A study on the effects of hands on healing [Therapeutic touch] on the growth of plants in a controlled environment versus control group and standard deviation
As proven by earlier studies [referenced at the end of the essay] hands on healing (Referred to as HH for the remainder of this essay, also goes by the name of Reiki, Chiqong, Therapeutic touch and a wide variety of other names) has an effect on the growth speed of cells as well as a moderate decrease in pain reported by patients. HH carries a heavy social and psychological burden in the scientific community because of its perceived status as a sham, hoax or a snake oil healing method. Despite strong evidence to the contrary this status has not changed in the eyes of a vocal part of the medical and psychological community. Most of the argument against HH rests on its perceived status as a placebo treatment regardless of its proven effectiveness far beyond what normal placebo treatments would indicate. To study the effect of HH in a controlled environment against a placebo group can be difficult as HH usually requires a close contact with the patient and under these conditions a sham healer used in the placebo control might be exposed and lower the accuracy of the results as patients would be aware of being in a placebo control. Thus the study I propose would work around this problem by working with plants instead of humans.
If HH is an effective way to boost health as is claimed then these effects should be same on all forms of living matter, human or animal and should act in a roughly similar manner. To study this in more detail I propose the following test regiment. A hired gardener who is unaware of the nature of the test plants 100 saplings of 3 different plants each for a total of 300 saplings. These plants will grow in identical conditions as far as possible in controlled closed greenhouses where all will receive an equal amount of nutrients and sunlight at the same time. These 300 will be divided into groups of 25 each assigned to one of the 3 groups. Group A consists of certified healers of at least 5 years of proven experience. Group B consists of sham healers who are skeptical to HH and have not studied it and are only instructed to mechanically follow the healers and copy their actions. Group C is the control group and will receive no healing. Each group of 25 plants in groups A and B will be designated to a single healer or sham healer and be under their energy care only to prevent a potentially harmful healer from influencing the results. Groups A, B and C will be placed in different greenhouses under identical conditions and placed under video surveillance to insure impartiality and to avoid what healers describe as an area healing where patients not directly healed still receive energy. By eliminating the healer’s knowledge of groups B and C an accidental healing can be avoided.
The healing itself is carried out over a period of 3 months and regular measurements of the plants in question are made once per week, measuring plant weight, height, growth stage. Healings are done 3 times a week and consist of distant healing given over a span of 1½ hours, Healers are allowed to sit in the same room as the plants but are not allowed to touch or come within 2 meters of the plants to prevent an increase in CO2 intake and the resulting growth from that. Sham healers only sit in the room with their plants for an identical amount of time as group A does.
The hypothesis is that plants in group A should grow more than plants in group B or C with group B potentially doing slightly better than group C. So in essence, the question I wish to answer or at least bring to the surface with this study is, in its simplicity, do plants grow faster when subjected to HH? If so, is the increase statistically significant? This study is simple in nature as the test subjects themselves are non human and by most definitions non sentient so ethics and in fact most of the fields of psychology itself are not relevant to this study. The nature of this study is similar to medical trials on animals before human tests are undertaken and as HH is popularly considered placebo the only real way to eliminate the possibility of placebo is to undertake the tests on primitive organisms not capable of producing a placebo reaction.
Healers used in this study will be collected from the greater Helsinki area based on the snowball action where one healer will contact others and so on until a desired group is achieved. Healers who drop out before the study is finished will have their plant group assigned to another healer.
Information gathering will be done purely by measuring the plant growth and comparing groups A-B-C and the subgroups of A and B per healer and comparing and analyzing the growth patterns versus the control group C and known growth speed for the plants in question from previous information. At the end of the test total plant mass in groups A-B-C will be compared against each other to see which has accumulated the most plant mass. Various other methods of analyzing plant health will be undertaken including chemical analysis to determine plant health.
There is a serious problem with the accuracy of the method of analysis in this study due to the large natural variance on plant growth speed and the difficulty of assessing the health of an individual plant. Accuracy of the test results will have a large dependence on the reliability of the gardener hired to take care of the plants and the reliability of the measurements of the plant size. Methods for an accurate analysis of plant conditions need to be devised before the test can proceed with satisfactory accuracy.
A step by step list of the stages in this experiment with explanations
Step one: Procure a sufficiently controlled greenhouse space that allows for the test to be completed, requires 3 separate spaces with some distance between them to try to work around what healers describe as healing presence. Distance is important for the same reason why it is important for 2 organisms subjected to different bacterial infections for research purposes to be kept separate. Failure in this step will either invalidate or seriously distort the test results resulting in a far higher probability of a false negative.
Step two: Set up the space and hire the gardener to take care of the plants. Both steps are important as the gardener is the only individual who should be allowed to handle the plants directly to prevent possibility fraud. Interview of the gardener using various psychological assessments for reliability as well as potential background check due to the importance of his status for the experiment and potential bias towards one or other belief might cause the individual to tamper with the plants. The healers will also be contacted at this stage and asked to come in for interviews where they will present their previous healing experience and present proof that they are an acclaimed healer. Proof of healing abilities will not be required due to the controversial nature of such proof, simply proof of status as an acclaimed healer.
