| Healing
Sick Houses
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In the September edition of Dowsing Today, we gave some background to our work healing sick houses and details of our research project. In this, the second part of our paper, we offer more about the sample, i.e. the people who participated in the project; how we excluded the placebo effect; something about sorting out the data, and announce our results. THE SAMPLE The sample for this research was drawn directly from 105 households which requested dowsing and healing work for problems which they believed to be associated with negative earth energies or discarnate presences. This is not a random population sample. It is a sample selected by application and is selected on the basis of households who, in the first instance, are experiencing some sort of difficulty, most usually ill health. Secondly, they believe in the possibility that the effects of negative earth energies might be contributing to their difficulties, and thirdly believe in the possibility of ameliorating the effects of these negative earth energies through dowsing and healing. Given the high response rate, and the apparent similarity between those who did and those who did not complete all the questionnaires, we can be confident that respondents are broadly representative of inquiring households. The reasons for requesting dowsing and healing are various, as are the methods by which households were referred for assistance. The main means of referral was through reputation and 'word of mouth'. Most enquiries (90%) were the result of referrals by friends or therapists who had direct experience or knowledge of dowsing and healing in relation to the effects of negative earth energies. The other significant route was through various articles written and talks given by us over the years. As a result, our work has snowballed as satisfied clients told others about our work and passed on our information leaflet. An article in the Sunday Times (March 1998) overwhelmed us with 800 enquiries, many of them wanting work done immediately! All respondents described adverse personal symptoms while only 48 respondents were able to describe any symptoms specifically related to the house, for example cold damp rooms, unexplained noises etc. Over 40% indicated a formal medical diagnosis for their personal symptoms with cancer, ME and chronic fatigue figuring strongly among the physical diagnoses and depression among the mental diagnoses. Emotional and 'psychic' symptoms were less commonly reported. The symptoms reported by respondents were broken down into four main groups as follows:
Over three quarters of respondents had received, and in some cases continued to receive, other forms of treatment for their personal symptoms. Although alternative and complementary treatments were the most widely used (by 55% of the respondents), the difference was not that great. Orthodox medical treatments were used by 41% of respondents.
RESPONSE RATE Self-completion postal questionnaire surveys attract notoriously low response rates; all the more so where the respondents are required to complete four questionnaires over a period of time. The accuracy and reliability of survey data are undermined by attrition or non-response because, in general, non-respondents differ from those who do respond and in ways which are unknown and which therefore cannot be controlled. Where non-response is large, the resulting level of bias is unacceptable and the findings of the survey cannot be generalised beyond those achieved for the respondents. 150 respondents were each asked to complete 4 questionnaires over a period of about 2 months. Thus there were potentially a total of 600 questionnaires to be returned, and each respondent had four opportunities to opt out. The actual number of questionnaires returned was:
Our statistical expert described the response rate as remarkable, substantially better that most other surveys of this type. One reason for this is that, through their application for treatment, respondents self-select themselves into the sample by reason of their sympathy with, and confidence in, dowsing and healing as a treatment for their symptoms. Nevertheless, we felt very gratified that so many people had taken the trouble to fill in their questionnaires and return them as requested.
SORTING OUT THE DATA How then did respondents evaluate their general health and wellbeing prior to treatment? At the outset each respondent was asked to rate their overall health and wellbeing according to the following categories: 'very good', 'good', 'fair', 'poor' and 'very poor'. In addition, each respondent was asked to provide more detailed information about their health and wellbeing in the form of scoring the intensity and frequency with which they experienced 26 specific health and house related conditions. The test of effectiveness of the healing is based upon a statistical comparison of responses before and after healing. This was the chief purpose of this investigation and is completed for the sample for the general health question and for each of the 26 questions which relate to specific symptoms. The intensity and frequency with which the reported symptoms occur are recorded separately. The timing of any improvement over a period of eight weeks from the intervention is also able to be assessed.
