Educational preparation for chiropractic clinical research

Chiropractic is severely criticized by organized medicine for its lack of scientific proof and publications. The official stance is that the onus for demonstrating the scientific validity of chiropractic rests with the chiropractic profession rather than the health care system. It is therefore desirable that chiropractic practitioners gain a practical comprehension of research methodology during their undergraduate course. This paper theorizes on how the teaching of research methodology may be implemented so as to facilitate clinical chiropractic research. By linking research and diagnosis in the form of case studies it is suggested that a significant contribution to chiropractic clinical research publications can be made by field practitioners. Changes in the undergraduate chiropractic program and at the Phillip Institute of Technology are examined in the light of the above proposal.