Key takeaways:  Prior plausibility: Evaluate how a claim aligns with established science. For example, “human energy fields” lack solid biological or physical foundations, making them low in plausibility—unlike massage’s impact on nervous and immune systems, which is far more plausible Methodology: Focus on the methods and results sections—they’re the least

Clinical equipoise means that clinicians and researchers honestly don’t know which treatment is better. Therefore, no researcher favors one treatment over another during the experiment design, which reduces the risk of bias. If one treatment is already known to be better, it would be unethical to give someone the inferior

A 2024 systematic review of 17 systematic reviews found that the evidence and certainty of massage therapy for 13 pain conditions to be predominately “low” or “very low.”  “There were only a few conditions for which [the] authors of systematic reviews concluded that there was at least moderate-certainty evidence regarding

Regression to the mean in health care describes the tendency of the symptoms of a condition to go back to an average state after it has run its course in one extreme. Various academic fields have similar definitions of regression to the mean, such as in psychology and philosophy.  For

We see the terms “evidence-based practice”—and sometimes its cousin “science-based practice”—pop up often in massage therapy forums. It’s not uncommon to see massage therapists sharing research from various sources in their discussions. This shift is a decidedly good thing. As healthcare providers, we should strive to critically evaluate our own