The Science Fair and Therapeutic Touch
A study published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association debunks a healing technique called therapeutic touch. It's a practice that is gaining popularity, especially among some nurses in the U-S and Canada who say they can manipulate an energy field that exists around humans and thereby promote healing. The experiment tested the ability of practitioners of therapeutic touch to detect an energy field around a human being and found that they could not do so reliably. The experiment was designed and conducted by a 9-year-old Loveland, Colorado, girl for a science fair. The girl's mother, a nurse who is a critic of therapeutic touch, wrote up the experiment and submitted it for publication. NPR's Rebecca Perl reports.
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