A.It involved nothing more than mere guessing.B.They th……
TEXT E
A nine-year-old schoolgirl
single-handedly cooks up a science-fair experiment that ends up debunking a
widely practiced medical treatment. Emily Rosa’s target was a practice known as
therapeutic touch (TT for short), whose advocates manipulate patients’ "energy
field" to make them feel better and even, say some, to cure them of various
ills. Yet Emily’s test shows that these energy fields can’t be detected, even by
trained TI’ practitioners. Obviously mindful of the publicity value of the
situation, Journal editor George Lundberg appeared on TV to declare, "Age
doesn’t matter. It’s good science that matters, and this is good
science."
Emily’s mother Linda Rosa, a registered nurse, has
been campaigning against TI’ for heady a decade. Linda first thought about TT in
the late ’80s, when she learned it was on the approved list for
continuing
nursing education in Colorado. Its 100,000 trained practitioners
(48,000 in the U. S. ) don’t even touch their patients. Instead, they waved
their hands a few inches from the patient’s body, pushing energy fields around
until they’ re in "balance." TI’ advocates say these manipulations can help heal
wounds, relieve pain and reduce fever. The claims are taken seriously enough
that TT therapists are frequently hired by leading hospitals, at up to $ 70 an
hour, to smooth patients’ energy, sometimes during surgery.
Yet
Rosa could not find any evidence that it works. To provide such proof, TF
therapists would have to sit down for independent testing-some- thing they
haven’t been eager to do, even though James Randi has offered more than $ 1
million to anyone who can demonstrate the existence of a human cncrgy field.
(He’s had one taker so far. She failed. ) A skeptic might conclude that TF
practitioners are afraid to lay their beliefs on the line. But who could turn
down an innocent fourth-grader Says Emily: "I think they didn’t take me very’
seriously because I’m a kid."
The experiment was straight
forward! 21 TT therapists stuck their hands, palms up, through a screen. Emily
held her own hand over one of theirs-left or right-and the practitioners had to
say which hand it was. When the results were recorded, they’d done no better
than they would have by simply guessing. If there was an energy field, they
couldn’t feel it.
Why did some TI’ practitioners agree to be the subjects of Emily’s experiment
A.It involved nothing more than mere guessing.
B.They thought it was going to be a lot of fun.
C.It was more straightforward than other experiments.
D.They sensed no harm in a little girl’s experiment.