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Author Topic: Inter-Rater Agreement of Biofield Tuning: Testing a Novel Health Assessment Proc  (Read 223 times)

YanTing

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The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine Vol. 26, No. 10 Pages 911-917 (2020)

Inter-Rater Agreement of Biofield Tuning: Testing a Novel Health Assessment Procedure

Richard Hammerschlag, PhD,1,2 Eileen D. McKusick, MA,3 Namuun Bat, ND,1
David J. Muehsam, PhD,1,4 James McNames, PhD,5 and Shamini Jain, PhD1,6

1 Consciousness and Healing Initiative, La Jolla, CA, USA.
2 The Institute for Integrative Health, Baltimore, MD, USA.
3 Biofield Tuning Institute, Burlington, VT, USA.
4 National Institute of Biostructures and Biosystems, Bologna, Italy.
5 Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Portland State University, Portland, OR, USA.
6 Department of Psychiatry, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, CA, USA.

Abstract

Objectives: Practitioners of Biofield Tuning assess health status of their clients by detecting off-the-body biofield perturbations using tuning fork (TF) vibrations. This study tested inter-rater agreement (IRA) on location of these perturbations.
Design: Three Biofield Tuning practitioners, in randomized order, identified locations of the 4–5 “strongest” perturbations along each of 4 sites for the same series of 10 research subjects.
Setting/Location: An Integrative Health and Medicine Center in La Jolla, CA.
Subjects: Adult volunteers with no serious current illness and no prior experience of a Biofield Tuning session.
Interventions: Practitioners used an activated 174 Hz unweighted TF to “comb” the same four sites per subject, located on the left and right sides of the base of the spine and the heart.
Outcome Measures: Practitioners identified and vocalized the distance from the body of perturbations along each site. Distances were recorded by a research assistant in the clinic room. No health information related to perturbation sites was discussed with the subjects.
Results: Practitioners reported 6.3 ± 0.6 (mean ± standard deviation) perturbations per combed site per subject, with no significant difference among the raters. The overall level of IRA was low based initially on a first-pass, nonstatistical, analysis of results, with “agreement” defined within a tolerance of ±2 inches. In this approach agreement was 33%. More rigorous statistical analysis, including a statistical test using a Monte Carlo approach, strongly supported the conclusion of poor IRA.
Conclusions: IRA was low despite attempts to balance the real-world practice of Biofield Tuning with the constraints of research. For example, while IRA necessitates multiple assessments of the same subject, no information exists as to whether an initial assessment may affect subsequent assessments. Our study exemplifies the challenges faced when attempting to fit interventions with incompletely understood procedures and mechanisms into conventional research designs.

https://www.liebertpub.com/doi/10.1089/acm.2020.0159


Excerpts:

The use of tuning forks (TFs) to detect and mitigate health-related conditions is based on a vibrational medicine view of health and health care.1,2 In this view, molecules, subcellular structures, whole cells, tissues, and even organisms are seen as dynamic entities that generate and respond to a variety of information-carrying signals not limited to those conventionally described in biochemistry. Current research suggests that these “beyond chemistry” signaling systems, for example, electromagnetic, acoustic, and biophotonic fluctuations, which are collectively designated as biofields, contribute to key aspects of physiologic regulation.3,4

Such biofield activity, generated at multiple levels of biologic complexity within the organism, is also detectable at and above the cutaneous surface of the physical body. The best known biofield-based diagnostic methods, electrocardiography and electroencephalography, assess electrical activity from the heart and brain, respectively. Ultraweak emission of biophotons is being examined as an additional health assessment tool.5 Biofield-based sound approaches have also been explored for their utility in diagnosing a limited number of conditions. For example, assessments of bone fractures6,7 and peripheral neuropathies8,9 using TF vibrations have been frequently reported but the cited systematic reviews conclude that results are not consistently reliable. By contrast, the nonmedical TF-assisted therapeutic practice of Biofield Tuning reports detection of clinically relevant information at off-the-body sites not preselected as injury related.10

Biofield Tuning is a biofield-based healing therapy whereby practitioners report use of a resonating TF to identify biofield perturbations through auditory and kinesthetic cues. The practitioner relates the location and felt sensations (e.g., tone quality or feelings of “heaviness” in the biofield) of these perturbations to aspects of the client's health history (including physical health, emotional health, and trauma history). The clinical practice of Biofield Tuning involves both assessment and rebalancing of these perturbations.

