There are no valid reasons to use a chiropractor but many seem to do it anyway. They can rest a little easier about wasting their money(1) on spinal manipulation. A new EXPLORATORY paper (corporate journalists need to be notified of that in giant red letters or they claim it's science) finds that one worrisome problem associated with that alternative to medicine, cervical artery dissection, is not happening in large numbers
The paper is only observational and like any survey that is not science. It is also published in a corporate-owned chiropractic pay-to-publish journal so the peer-reviewers are people who believe in chiropractors. Yet if you believe vaccines cause autism, virtual pollution gives your child bad grades, or that weedkillers cause cancer, you believe in exploratory claims, so this should make you feel better about your bone cracking.
Cervical artery dissection is just what it reads like; a tear in your neck artery after which you will likely stroke out. Doctors have long noted that people who didn't go to medical school are more likely to cause it while chiropractors have dismissed that as a genetic risk, not their unvalidated cracking of your bones, but they are also 30 percent anti-vaccine (2) so they seem to think science is a buffet and they pick and choose what to believe according to their tastes.
It's only exploratory because it was insurance claims from one database covering people between 2010 and 2025 - after the Obama administration controversially claimed it was as legitimate as medicine. The numbers were 862,000 adults and we know that people take their children, even infants, so that was selective parsing by the authors. As is getting down to 431,000 people who took ibuprofen for neck pain instead of going to a chiropractor.
They concluded the risk was much lower than taking Advil. That's right, your risk of an artery tear from visiting a chiropractor less ibuprofen - only 31 patients in their chiropractic group reported a new cervical artery dissection within 30 days of follow-up but 58 patients taking ibuprofen did. The confounders in that are too many to count.
Using statistics, ibuprofen can be more dangerous than letting someone who never went to medical school crack your bones.
"People often ask me whether chiropractic care for neck pain is safe," said chiropractor Christine Goertz, DC, PhD, and co-author of the paper. "This study is some of the best evidence yet that the answer to that question is yes.”
So in their analysis, it is at least a safe placebo. But like all claims in defiance of the consensus, it is going to need a lot more evidence than a hand-picked statistical analysis in a journal where they publish you if the credit card payment clears.
CItation: Robert J. Trager, Anthony N. Baumann, Collin M. Labak, Kelsey L. Lewis, Jaime Abraham Perez, Christine M. Goertz & Andres Schuster, 'Association between spinal manipulative therapy and cervical artery dissection in patients with neck pain or headache: a retrospective cohort study', Chiropr Man Therap 34, 53 (2026). DOI:10.1186/s12998-026-00678-4
NOTES:
(1) And ours. The U.S. Office of Inspector General estimated that the Obama administration paid chiropractors $438,000,000 under Medicare Part B and over 80 percent of the recipients of your money did not comply with Medicare's own requirements. In just one year. Yes, let's complain about Trump cutting a small amount of science funding but most science and medical funding in the U.S. still goes to things that are neither science nor medicine. And has since Clinton opened the floodgates to woo for government money.
(2) We have to hope that has improved since right-wing people rarely have the wealth to visit chiropractors and NPR listeners claim they love vaccines since 2021.
