Roll the Bones
Chiropractic is a respected profession in the US, and we wonder why people would vote for Donald Trump. Many of you probably get ripped off by these charlatans and actually believe in their pseudoscience.
Chiropractic means "done by hand" and was developed by Daniel Palmer, a well known phrenologist, spiritualist, and...magnetic healer. He claimed to have cured someone of deafness by manipulating his neck, ignoring the fact that the path from the ear to the brain doesn't go anywhere near that area.
The basic premise of the theory that Palmer developed from there was essentially the same concept of a spiritual life force but tried to make himself look more scientific by bluntly saying that the force is within our spine. His scientific term for it, innate intelligence, was no doubt called that to make his stupid clients feel good about themselves. Chiropractic schools (the largest of which was started by Palmer and made him incredibly wealthy) teach that almost all disease originates from the spine, where the innate intelligence (read: new age inner spiritual force) is disrupted. In short: Palmer did not believe in germ theory.
Sure, chiropractors are licensed, but that gives little legitimacy to their careers. According to chiropractors, everything from your sinus headache to lower back pain to a itch on your nose that you haven't scratched yet can be resolved by making your bones crack (or quack, if you will). The only thing that chiropractic is scientifically proven to fix are a small number of lower back problems, and even then it only temporarily relieves the pain. If you have a chronic back problem and you go to a chiropractor for it, they will latch on and milk you dry with ongoing treatment that never seems to fully get rid of the problem (because it can't).
Chiropractic is a large and diverse field since there's been a good hundred years since its creation. The minority of them (less than 2%) are physical therapists stuck in a chiropractor's body. The bulk of them adopt some scientific theories, with light skepticism, but still cling to the pseudoscientific roots Palmer laid down. Then there is the second minority (around 5%) that entirely eat up and regurgitate his unproven philosophy. These last two groups are the most likely to adopt other forms of pseudoscience and try to sell them to you, such as supplements, magical health drinks, and the like.
There runs the small risk of stroke, neurological injury, or even death from neck manipulation, but it's honestly such a small number of people are affected by it that I don't necessarily see it as a danger to paint the whole practice with.
So say you throw out your back, what's an alternative? Go to a ****ing doctor with a legitimate medical degree. Take some acetametaphine. Do some stretches. Exercise. If it's really bad, self refer to a physical therapist who will teach you which stretches and exercises that could help you, as well as tackling the cause such as posture, lifestyle, and other things. Don't give chiropractors any more legitimacy than they have unfortunately been granted already by letting them rip you off.
Pro-chiropractic anecdotal evidence in 3...2...1...
