At last year’s CFAR reunion, for instance, there was a talk uncritically presenting chakras as a real thing, and when someone in the audience proposed doing an experiment to verify if they are real or it’s a placebo effect, the presenter said (paraphrasing) “Hmm, no, let’s not do that. It makes me uncomfortable. I can’t tell why, but I don’t want to do it, so let’s not” and then they didn’t.
I attended that talk and have a slightly different memory.
To my memory, the claim was “I tried this exercise related to my body, and it had a strong internal effect. Then I started playing around with other areas related to chakras, and they had really strong effects too. Try playing around with this exercise on different parts of your body, and see if there’s a strong effect on you.”
The second part matches my memory, and I was a bit dissapointed we didn’t get to do more of an experiment, but in no way were “chakras uncritically presented as a real thing.”
I attended that talk and have a slightly different memory.
To my memory, the claim was “I tried this exercise related to my body, and it had a strong internal effect. Then I started playing around with other areas related to chakras, and they had really strong effects too. Try playing around with this exercise on different parts of your body, and see if there’s a strong effect on you.”
The second part matches my memory, and I was a bit dissapointed we didn’t get to do more of an experiment, but in no way were “chakras uncritically presented as a real thing.”