Step three: Plant groups A, B and C each in their individual greenhouse and set up a video surveillance system to video the growth and to dispel potential claims of fraud by researchers. Assign group A and B to their respective healers and sham healers. Begin the testing and proceed to data collection.
Step four: Once all necessary data has been collected proceed to analyze it for a statistically significant variation. Dispose the plants and conclude the test phase of the trial.
Step Five: Once analysis has been completed present the results for peer review and to be questioned by the scientific community.
Potential application and follow-up testing
If the results are positive and there is a correlation between plant growth and healing then as an immediate follow-up I propose a study to see if a similar result can be obtained by subjecting various different tissue samples of humans, animals, moss and other living organisms to HH and measuring their growth rates. If there is a proven correlation between the test I proposed and any follow up tests then a field test in hospitals or medical centers would be a logical next step. Access to the general population and healthcare facilities would be crucial for any potential application and as such is beyond the scope of this proposal.
Analysis of faults and suggestions for improvement
While this research can potentially be groundbreaking for modern medical science it goes without saying that it could stand improvement. Due to the scarcity of resources for such a fringe study many of the steps I would like to take such as outdoor testing, crop yield studies under similar conditions, studies in more than one city/geographic area are impractical or would cost too much to feasible. The biggest potential problem for the test as it is now is the inability to verify the healer group as being legitimate other than by reputation which opens the study for serious problems. The biggest benefit from studying in plants instead of living organisms is the plants uniform or close to uniform DNA due to thousands of years of selective breeding, because of this any proven result can be quickly replicated and this test can be potentially used to prove or disprove a claimed healing ability. If the plants do indeed grow quicker under true healers than the control group there is also another potential use for this test. If we gather a group of common people from the streets and ask them to perform a similar test and then measure the plant growth rate and drop the low 80% of participants and ask the 20% to do the same again and we once again measure the results we could potentially develop a method of picking out natural healers from a crowd. Or in other words those who have undeveloped healing abilities. This could open up a potentially critical benefit for modern healthcare as hands on healers could simply be screened from the general population in school level testing and those with abilities could be offered a training regiment similar to how talented people in their own field have special schools.
But back again to the potential errors in this study. Any point where all the data depends on a single person or a single variable not itself measured, such as the gardener, plant seeds from a single location and so on, the accuracy of the test is seriously in question. Due to the nature of the energy under observation and debate in this study internal and external validity should be fairly high. Most healers study in a hectic real world situation and as such should already be highly competent in real world healing situations so while the study itself is done in a controlled situation simply to make measuring any change easier it should also be fairly easy to transport to a real world situation and thus vastly increase external validity. Internal validity can prove a bigger problem as dropout rate of healers and sham healers can increase to such a point that by the end of the study healers will be healing far more plants than by the start and as such the amount of energy one plant gets can decrease to a point where the validity drops or vanishes all together. The only efficient way to prevent this is to pay the healers and use all available methods to try to convince them to stay such as making the test situation a work assignment for them as healers and by that make leaving the study an unethical thing for them. However due to the ethical complications in this the only realistic way to increase the accuracy is to simply remove the plants where the healer has quit.
This would not be a problem for a quantative study if the group of healers used was sufficiently large but due to the difficulty of procuring healers and spaces required for such a large long term study even a minor fluctuation in the healer group can cause vast deviation over the long term. If the healing energy is present in everyone at all times and healers simply learn how to channel or focus it on a particular area then even the perceptions or beliefs of the testing personnel can alter the end results. To correct this potential fault would require extreme measures and render the test unethical, lobotomizing or drugging the scientists involved in studying the results would be impossible, impractical and illegal. The only way to influence this variable is to simply ask the research staff to keep an open mind and try to avoid making any kinds of decisions in their mind and to try to not focus on any expected results.
Because of the nature of the study and the fringe nature of the phenomena under study stricter control over the test needs to be carried out as opposed to an already accepted field of study. As the burden of proof lies on those who claim new things it requires meticulous effort and accuracy at all stages of the study. Extensive interviews and psychological profiles of all the research staff as well as surveillance of the test area to prevent tampering for or against a positive result would also be beneficial but once again outside of the financial possibilities.
Closing thoughts
Although I’m tempted to carry out this research myself as my post graduation doctoral thesis or under similar conditions. Due to my intensive study of HH the accuracy of the test might be corrupted by my own awareness of both groups and of the test conditions. This study for me is one of those studies I would find very difficult to do but would be very tempted to carry out some day. From my personal experience and testing I can safely say that HH works, the principle and conditions under which it works are still not certain to me. Therefore this study will be of interest to me even though I know HH works, mostly because it will be an interesting analysis on the extent of its function as well as the ability of healers in the general community.
References to similar studies:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18370579?ordinalpos=1&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18332355?ordinalpos=3&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18272750?ordinalpos=4&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18258581?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18051981?ordinalpos=8&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18029964?ordinalpos=10&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
PubMed database under Therapeutic touch produces 628 studies, reiki 493 studies, as well as a wide variety of other results for less known methods and variations of their spellings. I’ve listed some of the studies above for the interested researcher.
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