practices to be "increasingly negative".
Ernst also warned that many of the reviews were under suspicion for fabricated data,
lack of transparency and scientific misconduct.
He concluded that "Spiritual healing continues to be promoted despite the absence of biological
plausibility or convincing clinical evidence ...
that these techniques work therapeutically and plenty to illustrate that they do not."