In 1975 the National Institutes of Health brought together chiropractors, osteopaths, medical manipulators and scientists to review the available literature on spinal manipulation. Their conclusion was straightforward: Although further research was warranted, insufficient data existed to draw any strong conclusions about this form of healing.

Bernard A. Coyle, who made his home in a new chiropractic college in California, was determined to change that state of affairs. He focused much of his career on the furthering of chiropractic research.

The Northern California College of Chiropractic (NCCC), which later became Palmer College of Chiropractic West (PCCW) in 1980, was unquestionably a “shoe string” operation. A month after its incorporation, the NCCC’s board of trustees was augmented by Bernard A. Coyle, PhD.

Coyle, known affectionately as Barney, was New Zealand-born and had taken his doctorate in physical chemistry (crystallography) from Northwestern University. With experience in research and teaching at several universities, he brought a somewhat novel dimension to the profession: the mentorship of a trained investigator who was willing to build from the ground up.

Over the next 14 years Coyle held various positions at NCCC/PCCW, including trustee, professor, acting chief administrator, vice president for academics and director of research. Along the way he would teach by example the role of scholarship and academic freedom within a chiropractic environment. Under his tutelage, PCCW outpaced its sister institution in Davenport in scholarly productivity and earned a reputation for academic innovation.

His accomplishments were many:

• Hired ‘live wires.’ Coyle’s strategy was simple. He viewed the faculty as the heart and soul of the institution and whenever he had the opportunity to replace “dead wood” with a “live wire,” he hired. He didn’t much care what direction the new faculty member’s research took. The profession was starting from a near-zero baseline, he reasoned, and all contributions were welcome.

• Created a hotbed of scholarship. Data and/or dollars were what he expected of his team, whom he viewed as “free agents,” at liberty to challenge and question and to exercise academic freedom in the grand tradition of higher education. During the course of his 14 years at the institution, PCCW became a hotbed of scholarship in the profession.

• Established methodology of research. Ironically, the PCCW’s reputation for research was acquired before much of any data were published. Coyle was partly responsible for this as well, for he and his faculty authored a number of articles (several appeared in Chiropractic Economics ) which discussed not only the imperative of chiropractic investigations, but the methodology for conducting such studies.

• Established ‘mini-grant’ programs. With minimal internal resources available, Coyle managed to establish a “mini-grant” program for faculty so as to provide seed money to novice investigators. By the mid-1980s, the PCCW research “machine” was in operation, and scholarly productivity took off.

• Launched annual conference on reviews. Coyle was also concerned about scholarship in the chiropractic ranks beyond PCCW. He recognized early on that little had been done in the way of critical reviews of the literature, and to this end he instigated an annual conference on reviews in 1984. It was a means of providing useful compilations of information for the profession-at-large, but perhaps just as importantly, it was a gentle way of introducing inexperienced chiropractors to the scholarly process.

• Established a research consortium. Budgets were always tight at the heavily tuition-dependent American colleges of chiropractic, and PCCW epitomized this dilemma. Coyle observed that the California Chiropractic Association had for several years been donating $50,000 for research annually to the five schools then operating in California. However, the method of distribution involved cutting five checks for $10,000 each, which were sent to the college presidents, and as likely as not, deposited in the schools’ general funds.

As well, he noted, there was a tension among the presidents, who tended to view one another as competitors and to discourage collaboration among institutions. Coyle decided to kill two birds with one stone. In collaboration with Robert Tolar, Ph.D., vice president at Western States Chiropractic College (WSCC), and Kurt Hegetschweiler, D.C., president of the CCA, Coyle established the Pacific Consortium for Chiropractic Research (PCCR) in the fall of 1985.

The articles of incorporation were signed by the college presidents (who were now officially on record as approving inter-college collaboration), but the purse strings would be controlled by the research administrators of the colleges. Thereafter, the CCA cut only one check each year, payable to the PCCR. The only rigid stipulation for research funding from the PCCR: any project must involve faculty from at least two of the member colleges.