Association Between Low Back Pain and Biomedical Beliefs in Academics of Physiotherapy, 2020, Gomes et al

Open access, https://journals.lww.com/spinejourn...tween_Low_Back_Pain_and_Biomedical.94247.aspx

 

Starting to get really hard to tell whether studies like this are actually serious or an experiment in trying to get nonsense published.

It does seem that all that mind-body split has accomplished is to somehow normalize the validity of beliefs in medical practice, that there are in fact beliefs that are superior to others and, somehow, that beliefs can be "measured", even compared.

To be fair, beliefs are absolutely a thing in medical practice and a serious problem with horrible consequences but the discussion is not about that at all, rather seems to be that BPS beliefs should be considered superior and deviation from this belief system is basically wrong and abnormal. Which seems to show an understanding that BPS is a belief system, but rather this being an issue it just reframes science-based medicine as being an opposing belief and as such on equal footing.

I'd much rather there be no beliefs at all, that science and objective evidence speak for themselves in a self-correcting process that reduces biases and conflicts as much as possible. But what the hell do I know, I guess arguing about the personality and motivations of imaginary angels dancing on holistic hairpins is the new medicine. For a while anyway.

 

What does this even mean? Google translate???

That if you don't have lower back pain then you are unlikely to believe in biomedicine?

 

I interpret it as meaning that suffering from chronic back pain is a "risk factor" in believing it has a physiological/biomedical cause and mechanism. Which is true, but a serious problem for BPS ideology, which both places the subjective experience as being the only thing happening but also dismisses all subjective experience that contradicts their beliefs.

Something we glimpsed in some of the BPS quacks saying Ron Davis was likely too biased to do his research because Whitney being sick is likely a contributing factor in Davis's "belief" that his son is actually sick, rather than... confused... or whatever it is those people truly believe.

Which all goes down to Wessely's "strength of belief" being the main "factor", oblivious to the fact that it actually shows patients are relatively capable of assessing their impairment, but twisted into being a belief because that's what BPS beliefs require to be true to be perceived as valid.

Basically it promotes the idea that detached, unbiased, scientists will adopt BPS beliefs because they are superior and that "belief" in... objective reality and science, I guess... is itself a belief that misses out on the superior model of mind-body split.

 

Even though there was no association found in students, I bet this won't stop people claiming this effect still occurs in patients.

 

i just don't really get the concept of something, much less back pain, being a "risk factor" for having biomedical beliefs. and that biomedical beliefs are I guess defined as bad. it's very perverse.

 

Wow, I think this study deserves a price for most ridiculous study

Low back pain is such a prevalent problem, so much waste of healthy years and a very large economic waste as well. This way of thinking just keeps turning in circles and circles. There was one "biomedical" idea that was popular for a long time (pain is directly linked with damage we see on scans), that turned out to be a very expensive and not extremely useful idea. So now we turn it all around and back pain is fully (bio)psychosocial and people are still not being helped at all. "Because biomedical thinking didn't help either". As if there is only one biomedical solution and if that doesn't pan out, there is nothing else

You see the same thing over and over with me/cfs. Oh the rituximab study didn't pan out, so that means "biomedical thinking didn't help" and we must be using CBT and GET after all

 

Because there is no diseasewar in Ba-Sing-Seback pain, only Zuulstrength of belief.

Put another way, once you get the back pains, you are one of them. You know, them, those patients.