this post was submitted on 02 Jun 2024
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I was recently reading a blog post by a generalist doctor (Baptiste Beaulieu). His kid, a baby (so no possible placebo effect, right?), was having trouble sleeping. His companion not being a doctor, wanted to try a baby chiropractor. Needless to say, he was very dubious about the whole thing, but nothing in his medical training was helping.
Twice they went and twice the chiropractor essentially lightly touched the baby here and there and done (no cracking anything!). Yet for months afterwards the baby would sleep soundly.
There are countless such anecdotes, but rarely anything scientifically reproducible. Ie, it's that baby chiropractor who's doing it. And he can't tell what exactly he did, so that BB could reproduce the effect, despite being a trained doctor.
It's as fascinating as it is infuriating for people who've dedicated their lives to studying medecine (amongst them, my father and my wife).
These are called coincidences. If you take the baby to the chiropractor and the baby suddenly gets well, of course you're going to talk about it! That doesn't mean that the chiropractor had anything to do with it. What's the chiropractor's success/failure ratio?
Also, the idea of a "baby chiropractor" squicks me out. Maybe this one only lightly touched the baby, but I've heard horror stories about them harming babies. People think "Oh, the worst that can happen is that nothing changes." No, the chiropractor can make things worse.
Squicks. This is a new word, but I approve.
my sister has a dog chiropractor. she takes her dog two every other month for $50.
dog was having issues with certain sitting positions and randomly yelping in pain. vet didn't do anything, but the chiropractor does something and the dog no longer has pain and isn't yelping anymore.
it's bullshit, but it's bullshit that works for some people. just like lonely depressed people stop being so once they find god or some other 'purpose' in their lives. and it doesn't work for others.
It's also bullshit that can harm people.
yeah? and? every single medical procedure and drug you take comes with risks as well.
That's why I like to use treatments that are backed up by science. Don't take risks without a good reason.
If it was months it could be that it would've gone away in that time anyway. Our baby had colic for four months and for couple months she did go to baby massage or some other quack doctor (mother's father insisted and paid so what the hell..) and the mother still believes it helped because of that... I'm sure it didn't do shit and it would've gotten better anyway in that time frame.
maybe the baby wasn't getting hugged enough