Osteopathie und Wissenschaft

Osteopathy includes philosophy, sciences and arts in one field, as is widely expressed in the community. Wright claims, osteopathy as a science includes aspects of biology, chemistry and physics, all serving health and prevention, healing and abatement of disease [34]. This paper adopts a broad view on science, scientific method and its philosophy, and reflects relations of osteopathy and science. Based on this discussion we claim various implications from scientific and systems theoretic approaches. For example, we believe scientific studies on osteopathic outcome need to include the status of the osteopath, as part of the system in which the interaction between patients and the osteopath is essential. Osteopathy is a manual art, in which this interaction alone has a substantial effect on the patient, according to recent neurobiological work. We suggest standardized and anonymized collaborative studies to discard the subjective factor from osteopathic research. Available research that compares outcome of osteopathy with other medical methods (e.g. orthopaedy, physiotherapy) and delivers clear results motivates more sophisticated approaches in osteopathic research. Osteopathy regards itself as a „wholistic“ approach and should organize its scientific research accordingly.