I first became aware of chiropractor Eric Pearl through the reprehensible movie The Living Matrix. Several months ago I reviewed that movie and described its segment featuring Pearl as follows:
A 5 year old with cerebral palsy was allegedly healed by “reconnective healing” by a chiropractor who is shown waving his hands a few inches away from the child’s body. Problem: There was no medical evaluation before and after to determine whether anything had objectively changed, and video of the child after treatment shows that his gait is not normal.
I have since learned that Pearl is far more than an eccentric oddball. He is a whole industry. He is teaching his “reconnective healing” methods to others worldwide through seminars in several languages, he engages in aggressive marketing, he offers practice-building advice to his many disciples, and he even foists his beliefs on groups of impressionable young children. I use the word disciples intentionally because there are strong religious overtones to this healing method.
What is Reconnective Healing?
“The Reconnection” is similar to therapeutic touch, but goes much farther. He does not need to physically touch patients because they can feel his touch without any contact. They close their eyes and he moves his hands around their bodies but several inches away. They feel a presence, see colors unknown on Earth, and often see angels (one particular angel is George, a multicolored parrot). Afterwards, they report miraculous healings of “cancers, AIDS-related diseases, epilepsy, chronic fatigue syndrome, multiple sclerosis, rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, birth disfigurements, cerebral palsy and other serious afflictions.”
How Did He Learn to Do This?
He discovered this new ability after a “Jewish gypsy” (!?) read his cards at Venice Beach and “Almost as an afterthought she said to me, ? [sic]There’s a very special work that I do through the use of axiatonal lines. It reconnects your body’s meridian lines to the grid lines on the planet that connect us to the stars and other planets.” She told him he could read about it in the Book of Enoch. (I couldn’t stand to read that book, but I skimmed it and didn’t notice anything that seemed pertinent to healing; if readers can find the pertinent sections, I’d appreciate it if they would point them out to me.) He returned for a couple of healing sessions; her fee was $333. Later, at home, a light by his bedside turned on by itself and he thought there were people in his home, that he was not alone and was being watched. He began to have other unusual experiences such as strange sensations and vibrations in his skull and legs, and he started hearing music and sounds. (In psychiatric parlance, the word for this is “hallucinations.”) Then his chiropractic patients started reporting similar unusual experiences, seeing angels and experiencing miraculous healings.
He learned that “God is the healer.”
Not only did the energy know where to go and what to do without the slightest instruction from me; the more I got my attention out of the picture the more powerful the response. Some of the greatest healings occurred when I was thinking about my grocery list.
Then he discovered he could transmit these abilities to others.
He teaches you how to activate and utilize this new, all-inclusive spectrum of healing frequencies that allow us to completely transcend “energy healing” and its myriad “techniques” to access a level of healing beyond anything anyone has been able to access prior to now!
So what is it? Something he does, or something that a mysterious energy spontaneously does when his attention is elsewhere? A spectrum of healing frequencies, or God, or angels, or axiatonal lines connecting us to the stars, or what? It doesn’t appear that he has even tried to think this through or form any coherent hypothesis.
What About Evidence?
His website is full of miraculous testimonials. These amount to what the courts call hearsay. For all we know, he or his patients could have made these stories up. He offers no medical documentation. The only attempt at any objective evidence is a ridiculous, meaningless pair of Kirlian photos of his hands during and prior to healing mode. He has never even tried to do a properly blinded, controlled test to see if patients really can sense his hands without contact. He’s not about evidence, he’s about belief.
Conclusion
According to the philosopher David Hume’s guidelines for determining whether reported miracles have really occurred, it seems more probable that Pearl’s testimony is misguided than that the phenomena he reports are real. It is far more likely that his claims are explainable through a number of well-documented human foibles: delusion, illusion, hallucination, imagination, fantasy, suggestion, misperception, misinterpretation, and inaccurate reporting. If he wants us to believe there is anything more substantial going on, the burden is on him to test his abilities and offer meaningful evidence. He’s not likely to do that: he has no motivation to test the reality of something he believes in, and he’s garnering far more fame and fortune than he ever could have as a chiropractor. It’s ironic that the etymology of chiropractic implies “hands-on” and that he is now practicing “hands-off.” I’m guessing he’s not a deliberate fraud, but merely self-deluded and lacking in critical thinking skills. His intellectual level is revealed by his own statement that
Books and I never got along. By this point in my life I had maybe read two books, and one of them I was still coloring.
He offers his patients false hope: he is probably harming at least some of them by keeping them from getting real help with their medical problems. Buyer beware!