THE PLACEBO EFFECT A vital consideration when designing a project of this kind is the placebo effect. A placebo response is one which is generated from an inactive intervention. In medical trials it might be achieved by giving a dummy pill to a control group. It is not the same as no treatment. Placebo responses are observed to be a powerful and widespread phenomena. They are normally explained as the fulfilment of an expectation of a beneficial effect of the treatment on the part of the patient. The therapist believes in the power of the treatment and communicates this to the patient who thus learns to expect a successful outcome. Placebo effects are an empirical fact of life. In the medical literature they are treated as an error of observation to be eradicated from the data in order to achieve a 'true' measure of the effect of the treatment. A great deal of emphasis is placed upon achieving net outcomes after the removal of any placebo effects. A treatment is effective only to the extent that it achieves a positive net outcome, that is an outcome which is superior to that of a placebo. The potential for a positive placebo response in the healing we are doing is considerable. Application for treatment is self-selected and highly motivated. If not in general severe, the adverse symptoms experienced by applicants are often of an intractable nature and had proved immune to other treatments. Application for treatment often involved, in the first instance, a telephone conversation with one of us where acceptance, sympathy and comfort were offered (provided the moment was not TOO inconvenient!). Good intention engenders hope and, if expectation grows with hope, then applicants would have had high expectations that the treatment would be successful. Our interest is largely directed towards gross outcomes, that is an improvement in health, rather than in whether this was a 'true' or a placebo response. However, for reasons of convention, curiosity and the considerable potential for a placebo effect, the survey was designed to incorporate a test for placebo effects. At Questionnaire 2, respondents were randomly allocated to an experimental group where the dowsing and healing had been done and a separate control group where it had not until later. The allocation was double blind in that neither the respondent nor the researcher knew whether the work had been done. A comparison of outcomes across the experimental and control groups provides a measure of the placebo response. So the survey design was based upon the classic method: the pre-healing responses at the second questionnaire stage comprised the control group, and the post-healing responses comprised the experimental group, and the test of effectiveness comprised the comparison of results between the two groups. Unlike the traditional control group, respondents were themselves used as their own control group. The reason for this is a simple one. It would have been inappropriate to withhold a potentially beneficial treatment from certain households in order to provide a control group, most especially since those households had specifically requested that they receive the treatment.
THE RESULTS These are shown in Figure 4. At questionnaire four stage, a month or more after healing, 85 of the 105 respondents showed, by their filling of the questionnaires, that they experienced some improvement in health. 'This is a pleasingly high number!' quoth our statistical expert! At the Questionnaire 2 stage, within a week of healing, 48 reported benefit, which included 15 who had not yet received healing. These latter could be said to have benefited by placebo influences, although with spiritual healing, we do sometimes find that effects are felt outside time, and the very act of asking for it sets healing in motion.
CONCLUSION So, you can see we have gone to a considerable amount of trouble and expense to show that our way of healing sick houses works. Of course we know it works, otherwise we would not be continuing to give so much time and energy to our clients in our seventies. We have masses of positive feedback from clients from the thousands of cases we have treated to date. If you want not to believe this kind of feedback we understand it is called 'anecdotal evidence' and doesn't have much validity. In Ann's profession as a psychotherapist, feedback called 'case histories' ARE valid to illustrate points in a presentation. For this reason we put some personal stories from clients in our book. Do statistics cut more ice? After all that effort we do hope so. However, as Laurence J. Peter said, 'A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still'. So we will see how our research is received by people whose scientific paradigm finds it difficult to stretch to the underlying concepts applied to this work. As most dowsers accept, it is very difficult to prove that dowsing is valid for non-physical targets. We have moved further into this dilemma by testing results, first by dowsing for diagnosing the problem and what to do about it, and then by using spiritual healing techniques for effecting change. Terry Ross, one time President of the American Society of Dowsing, in his book The Divining Mind, would include the healing aspect of the work in his 'Seven Steps'. Level Five involves 'Making changes: the diviner goes from observer to effector'. But when teaching people to do this work we find it best to make a clear distinction between receiving relevant information at the diagnostic stage by dowsing and moving into the proactive stage of healing to effect changes. We offer the research based on OUR way of working, whose effectiveness we have now shown statistically. We do not for a moment think this is THE way; indeed it is more than likely that each dowser/healer doing this work will do it differently! However, you have now been given the advantage of a proof of validity which we hope will further enable your work in this field. If you are interested, and have the mental stamina to digest it, you can download the full report, with all the complicated statistical analyses, from our website (1) and we are most grateful to Barry and Heather Hoon for putting it there. For those not able to access the internet we can supply a copy for the cost of photocopying plus post and packing. Please ask. Some of these two articles are in the words of our statistical
expert, Dr Vicky Wass, but she has not been able to share with us
in presenting the paper [at the 70th Anniversary International Congress]
as she has become extremely busy with a young family. |
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