SOME ELEMENTARY GUIDES FOR PERFORMING RESEARCH INTO THE EFFECTS OF PHYSIOTHERAPY TREATMENTS1 1Based on an address given to the teaching staff of the New South Wales School of Physiotherapy, October 1972. Received March 1973.

If any profession is to survive, it cannot escape the necessity of continually subjecting its techniques to critical reappraisal. If a profession does not carry out research into its own methods, it is certain that it will come under challenge from other allied professions which do encourage research. This is already occurring with physiotherapy. In a recent International Seminar on Rehabilitation Medicine, Dr. J. V. Basmajian said:“I am persuaded that almost all therapeutic procedures in a rehabilitation department must be regarded as suspect; they may be either useless or harmful. I have little confidence in the scientific basis of any of them.