Until recently, I considered Wikipedia to be one of the great advances of the Internet age: a gigantic encyclopedia of everything, at my fingertips, with real-time updates in all spheres of human knowledge. I even consult him regularly to obtain medical information as part of my work as a practicing psychiatrist.
But in recent months, I have reconsidered my project. For what? In a nutshell, it seems the folks at Wikipedia have a problem with a relatively new type of therapy that I practice and find helpful for some patients.
Here’s the backstory.
For several years now, I have been increasingly deploying this new form of psychotherapy, called energy psychology (EP), in my work with chronic pain patients at the outpatient clinic at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Medford, Massachusetts.
Energy psychology uses a combination of exposure (intentionally reliving unpleasant emotions surrounding a stressful situation) and desensitization (affirmations of self-acceptance despite persistence of symptoms), as well as a somatic component (tapping on one’s own pain points). acupressure) to defuse the emotional charge of these upsetting memories.
Without going into detail about how it works, suffice it to say that energy psychology has helped many of my patients make great strides, especially when post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is involved. (For example, when a scary automobile accident triggered the disorder). For some patients, a full recovery is possible. I saw it.
A large body of research over the past 10 years shows how effective energy therapy can be for a wide range of clinical problems, as described in this paper. journal article from the American Psychological Association journal, Review of General Psychology.
Energy psychology has been shown to be particularly effective in the treatment of PTSD in combat veterans. And energy psychology has even received mainstream attention from television shows. Dr. Oz has The Huffington Post.
But you’ll never know any of this from Wikipedia. Their articles use a range of emotionally charged and downright derogatory terms to describe energy psychology and make no mention of the promising new research published over the past decade. Their article on the related topic of Energy medicinefor example, only includes studies conducted before 2004 (although more recent critical reviews are cited).
Wikipedia entry on the most widely used energy psychology protocol (Emotional Freedom Techniquesor EFT) refers to the field of energy psychology as a “pseudoscience” and relies on judgments made by a non-peer-reviewed blog named – Quackwatch – reveals how objective he is (no).
To counter what we consider to be gross misrepresentations, the international energy psychology community and members of the national energy psychology organization – the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP) – have attempted to add new citations of research to the article on energy psychology, as per Wikipedia’s promise. update their entries to include scientifically validated results.
However, new entries supporting energy psychology appear to have been removed from the site. Fortunately, many details of this process are stored on the “Revision History” link of any Wikipedia article, so much of the back-and-forth process can be followed and inconsistencies between policy and practice become obvious. (The revision history of Emotional Freedom Technique is here).
Even studies published in prestigious peer-reviewed journals like the Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases whose editor-in-chief is the former president of the American Psychiatric Association, have not been cited by Wikipedia, nor has it been mentioned that the American Psychological Association now licenses its approved continuing education providers to offer training in energy psychology for continuing education units, the result of a long appeal process.
Because these obstacles have persisted despite several years of good faith efforts in the face of repeated “cleansing” of favorable energy psychology information from Wikipedia, ACEP recently launched a petition via change.org, asking Wikipedia to demonstrate equity by discussing new holistic approaches. therapies. More than 11,300 supporters signed and, to our great surprise (and I say “our” because I am an active member of CAPE), the founder of Wikipedia: Jimmy Wales – responded personally to the petition. Here is what he wrote on the change.org website:
No, you’re kidding me. Every person who signed this petition needs to check its premises and think more about what it means to be honest, factual and truthful.
Wikipedia’s policies regarding this sort of thing are completely correct and correct. If you can get your work published in respectable scientific journals, that is, if you can produce evidence through reproducible scientific experiments, then Wikipedia will cover it appropriately. What we won’t do is pretend that the work of crazy charlatans is the equivalent of “real scientific discourse.” This is not the case.
(Rachel Zimmerman Editor’s Note: I emailed Jimmy Wales to confirm that this response came from him and he responded, “Yes and I fully stand by my remarks.” In an email Later, responding to the question of whether Wikipedia is biased against certain alternative therapies, he wrote: “My basic answer is that there is no factual basis for the claim that we are biased, other than a strong bias toward peer-reviewed academic research published in reputable scientific journals.”
But in fact, Wikipedia has repeatedly refused to recognize the type of work Mr. Wales is calling for: “reproducible experiments” deemed worthy of publication by “respectable scientific journals.” The journal editors and the American Psychological Association have already made their judgment on the scientific validity of these energy psychology studies by giving their approval for the publication of many such studies. It is not the job of Mr. Wales or Wikipedia to determine what constitutes good science – it is the job of professional experts in the field.
This is CAPE President Debby Vajda. complete answer in Wales.
In my view, these developments are the result of a struggle between old and new paradigms that offer competing explanations for the nature of health, disease, and consciousness. It’s a fight that must be approached with scientific integrity and fair, open reporting, but unfortunately one of the primary gatekeepers of information in our digital age is not playing fair and it’s time to make a change. The stakes are high.
Eric Leskowitz is a psychiatrist at the Medford, Massachusetts clinic of Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, and an instructor in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.
