Perhaps not, but I wouldn’t be surprised that people who avoid wine in favour of beer avoid your product. If someone chooses to label themselves with a name rooted in pseudoscience, then they really shouldn’t complain when people lump them in with the people who practice pseudoscience.
Labels may not define or describe, but you can’t honestly tell me that the labels that people use to describe themselves say nothing about those people. If some guy labels himself a pickup artist, I’m going to make judgements based on that label. If a different guy labels himself a feminist, I’m going to make different judgements based on that label. Similarly, if a doctor advertises their service as “chiropractic,” I’m going to assume that they believe that “diseases are 95% caused by subluxated vertebrae.” Because that’s the idea that chiropractic was founded around.
Again, my sources tell me that beyond back pain, chiropractic is no better than placebo. I don’t care if my doctor is atheist, Muslim, Mormon, or Scientologist. What I care about is whether they believe in the scientific method when it comes to treating their patient: using treatments based on their clinically-supported efficacy and clinically-defined risks, not solely based on their own anecdotal experience. Simply by calling themselves chiropractors, chiros advertise that, more likely than not, they’re going to fail to clear that bar.
That can be a dangerous attitude. I mean, obviously, if you’re focused on long-term outcomes, then yes: the one that finds the best/“least worst” outcome is the one that they should get. But “least bad” sounds like you would be aiming for what feels best now, which… Well, to use a horrible example, people have gone off chemotherapy and onto more pseudoscientific “medical” treatments because the side effects of chemotherapy are frequently worse, in the short term, than the early symptoms of cancer.
That sounds like it would be the perfect opportunity for a “reversion to the mean” bias to creep into results. After all, if you see someone on your worst day, and the next day is better, that might not have anything to do with what you did that day.
Anyway, I can’t speak for future me, having never received a reply from the man (despite repeated attempts to make contact), so I can’t say that I will never do it. But that would represent such a substantial change of mindset for me that I can’t predict anything that version of myself would do. I, as I exist now, would never use chiropractic. But you’re right. I’m not quite the same person I was at other points in my past; I can’t speak for the different people that I will become in the future.
