Leaving the Land of Woo

Tags: Reiki claims

We have recently been making some enquiries into the ITEC Level 3 Diploma in Reiki because it is apparently a qualification based on detecting and manipulating an undetectable healing energy unknown to science, and with no evidence of its presence to be found.  Youngsters are being offered a course which includes learning "basic energy sensing skills" and are taught about fictional notions like chakras and auras.

It seems the course was jointly developed by ITEC and the Reiki Council though ITEC say they didn't have much to do with the course content.  Such courses have to meet certain standards laid down by OFQUAL and those requirements cover the nature and scope of the assessments leading to awards.  Courses have to show they are professionally delivered and meet certain standards of objectivity.

For example, differentiation between the candidates must be only on the basis of the evidence they provide, to make sure they are all treated fairly.  But in the case of Reiki, it isn't possible to tell the difference between someone who actually detects undetectable energy, and someone who just says they do.  Not even the instructor can demonstrate its presence so how can they possibly tell whether any of the candidates has demonstrated anything at all?  Clearly the course, on its own terms cannot meet the OFQUAL requirements.

But OFQUAL say that Reiki is just a relaxation technique, like yoga.  Of course Reiki practitioners claim vastly more for it than that.  They talk about healing energy being transferred, that practitioners can download it and make use of it to help the body heal itself.  These are grandiose and unjustifiable claims.  So how come OFQUAL, which is supposed to uphold high standards in qualification assessment, are so easily taken in by these claims?

Back in May last year, they published a survey document about the alternative medicine industry and listed those areas where there was a shortage of qualifications.  They made no assessment of whether these alternatives had any basis in fact.  In the document, they accept as fact whatever they were given from the various alt-med bodies so we get a totally uncritical statement: "Cranial Therapies are hands-on therapeutic approaches for normalising the functioning of the craniosacral mechanism and reflected imbalances in the body tissues."  This is utterly without basis in fact.

Having listed those areas of alt-med lacking available qualifications, they then comment on the need for more courses.  This is good news for qualifications providers and institutions that teach them because it leads to more bums on seats, more finance.  But providing spurious qualifications undermines the whole point of qualifications in the first place.

Starting from a market survey of available courses, demand is generated based on spurious alt-med claims, endorsed by government agencies who almost accidentally give academic credibility to nonsense ideas.  Despite the laudable aim of providing career opportunities for youngsters, these empty qualifications are encouraging young people to accept deluded ideas about human biology and base their employment on misinformation, non-existent skills, and potentially dishonest and fraudulent practices.

You can write to Skills for Health here and ask questions about who checked the content of this course.  You'll be doing youngsters a favour if it gets these bodies to check what they are actually endorsing.  My guess is that they just offload the responsibility for content back onto the sponsors, in this case the Reiki Council.  As if they are going to question their own unjustified beliefs!

Tags: academic woo aggregator | Orac | Quackademia

David Colquhoun is well-known for his campaigning against the introduction of academic Woo into UK universities, challenging the content of homeopathy courses and exposing the ludicrous content of their examinations.

In the US, the illustrious blogger Orac has been doing the same for a number of years and has compiled a list of academic institutions offering quackademic courses.  He lists over forty such institutions here in his Academic Woo Aggregator.

It is quite extraordinary that so much mystical nonsense is taught under the guise of academic authority and therefore understandable when so many people go along with these ideas in the complete absence of any evidence.  Getting accepted into an academic institution gives these wacky ideas credibility amongst the general public.  After all, anyone coming out of a university with a degree is assumed to have studied a subject which has some academic credibility. 

Now that is no longer the case.  As Orac has shown, academic institutions will promote anything as long as there's money in it.