September 23, 2009 • 10:20 pm
The International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (IJTMB) is an open access, peer-reviewed publication intended to accommodate the diverse needs of the rapidly-expanding therapeutic massage and bodywork community. Principal sections of the journal span the areas of research, education, and clinical practice.
IJTMB is indexed in the Directory of Open Access Journals, CrossRef, and Healthindex.
Table of Contents
Editorial
| International Journal of Therapeutic Massage & Bodywork (IJTMB): A First-Year Retrospective View Reflecting Google Analytics and Open Journal Systems Sources |
|
| Glenn M. Hymel, EdD, LMT |
1-3 |
| Fascia Research II: Second International Fascia Research Congress |
|
| Thomas W. Findley, MD, PhD |
4-9 |
Research
| Understanding the process of fascial unwinding |
|
| Budiman Minasny, PhD |
10-17 |
Practice
| The Integrated Taxonomy of Health Care: classifying both complementary & biomedical practices using a uniform classification protocol |
|
| Antony Joseph Porcino, BSc, Colleen MacDougall |
18-30 |
Commentaries
| Letter to the Editor |
|
| Jo Smith, MEd (Hons), BHSc, BSc, RMT, Donna Smith, PGDip (TT), BTSM, RMT |
31 |
News/Announcements
| Entries for News/Announcements Section for September 09 Issue |
|
| Glenn M. Hymel, EdD, LMT |
32-34 |
Filed under: MT research issues, Professional journals, Research news, massage therapy , journal, massage, massage therapy, research
September 15, 2009 • 3:59 pm
BMJ 1995;311:485 (19 August) – Statistics notes – Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence
Douglas G Altman, J Martin Bland
“Randomised controlled clinical trials that do not show a significant difference between the treatments being compared are often called “negative.” This term wrongly implies that the study has shown that there is no difference, whereas usually all that has been shown is an absence of evidence of a difference. These are quite different statements.”
“While it is usually reasonable not to accept a new treatment unless there is positive evidence in its favour, when issues of public health are concerned we must question whether the absence of evidence is a valid enough justification for inaction.”
“When we are told that “there is no evidence that A causes B” we should first ask whether absence of evidence means simply that there is no information at all”
Filed under: Evidence Based Practice, MT research issues, Research education , evidence, p-value, RCT
August 6, 2009 • 10:50 am
The number of papers published on massage using the search terms “massage and clinical trial” and “find all search terms”.
Searching CINAHL and Psycinfo simultaneously in EBSCO gave me these numbers
1990-1999 = 213
2000-2004 = 595
2005-2009 = 1371
These are my numbers. There is no control for “other” types of massage such as cardiac, prostate or other use of rubbing/massage.
A selection team would weed out none MT related uses. How ever in CINAHL and PsychInfo there is, in my experience, less noise in the results than what comes from Medline searches.
This article posted here goes in to detail of the issues around searching for MT research.
Filed under: MT research issues, Research databases , EBSCO, massage therapy, research
This case highlights the necessity of confirming study result with replication of the initial work.
Research can be faked, how ever more commonly researchers can make a mistake in the study design or their reporting of the results. When clinicians search for research to inform their practises it is crucial for them to be aware of the strength and quality of the research they are intending to use.
Filed under: Evidence Based Practice, MT research issues, Research news , phoney science, research
Majid Artus and Daniëlle van der Windt
Machado et al. [1] in a recent systematic meta-analysis conclude that ‘the analgesic effects of many treatments for non-specific low back pain (NSLBP) are small’. An increasingly large effort is being expended in the research on treatments for NSLBP, represented by the long trail of more than 1000 publications on randomized trials in the past 25 years, and numerous systematic reviews summarizing the evidence for potentially beneficial interventions. For a very common health problem, with major impact on everyday activities and large socioeconomic consequences, this is a desirable situation. However, it is paralleled by an equally growing realization among the back pain research community that more and more trials and reviews are failing to show clear superiority or benefit of any particular treatment, with a large number of widely varying types of treatments seeming to produce similar improvement in back pain symptoms [2–4]. The most recent is the systematic meta-analysis conducted by Machado et al. [1] summarizing available evidence on the analgesic effects of treatments for NSLBP. Beyond the main conclusion the authors arrived at, this review raises some important issues that deserve further discussion.
Rheumatology, Volume 48, Number 5, Pp. 464-465 – full text
Filed under: MT research issues, Research education
Ioannidis JPA
Summary
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias. In this essay, I discuss the implications of these problems for the conduct and interpretation of research.
PLoS Medicine 2(8): e124. – full text
doi:10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
Filed under: Evidence Based Practice, MT research issues, Research education
October 23, 2008 • 11:48 am
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