Touch Therapy

Re “4th-Grader’s Study Rebuts Touch Therapy,” April 1:

As a professional magician (and therefore, a deceptionist), no one could be more skeptical than I regarding the validity of “touch therapy.” But even touch therapists do not claim 100% results. Isn’t it just possible that, given her testing methods, all Emily Rosa proved is that she does not emit a detectable “energy field”? Or that a detectable, and therefore treatable, energy field is emitted only when in need of healing?

A more reliable test--perhaps the next step--would have clinician Rosa merely recording the results of a blind test in which the therapist interacts with several random patients, some healthy, some ill.

TOM OGDEN

Hollywood

* Rosa, an 11-year-old girl, disproved in a science project the claims of those who wave their hands over sick people and heal them by altering “the energy field.” How fitting, that a child should debunk those beliefs of adults with infantile minds!

HARRY SIMMONS

Laguna Niguel