The Mystery of "Quantum Resonance Spectroscopy"

Neuroskeptic iconNeuroskeptic
By Neuroskeptic
Apr 20, 2014 2:03 PMNov 20, 2019 5:56 AM

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Can quantum physics help to diagnose schizophrenia and depression? A paper just published in the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease claims that a technique called 'quantum resonance spectroscopy' (QRS) can accurately diagnose various mental health problems. But is it quantum wizardry or magic quackery? According to the authors of the new paper, Zhang et al from Xi'an in China, QRS was able to measure symptoms like anxiety, irritability, depression, and psychosis. In a large sample of patients, the accuracy was high: compared to psychiatrist's ratings of the patients symptoms, QRS agreed with kappa correlation values of over 0.65. That's an impressive performance, given that two psychiatrists rarely agree about a patient's diagnosis as well as that. So what is QRS? Well, I didn't know anything about it before I read this paper... and I still don't. The paper provides few details. About the only thing it gives us is a picture of a QRS machine:

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