You know, I really thought it was a spoof on April Fool’s Day when I looked at the New York Times and there, shyly staring back at me from a posed photograph, was 11-year-old Emily Rosa of Loveland, Colorado.
According to the Times, Emily is the youngest person ever to publish a paper in a major scientific journal, in this case the Journal of the American Medical Association. Her paper, which is said to debunk the practice of “therapeutic touch,” is based on a science fair project of two years ago, when Emily was a nine-year-old prodigy.
Emily had been planning a science fair project involving different-colored M&M candies, which sounds about right for a nine-year-old, but one day she happened to see a video about therapeutic touch. As it turns out, Emily’s mother, Linda Rosa, is a nurse and – what a surprise – an anti-therapeutic touch activist. Don’t get me wrong – therapeutic touch could probably stand some debunking and Emily’s science fair project sounds good as far as it goes. I just think this episode could stand a little more debunking.
You see, I really don’t think little nine-year-old Emily Rosa designed her experiment and located the 21 therapeutic touch practitioners who did so poorly in a battery of 280 tests. The New York Times noted that Emily’s experiment is the first time therapeutic touch practitioners have submitted themselves to empirical testing. One source quoted in the article speculated that the therapeutic touch people were disarmed by being approached by a child.
And while Emily the prodigy is touted in the headline, those who read down to the tenth paragraph found Emily’s paper for the Journal of the American Medical Association was written by Emily and her mother and two other activists who oppose the use of therapeutic touch. Unmasking quackery is as fine an avocation as any, but I fail to see why we should use our children as pawns in a debate among adults.
I had hardly finished putting down the paper with a sigh when it struck me that Emily’s hometown, Loveland, is about 30 miles north of Boulder, Colorado, home of the strangled six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. Forty miles north of Loveland is Cheyenne, Wyoming, where in April 1996, seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff died in a plane crash trying to become the youngest person to fly from coast to coast.
Of course, JonBenet’s story is tainted by profligacy and Jessica’s is tainted by overindulgence and no one is predicting Emily’s demise. But even while we consider scientific crusading a more noble cause than beauty pageantry or barnstorming, it still cannot justify the theft of childhood.
Then the images came flooding in – teenage Olympic gold-medalist Tara Lipinski, four-year-old Tiger Woods showing off his golf skills on the Merv Griffin Show, grown-up prodigy Jim Piersall breaking down in the Red Sox dugout and attacking his teammates.
And how many images don’t make it to the public limelight? How many math whizzes, piano prodigies, would-be quarterbacks and failed child actors will we never hear about? And if the price of success is high for a prodigy, what is the price of failure? What do the Little-League fathers and stage-door mothers have to say when their child prodigy turns out to be just a child?
And what about Emily Rosa? The New York Times says she is “on a roll,” planning to debunk more alternative medical therapies. She can’t stop publishing now, lest her public forget her and she becomes just another elementary school student.
Leave Them Kids Alone
You know, I really thought it was a spoof on April Fool’s Day when I looked at the New York Times and there, shyly staring back at me from a posed photograph, was 11-year-old Emily Rosa of Loveland, Colorado.
According to the Times, Emily is the youngest person ever to publish a paper in a major scientific journal, in this case the Journal of the American Medical Association. Her paper, which is said to debunk the practice of “therapeutic touch,” is based on a science fair project of two years ago, when Emily was a nine-year-old prodigy.
Emily had been planning a science fair project involving different-colored M&M candies, which sounds about right for a nine-year-old, but one day she happened to see a video about therapeutic touch. As it turns out, Emily’s mother, Linda Rosa, is a nurse and – what a surprise – an anti-therapeutic touch activist. Don’t get me wrong – therapeutic touch could probably stand some debunking and Emily’s science fair project sounds good as far as it goes. I just think this episode could stand a little more debunking.
You see, I really don’t think little nine-year-old Emily Rosa designed her experiment and located the 21 therapeutic touch practitioners who did so poorly in a battery of 280 tests. The New York Times noted that Emily’s experiment is the first time therapeutic touch practitioners have submitted themselves to empirical testing. One source quoted in the article speculated that the therapeutic touch people were disarmed by being approached by a child.
And while Emily the prodigy is touted in the headline, those who read down to the tenth paragraph found Emily’s paper for the Journal of the American Medical Association was written by Emily and her mother and two other activists who oppose the use of therapeutic touch. Unmasking quackery is as fine an avocation as any, but I fail to see why we should use our children as pawns in a debate among adults.
I had hardly finished putting down the paper with a sigh when it struck me that Emily’s hometown, Loveland, is about 30 miles north of Boulder, Colorado, home of the strangled six-year-old beauty queen JonBenet Ramsey. Forty miles north of Loveland is Cheyenne, Wyoming, where in April 1996, seven-year-old Jessica Dubroff died in a plane crash trying to become the youngest person to fly from coast to coast.
Of course, JonBenet’s story is tainted by profligacy and Jessica’s is tainted by overindulgence and no one is predicting Emily’s demise. But even while we consider scientific crusading a more noble cause than beauty pageantry or barnstorming, it still cannot justify the theft of childhood.
Then the images came flooding in – teenage Olympic gold-medalist Tara Lipinski, four-year-old Tiger Woods showing off his golf skills on the Merv Griffin Show, grown-up prodigy Jim Piersall breaking down in the Red Sox dugout and attacking his teammates.
And how many images don’t make it to the public limelight? How many math whizzes, piano prodigies, would-be quarterbacks and failed child actors will we never hear about? And if the price of success is high for a prodigy, what is the price of failure? What do the Little-League fathers and stage-door mothers have to say when their child prodigy turns out to be just a child?
And what about Emily Rosa? The New York Times says she is “on a roll,” planning to debunk more alternative medical therapies. She can’t stop publishing now, lest her public forget her and she becomes just another elementary school student.
Welcome to the rat race, Emily.