BY APRIL BLESKE-RECHEK, KATIE PAULICH, AND KEITH JORGENSEN
IN 1998, 11-YEAR OLD EMILY ROSA CAUSED A NATIONAL sensation when she published the results of her 4th grade science experiment in the Journal of the American Medical Association.1 She had generated a simple but clever experiment to test the claim that the socalled “human energy field”2 (HEF: “aura”) can be detected, and she had compiled convincing evidence that individuals—specifically, Therapeutic Touch (TT) practitioners who claim to manipulate others’ energy fields for healing purposes—could not reliably detect that energy field. (You can watch Emily test her subjects in this special on her experiment featured on ABC’s 20/20 with John Stossel: https://bit.ly/1ouAKQJ). As summarized by Larry Sarner, who recounted the events for Skeptic magazine in 1998, energy therapies are based on the fundamental claim that “the hands can be used to manifest a TT practitioner’s intention to heal by detecting and eliminating differences in the HEF of a patient, thereby either returning the patient directly to health or removing impediments to the healing processes of the patient’s own body.”3 Because Emily Rosa showed that self-proclaimed Therapeutic Touch practitioners could not reliably detect a human energy field, her results led to the direct conclusion that claims about Therapeutic Touch practitioners’ ability to modify human energy fields to promote healing were questionable at best and, more likely, completely mistaken.
In fact, no one has yet demonstrated the existence or reliable detection of a human energy field.