- Yes, But. The Annotated Atlantic. - November 7th, 2009 [November 7th, 2009]
- Health Insurance Benefit Costs by Region - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- For an Operator, Please Press... - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pollyanna With a Pen: Maine Governor Signs 18 New Health Care Bills into Law - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- AMA Sounds the Alarm, Medicare Making Yet Another Attempt to Cut Reimbursement - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mass Governor Asks Blue Cross to Keep Higher Employer Contribution - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Lifespan and Care New England Plan Monopoly (Again) - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Dirigo Health: Con Artists, Liars, and Thieves? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- New Orleans: Health Challenges - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- August a Flurry of Activity - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Maine's Dirigo Health Savings One-Third of Original Estimate - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- “Methodolatry”: My new favorite term for one of the shortcomings of evidence-based medicine - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Suzanne Somers’ Knockout: Dangerous misinformation about cancer (part 1) - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- A science-based blog about GMO - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- A Not-So-Split Decision - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Military Medicine in Iraq - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The effective wordsmithing of Amy Wallace - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- A Science Lesson from a Homeopath and Behavioral Optometrist - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Join CFI in opposing funding mandates for quackery in health care reform - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mainstreaming Science-Based Medicine: A Novel Approach - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Those who live in glass houses… - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- J.B. Handley of the anti-vaccine group Generation Rescue: Misogynistic attacks on journalists who champion science - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- When homeopaths attack medicine and physics - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The cancer screening kerfuffle erupts again: “Rethinking” screening for breast and prostate cancer - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- All Medicines Are Poison! - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- When Loud Wins: Will Your Tax Dollars Pay For Prayer? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- It’s All in Your Head - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Skeptical O.B. joins the Science-Based Medicine crew - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Tragic Death Toll of Homebirth - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What’s the right C-section rate? Higher than you think. - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Recombinant Human Antithrombin – Milking Nanny Goats for Big Bucks - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Does C-section increase the rate of neonatal death? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Man in Coma 23 Years – Is He Really Conscious? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Why Universal Hepatitis B Vaccination Isn’t Quite Universal - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Ontario naturopathic prescribing proposal is bad medicine - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Naturopaths and the anti-vaccine movement: Hijacking the law in service of pseudoscience - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The Institute for Science in Medicine enters the health care reform fray - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Neti pots – Ancient Ayurvedic Treatment Validated by Scientific Evidence - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Early Intervention for Autism - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- A temporary reprieve from legislative madness - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- A critique of the leading study of American homebirth - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Lose those holiday pounds - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Endocrine disruptors—the one true cause? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Acupuncture for Chronic Prostatitis/Chronic Pelvic Pain Syndrome - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Evidence in Medicine: Experimental Studies - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Midwives and the assault on scientific evidence - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The Mammogram Post-Mortem - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- An Influenza Recap: The End of the Second Wave - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The End of Chiropractic - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Cell phones and cancer again, or: Oh, no! My cell phone’s going to give me cancer! (revisited) - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Another wrinkle to the USPSTF mammogram guidelines kerfuffle: What about African-American women? - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Acupuncture, the P-Value Fallacy, and Honesty - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- The One True Cause of All Disease - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Communicating with the Locked-In - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Are the benefits of breastfeeding oversold? - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Measles - December 20th, 2009 [December 20th, 2009]
- Radiation from medical imaging and cancer risk - December 21st, 2009 [December 21st, 2009]
- Multiple Sclerosis and Irrational Exuberance - December 21st, 2009 [December 21st, 2009]
- Medical Fun with Christmas Carols - December 22nd, 2009 [December 22nd, 2009]
- Lithium for ALS – Angioplasty for MS - December 23rd, 2009 [December 23rd, 2009]
- “Toxins”: the new evil humours - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- 2009’s Top 5 Threats To Science In Medicine - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- Buteyko Breathing Technique – Nothing to Hyperventilate About - December 26th, 2009 [December 26th, 2009]
- The Graston Technique – Inducing Microtrauma with Instruments - December 29th, 2009 [December 29th, 2009]
- The “pharma shill” gambit - December 29th, 2009 [December 29th, 2009]
- Ginkgo biloba – No Effect - December 30th, 2009 [December 30th, 2009]
- Oppose “Big Floss”; practice alternative dentistry - January 1st, 2010 [January 1st, 2010]
- Causation and Hill’s Criteria - January 3rd, 2010 [January 3rd, 2010]
- The life cycle of translational research - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- The anti-vaccine movement strikes back against Dr. Paul Offit - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- Osteoporosis Drugs: Good Medicine or Big Pharma Scam? - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- Acupuncture for Hot Flashes - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- The case for neonatal circumcision - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- A victory for science-based medicine - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- James Ray and testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) - January 10th, 2010 [January 10th, 2010]
- The Water Cure: Another Example of Self Deception and the “Lone Genius” - January 12th, 2010 [January 12th, 2010]
- Be careful what you wish for, Dr. Dossey, you just might get it - January 13th, 2010 [January 13th, 2010]
- You. You. Who are you calling a You You? - January 15th, 2010 [January 15th, 2010]
- The War on Salt - January 16th, 2010 [January 16th, 2010]
- Is breech vaginal delivery safe? - January 16th, 2010 [January 16th, 2010]