In testamonio

Posting on research

I give up on the ‘CE research question’.

I have been teaching and preaching against the nonsense that masquerades as ‘research into Conductive Education’ for more years now than is worth remembering. It has all become rather wearisome. Frankly, I am fed up with it. For the difference that it has made to anything I may as well have been sticking pins into wax effigies.

I feel like that about an increasing number of things in Conductive Education!

Here on Conductive World I am ceasing all mention of the research question, with immediate effect. Henceforth, folks, navigate those dangerous seas without me, and I wish the best of luck to you. I shall return to this topic only for two reasons:

• to notify about particularly egregious nonsense, for those who share ironical satisfaction in being reassured about just how low one can sink and still be taken seriously enough to be paid for doing so,
• more positively, to offer those who wish to stand up for more sensible lines of enquiry, information that you might find useful in the long, hard, lonely battle that stretches before you.

From time to time I shall probably announce other such topics that I shall be dealing with in this way over the remaining time allotted to Conductive World.

Evidence-based, schmevidence-based

Meanwhile, I leave you with item no 1 in this new regime, a piece of information that you might find useful in the long, hard, lonely battle that stretches before you (if this makes it sound like a New Weapon in a video game, then so be it!). Make what use of it you will, that is your problem, your opportunity. If you do have the chance to use it in anger, do so with cruel effect. Excepting the unusually critical, (and insufficiently cited) reviewers from the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research, little quarter has been offered Conductive Education by the other side.

Wise up, it’s a jungle out there. Kill or be killed.

All that you need ask, however, from those who screech slogans like 'research' and 'evidence-based', as though they know what these terms mean, is the broad, humane and truely scientific understanding of the creation and nature of knowledge that is demonstrated by Professor Sir Michael Rawlins, Chairman of the National Institute of Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) since its formation in 1999.

Professor Sir Michael Rawlins’ 2008 Harveian Oration, titled ‘De’testimonio: on the evidence for decisions about the use of therapeutic ’interventions’

Summary, from a most excellent medical blog, from Australia
Nickson, C., Cadogan, M., Allely, P., Ercleve, T. (2009) De testimonio, Life in the fast lane: emergency medicine blog, vernacular insights and health 2.0 reasoning, 22 May
http://sandnsurf.medbrains.net/2009/05/de-testimonio/#more-3222　
　
Audio recording of oration, plus slides
http://sandnsurf.medbrains.net/2009/05/de-testimonio/
　
Full formal text of the oration
http://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/pubs/contents/304df931-2ddc-4a54-894e-e0cdb03e84a5.pdf

Good luck.