Massage & Bodywork

November/December 2009

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A MAP OF SCIENTIFIC ACTIVITY Different research approaches are not polar opposites, but part of a continuous spectrum of scientific methods of investigation. Over the past two years in this column, we've covered a lot of ground, and we've added elements to our research repertoire. For the last article in this series, let's zoom out and take a broader view of the entire field of massage research. Such a perspective allows us to cover a great deal of ground, to place studies in relation to each other, and to suggest niches for individuals with different interests to explore massage research capacity and literacy. A few questions come to mind right away. How do we use this knowledge? What does any particular study mean in the larger context of massage? How does massage science fit into the larger scientific universe? How do we apply findings from research in our therapeutic encounters with clients? Many other questions will occur to you as you continue to become familiar with research study articles. Here, we'll examine how we put those smaller, separate parts together into a bigger picture, each part of the process working back and forth to inform and influence the others. We'll look at the field through several different lenses to suggest where your interests might open a natural starting point. Anthropologist and educator Gary Witherspoon offers a useful way of thinking about relationships (part/whole, macro/micro) in the research articles we read. Although his immediate subject is Navajo art and cosmology, rather than biomedical research, the framework is useful. "Symmetry provides a succinct expression of the nature of the whole- to-part relationship," he explains. "In symmetry, the whole consists of two or more complementary parts … All parts have their identity, their function, their efficacy, and their beauty in relationship to the whole. Any marring or disabling of any part of a symmetrical whole destroys the integrity of the whole. Therefore, symmetry is inherently interdependent and holistic."1 This analogy helps frame several kinds of dynamic tension in science— between holism and reductionism; large scale and small scale; qualitative and quantitative; experimental and correlational; subjective and objective. In isolation, neither half is better than its opposite; the answer depends on the context. Think of the way each half of the yin-yang symbol contains a dot of the other color, indicating that they are not entirely separate from each other. Similarly, different research approaches are not polar opposites, but part of a continuous spectrum of scientific methods of investigation. connect with your colleagues on massageprofessionals.com 123

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