fMRI explained…

Hah! now I’ve never really understood fMRI except as a vague generalisation that it ’shows blood flow which correlates to neuronal activity’.
This post found on MindHacks (see my ‘blogroll’ for the link!) leads to several helpful readings about what fMRI actually measures, how it does so, and more importantly, says ‘our understanding of what [...]

Finally - truth and opinion

This is the last post in this mini-series on why I use science when deciding what interventions to use as a therapist.  As I did yesterday and the day before, I refer to William Palya’s book on research methods - it’s easy to read, available on the internet for free, and although it gives only [...]

Science and therapy

Yesterday I blogged about why I am so keen to use science to help me work ethically with clients. I talked about the basic onuses that we accept when we decide to become therapists, and showed how these are no more than what I would hope to receive if I saw a therapist or plumber [...]

Why I care about science and evidence

I caught myself wondering in the last few days about why I am so keen to pursue science and evidence-based approaches to health care.  I’m definitely consistent about wanting to know why something works, and equally consistent about knowing that it works - at the same time I meet people every day who don’t believe [...]

New blog to watch!

If this post is anything to go by, and from the ones I’ve read, it is, then dipping in and out of Science-based medicine is a very good thing.
The authors are respected scientists and doctors who write eloquently and thoughtfully about issues to do with those gray areas between science and [...]

Am I right or just dogmatic?

Even in health care, the loudest voice with the largest opinion can be the most persuasive - even with limited (or selective) use of scientific evidence. Sadly, fads exist in pain management too.
To counter our human biases we need to be critical of all research, and ask some serious questions about accepted practice as [...]

Hippocrates

Now I’m not going to post a lot about Hippocrates himself, but I want to start todays post by quoting something that he is supposed to have said: ‘There are, in fact, two things, science and opinion; the former begets knowledge, the latter ignorance’.
Hippocrates proposed that if a new treatment was to be tried, we [...]

Science and therapists

I’ll admit I’ve been warped a little by psychologists. No, I haven’t learned to blame my parents for how I’ve turned out (that’s why my mother wouldn’t let me study psychology when I left school!), but psychology as a field of science has definitely made me more thoughtful and critical of how I make [...]

Colour therapy…

With only a small proportion of the people experiencing acute low back pain becoming chronically disabled by their pain, a holy grail of sorts has been to quickly and effectively identify those who need additional help and those who don’t.
The ‘Psychosocial Yellow Flags’ initially developed in New Zealand by Kendall, Linton & Main (1999) provides [...]

Managing low back pain: knowledge and attitudes of hospital managers

Now this is a really useful, although unsurprising, study of hospital line manager’s knowledge of the management of low back pain. Sad to say, Caitriona Cunningham, Catherine Doody, and Catherine Blake of UCD School of Physiotherapy and Performance Science, Dublin, Ireland, found that 54% (N=32) of the managers who responded to their survey believed [...]