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| David Alimi |
Alimi & Chelly even claim to have studied brain dissections and “proved the neurophysiological correlations existing between auricular displays and their brain correspondences”; indeed, they claim to have found that the middle of the corpus callosum is the “epicenter of the somatotopic organization of the brain homunculus.” We suppose real neuroscientists must be in some sort of conspiracy to hide those facts, though we suspect that Alimi & Chelly made the discovery based on loose association and poetic and metaphorical license. They do, admittedly, provide a new nomenclature for auriculotherapy, which is almost as impressive as providing a new nomenclature for a Dungeon & Dragons stats sheets.
Apparently Chelly even has a clinical trial going, officially motivated by (piggybacking on) the currently popular movement to explore non-pharmacological techniques to treat post-operative pain in light of the opioid crisis. In the study, Chelly will be using a cryopuntor device, “which has been shown to produce the same effect as needles”. Of course, needles have no effect beyond placebo either, so showing that a technique has “the same effect as needles” would be textbook tooth fairy. Chelly is apparently into aromatherapy, too, which is arguably even more ridiculous than auriculotherapy.
Despite (or rather: due to) it being what it is, Alimi’s and Chelly’s research has apparently managed to acquire a certain amount of influence among woo practitioners and pseudoscientists.
Diagnosis: More nonsense from people who possess real credentials and, on the surface, look respectable enough (Chelly even has a Wikipedia article, which fails to mention his forays into pseudoscience), and who should really know better. The real tragedy, of course, is the massive amount of resources used to add to the pile of pseudoscientific junk instead of being used on projects that have at least some chance of providing real benefits to real people.
Hat-tip: Respectful Insolence