Consistency of interpractitioner diagnosis is of importance for both research and clinical practice to ensure that measurement variations can be attributed mainly to changes in the research subject or patient.11 Given the nonconventional assumptions inherent within Biofield Tuning (that a biofield exists and can be detected well outside of the body and that perturbations of this field are related to health history and health quality), interpractitioner consistency is an important step in helping to establish an understanding, if not the validity, of such claims.

In the practice of Biofield Tuning, the practitioner activates a TF, by manually striking against a handheld hockey puck, in anticipation of scanning (“combing”) the length of 18 (9 bilateral) off-body sites in clockwise sequence.12 At each site, the audibly vibrating TF is first moved slowly from about six feet away toward the client, supine on a treatment table, to detect the edge of the client's biofield. The edge is identified by the perception of resistance, tonal change, or a stronger vibration of the fork. The practitioner then moves the resonating TF slowly through the field toward the body, with the aim of detecting perturbations, “turbulence,” or significant tonal changes. When these areas are encountered, the practitioner pauses to allow the sound to break up stuck energy and provide the body with a coherent signal around which to better organize itself. After a perturbation has been resolved, the practitioner resumes moving the activated TF toward the body until the next area of turbulence is detected.

Recording all perturbations along each of 18 sites was considered suboptimal since, in their clinical practice, Biofield Tuning practitioners are not accustomed to noting and recording all distances of perturbations from the body...At practitioners' suggestion, the IRA study was limited to combing four sites located on the left and right sides of the base of the spine and the heart, with sites examined in clockwise sequence starting at the left base of spine.

A test run, using members of the research team as subjects, revealed 8–10 perturbations per site. Since IRA would be based on perturbation distances, difficulties would likely be encountered when deciding which individual perturbations should be grouped for consideration of “agreement.” To mitigate this problem, the research team agreed to base the trial on the identification of only the four to five “most prominent” perturbations along each of the four combed sites.

Our trial, in which 3 practitioners (in random order per subject) reported the distances of the main perturbations detected along the same 4 assessment sites on each of the same 10 subjects, revealed a low level of IRA.

Given these findings it is important to consider whether flaws in model validity comprise a limitation of our study. How well did we achieve our aim of creating a research design that reflects clinical practice?

In clinical practice, as described above, a Biofield Tuning practitioner (1) assesses a client with whom they often have an established rapport; (2) pauses after each detected perturbation to discuss its possible health significance for the client; and (3) rebalances the perturbation before seeking the next site of potential interest. In contrast, the study practitioners were asked to assess Biofield Tuning-naive subjects, to refrain from conversing with subjects, to consider only the distance from the body surface (and verbally report it) of a limited number (4–5) of “strong” perturbations, and to perform no rebalancing of perturbations until after two additional practitioners had assessed the same subject.

These practice versus research differences, which appear as weaknesses in model validity, could well have contributed in part or in combination to the low level of IRA. An equally important consideration is that our study rested on an untested assumption: that the process of TF detection does not alter the properties of a perturbation for subsequent detection...A related possibility is that interpractitioner variability of their own biofields may contribute to the low IRA.

The present challenges of design and interpretation resonate with studies testing IRA of pulse diagnoses within the health care systems of Chinese traditional medicine15,21 and Ayurvedic medicine.22 A common feature of East Asian medicine diagnosis of pulse, as well as Biofield Tuning assessment of perturbations, is that the respective explanatory models do not recognize a clear distinction between diagnosis and treatment. The act of palpation may prompt “correction” (rebalancing) of a radial pulse just as detection with a vibratory intervention may stimulate a rebalancing of an identified perturbation.

In conclusion, while our research team of biofield practitioners and researchers found the process of collaborative protocol development a valuable endeavor, the agreed upon design may have been suboptimal for testing IRA of Biofield Tuning in a clinically relevant manner. Finally, it is important to note that the present study did not set out to test the existence of a biofield, only to evaluate IRA of an intervention whose explanatory model states that health-related information can be detected at off-the-body sites.

Author Disclosure Statement

E.D.M. is the founder of the Biofield Tuning Institute (Burlington, VT), the 501(c)3 organization that funded the present study. None of the other authors report any competing financial interests.

Funding Information

Funding of this IRA study was provided by a grant to the Consciousness and Healing Initiative (La Jolla, CA) from the Biofield Tuning Institute (Burlington, VT).
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