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TALLAHASSEE, Florida (AP) -- Some Florida State University professors have been circulating a parody map showing the campus of the future, with a new Bigfoot Institute, a School of Astrology and a Crop Circle Simulation Laboratory.

It's a not-so-subtle jab in a growing debate over a proposal to build a chiropractic college on this campus -- the first such school at a public university in the nation.

More than 500 professors, including the university's two Nobel laureates, have signed a petition opposing the school and a handful have even threatened to resign rather than teach alongside what they consider a "pseudoscience."

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Some Florida State University faculty members beat me to the punch line.

Those who oppose the creation of a chiropractic school there say the proposal is an embarrassing attempt to create an appearance of unearned scientific legitimacy for a field that is based on wishful thinking and quackery.

If an FSU school is created to turn out America's future chiropractors, that will be a public relations coup for an industry long lumped in with snake oil salesmen. And it would also be good for University of Florida grads, like me, who would have more material for razzing Seminoles.

So some FSU faculty members have suggested that if that major state university is forced to accept that school at the insistence of well-lobbied legislators, then lawmakers should also add a Bigfoot Institute and a Crop Circle Simulation Laboratory.

That's a bit unfair. And I don't mean unfair to Bigfoot believers or UFO buffs. I mean to me. That's the kind of crack columnists, not colorless academics, are supposed to make. I could suggest that FSU consider a School of Phrenology, or a College of Creation Science, but the faculty has already trumped me.

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At the same time, I know that licensed chiropractors go through several years of rigorous med-school style training including anatomy and physiology and the sort.

And I have no problems believing that some musculoskeletal problems could present as spinal anomalies and that adjusting those anomalies could relieve the underlying problem.

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Originally posted by Scott Piatkowski:
In my experience, chiropractors are fine if they stick to dealing with back pain and spinal adjustments. When they start trying to talk people out of vaccinating their kids, I draw the line.

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Originally posted by ronb:
The difference between physiotherapy and chiropractic is roughly analagous to the difference between obstetrics and midwifery, in my experience.

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So, ronb, just what experience have you had with obstetrics and midwifery?

Some people who have been through chiropractic schools and training share their insights and concerns, along with questionable diagnostic and treatment Practices.

If a chiropractor insists on you getting an x-ray, get out of the office!

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Most chiropractors claim that x-rays help them locate the "subluxations" that D.D. Palmer envisioned. But they do not agree among themselves about what subluxations are. Some chiropractors believe they are displaced bones that can be seen on x-rays and can be put back in place by spinal adjustments. Others define subluxations vaguely or say they do not necessarily show on x-rays. But what chiropractors contend about x-rays also depends upon who asks and how the question is posed.

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[ 18 January 2005: Message edited by: TemporalHominid ]

I go to a chiropractor whenever I have musculoskeletal issues, and while she does minor adjustments and uses acupuncture (she is a trained acupuncturist as well) when there is a need, most of the time it is exercise prescription. She is a fantastic diagnostician and I've had a superb experience with her working through several injuries.

On the contrary, my GP misdiagnosed a herniated disc as innocuous muscle pain and prescribed forward flexion exercises that greatly exacerbated the posterior herniation.

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Wasn't York University in a similar controversy a few years ago over chiropractic? A chiropractic group wanted to established a School of Chiropractic affiliated with York U., or something along those lines, and there was an uproar about it?

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See Skeptical Inquirer, Volume 26, No.1 - January/February 2002 for a good article on that particular episode.

"A University's Struggle With Chiropractic" by Michael De Robertis.

It took place over a period of six years, and ended on April 26, 2001.

A University's Struggle With Chiropractic

I also found this site which includes a chronology of the whole affair.

As for finding clinicians to treat the low back, one of the keys is not necessarily the discipline they are formally credentialled in, but how curious and open-minded they are, and how catholic they are in their study and practice. Those who are dogmatic and blinkered by their disciplinary training are unlikely to be the best therapists.