We have in recent months devoted a great deal of valuable column space to the Wikipedia controversy because when someone new to Energy Medicine or Energy Psychology wants to learn more, Wikipedia is often the first place they look. There they are fed biased and misleading information that represents both disciplines as pseudoscience, lacking in substance or merit.

A new book by Sharyl Attkisson, an award-winning former CBS investigative reporter, points to Wikipedia as a prime example of a growing problem where the internet and other media are used by special interests in disguise "with the intent of fooling you into believing an independent or grassroots movement is speaking . . . They give the impression there's widespread support for an agenda when there's not."

In her book Stonewalled, published by Harper last November, Attkisson explains that while Wikipedia is billed as "the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit . . . the reality can't be more different. Anonymous Wikipedia editors acting on behalf of corporate interests co-opt and control pages to forbid or reverse edits that threaten their agenda. . . . They skew and delete information, blatantly violating Wikipedia's own established policies with impunity . . . blocking [other would-be contributors] from correcting even the simplest factual inaccuracies."

Most relevant to Energy Medicine, she points to "the powerful pharmaceutical interests that deftly use Wikipedia to distribute their propaganda and control the message."

Some of Wikipedia's conflicts of interest are being exposed now by a group called Wikipediocracy.com, which states that it exists to "inoculate the unsuspecting public against the torrent of misinformation, defamation, and general nonsense that issues forth from one of the world's most frequently visited websites."

John Freedom

Commenting on these revelations, John Freedom, director of research for the Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology (ACEP), recently wrote to ACEP members: "So there you have it, dear colleagues, we've no doubt been shadowboxing with psychiatry and big pharma all along, regardless of what our studies prove. This is also why most of the reporters we've talked to, even those who have initiated the contact, drop the story of Energy Psychology for combat PTSD and other populations. Their editors kill their stories because of big pharma advertising dollars. Who else would stonewall our research and so vehemently attack us as 'lunatic charlatans?' However, we have the outcomes -- people heal."