Confessions of a Former Chiropractor

A personal essay by a former chiropractor turned methodologist. Trained in program evaluation, the author entered chiropractic in the 1980s after an apparently successful treatment and graduated from Palmer College of Chiropractic–West in 1987. He describes the profession from the inside. Its diagnostic methods, such as applied kinesiology, had never been validated against reference standards. Its practice-management culture sold care plans, visit frequency, and lifetime care ("Always Be Closing"). It has a two-tier structure in which researchers and leaders who do not practice shape the profession while practitioners absorb its failures personally. Its belief and certainty substitute for outcomes, which the author frames as a corruption of Donabedian's structure–process–outcome model of quality. He argues that when placebo, expectation, and natural history are properly controlled, the specific effect of spinal manipulation shrinks or disappears, so that better science makes chiropractic look worse, and he explains why he left the profession. Originally published in Skeptic magazine (skeptic.com), March 13, 2026. Reposted with permission of the Skeptic Society.