Objective: To discuss the professional identify of chiropractic as evident in the profession’s literature.
Methods: Structured literature review followed by a pragmatic historical narrative of found artefacts.
Results: The literature appears vague regarding chiropractic’s identity.
Discussion: The literature does allow a broad determination that the identity of chiropractic is unimodal gathered around the founding premise of DD Palmer with an informed prediction of a left-skewed, negative distribution of concessional chiropractors representing no more than 30% of all. It appears this minority becomes more dogmatic as it concedes elements of conventional identity and adopts extreme evidence-based musculoskeletal medicine to become a sect of about 0.2% of all. About 70% of chiropractors identify with subluxation in an evidence-informed context and I call this representation the conventional chiropractic identity.
Conclusion: The identity of chiropractic may now be described as conventional when its practitioners adhere to the profession’s founding precepts, or concessional when it modifies or ignores these. The majority of the profession can be considered conventional.
Author keywords: Chiropractic, Identity, Subluxation
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