Chapter 27, Problem 4DCR

Summary Introduction

To clarify:

A patient brings you a clipping from the December 11, 2011 Chicago Times with an article by Trine Tsouderos. “Thanks to a $ 374,000 taxpayer-funded grant, we now know that inhaling lemon and lavender scents doesn’t do a lot for our ability to heal a wound. With $666,000 in federal research money, scientists examined whether distant prayer could heal AIDS. It could not. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine also helped pay scientists to study whether squirting brewed coffee into someone’s intestines can help treat pancreatic cancer (a $ 406,000 grant) and whether massage makes people with advanced cancer feel better ($1.25 million). The coffee enemas did not help. The massage did.” He asks you how he can know “what works”? How do you reply?