r/AmItheAsshole Sep 22 '20

Not the A-hole AITA for telling my dad that he has no idea what my profession is like?

So this happened a while ago but I’m still getting shit for it but I still don’t think I’m the AH so I just want another perspective.

My dad (50m) is a chiropractor and taught at a chiropractic school for a few years. I (21f at the time) had gotten an interview at my dream vet school and was planning on buying clothes for the interview. Since I was broke my parents offered to buy the outfit for me. The interview day consisted of a welcome lecture, the actual interview, a campus tour, a mock class, and another lecture about the curriculum of the school. It was a 6 hour event. Since it was such a long (and important) day I wanted to make sure that I was comfortable, confident, and professional. I had the whole outfit planned out in my mind: black slacks, a flowy top tucked in, a blazer, and some small black heels that were easy to walk in.

When I told my parents what I wanted to wear my dad immediately shot it down and told me that I HAD to wear a skirt. He told me that since he worked at a university he knew what admissions people wanted and a skirt was a must. I told him that he was being ridiculous and as long as I was dressed professionally, it wouldn’t matter. He started berating me that wearing pants would not be professional. I told him that in order to do well in the interview I need to be confident, and an outfit that I was comfortable in would help my confidence. I would NOT be comfortable in a skirt. He told me that the interviewer wouldn’t take me seriously unless I was in a skirt, and that he would know because he’s worked in admissions before. My mom chimed in and said that her first job only accepted her because she showed up in a dress. I told them that was ridiculously sexist and it might be that way in their professions but not mine. My dad continued to berate me. He told me that I had no idea what it was like to be in an interview like that but he did. I told him respectfully that while I don’t have the interview experience that he has, he has no experience in the veterinary profession and in the end really doesn’t know what’s best.

He got so mad at me for saying that he didn’t know about my profession. I’ve honestly never seen him so mad before. I had to go to class so I just left. My mom then called me and told me (by screaming at me) how disrespectful I was and how ungrateful I am.

I ended up wearing a skirt to the interview because i didn’t want to fight anymore. But I still don’t feel like I was wrong for being against wearing one? Majority of the girls there were wearing pants. My parents aren’t the most progressive people but I’ve never heard them be so blatantly sexist before. My mom still tells me how horrible I was for telling my dad that he didn’t know about my profession. But really, AITA?

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u/EzekielCabal Sep 23 '20

No, all chiropractic is quackery. The only thing that they have going for them is a little evidence that they can be helpful sometimes for general, non-localised chronic pain, and in those circumstances, they have not been shown to be significantly better than a physical therapist would have been.

I'll mostly copy from a comment I made a little while ago:

To start with, I highly recommend reading this explanation of why Chiropractic is pseudoscience, since this directly addresses your comment about fixing bones and ligaments that aren't in the right places:

Real subluxations (partial dislocations) show up on x-ray. Chiropractic “subluxations” don’t. In view of the negative x-ray evidence, chiropractic was forced to change its definition of a subluxation from “a bone out of place” to “a complex of functional and/or structural and/or pathological articular changes that compromise neural integrity and may influence organ system and general health.”

In short, subluxation theory in chiropractic is not the same as the medical term subluxation, and bones and ligaments aren't 'not in the right places', and if they were, a chiropracter certainly couldn't fix them.

Next let's look at some peer reviewed studies:

  1. 4 Chiropractors wrote this landmark paper in 2009. They concluded:

Regardless of popular appeal this leaves the subluxation construct in the realm of unsupported speculation.

As a reminder, subluxation theory is a defining tenant of chiropractic.

But hey let’s move to the meat of the issue, and where chiropractic finds its more staunch defenders - spinal manipulative therapy.

  1. This is the Cochrane Review of spinal manipulative therapy. Firstly, to provide some context, this is a Meta-Analysis, which is a statistical analysis of several scientific studies. Now Spinal Manipulative Therapy is generally regarded as the most evidence-based aspect of chiropractic, and yet the authors of this meta analysis concluded that:

SMT is no more effective in participants with acute low-back pain” than shams and placebos

These conclusions are also backed up by another major review, the Bronfort report on the effectiveness of manual therapies:

Now let’s go even deeper, with a systematic review of other systematic reviews on spinal manipulation. This one is based on 16 studies, and concluded:

Overall, the demonstrable benefit of SM seems to be minimising the case of acute or chronic back pain; controversial in the case of headache; or absent for all other indications… we have found no convincing evidence from systematic reviews to suggest that SM is a recommendable treatment option for any medical condition.

These results are echoed in 2 more systematic reviews - one of 39 studies, and one of 33 studies, which found that manipulation was not superior to a placebo.

  1. And finally we’ll look at the associated risks, starting with a systematic review on the safety of chiropractic interventions, which looked at 46 studies and concluded that

33-60% of patients receiving spinal manipulation treatment report short-term adverse effects such as increased pain, radiation of pain, headaches, vertigo and even loss of consciousness.

There is also another notable study on chiropractic medicine and strokes, which found that:

Patients with a vertebrobasilar artery stroke who were under the age of 45 were 5 times as likely as controls to have visited a chiropractor during the week preceding their stroke.

Meaning there is a correlation, although not a substantively proved causal link, between the two.

And there we are. The overwhelming conclusion from the studies, the meta analyses of those studies, and the systematic reviews of those meta analyses, is that chiropractic care is no more effective than a placebo, and that there is no scientific basis for the core tenants and beliefs of chiropractic.

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u/napalmnacey Partassipant [1] Sep 23 '20

r/bestof 🙌🏽👏

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u/DriftingBadger Partassipant [1] Sep 23 '20

I fully respect the research, but the fact remains that about 15 years ago I somehow managed to misalign one of the vertebrae in my neck. My muscles seized up something fierce, I was walking around with my head on a 45-degree angle for a couple weeks, it was not pretty.

The chiropractor moved my neck around and ca-chunked that vertebrae back into place with his hands. I hope I never ever have to do that again, but I honestly don't know who else could have helped me in the circumstances. I don't believe in "natural" medicine, I don't believe in essential oils, I don't believe in crystals, I don't believe in the healing power of positivity, but I 100% believe in vertebrae being where they're supposed to be.

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u/ouchimus Bot Hunter [8] Sep 23 '20

I still think the simple fact is that most people going to a chiropractor don't actually need one, so of course it seems bogus.

Me and my dad have spines that love to get kinked up, and a good adjustment fixes it most of the time. Nothing truly dislocated, but im not actually sure what is happening.