Help With Ear Candles!

Okay, first off let me preface this by saying that I am a big time skeptic, i'll believe something, but only if there is sufficient evidence.

So here is the story, my mother went to a relative's house and while there was exposed to ear candling. When she gets back home, she is preaching about them like they are a religious artifact. So I got on google, and searched for "ear candling" and read a few of the pages that came up. The first one was quackwatch, and most of the others were as zealous about ear candles as my mother, but all claimed various origins. One said the hopi indians, another said the egyptians, and yet another said the ancient chinese, which struck me as a little odd. So I hopped onto wikipedia, which I actively fact check and submit changes to, and searched for ear candling again, and read the page.

Accoring to the wikipedia, and i'm paraphrasing, the skeptic arguement is thus.

1. It is physically impossible for the candle to produce sufficient heat of pressure to actually remove wax.

2. The results when the candle is cut open for inspection infact come from the candle itself.

3. The candling process can lead to damage of the ear, via wax or burns.

Which to me was proof positive that it was a hoax, but then my mother told me about my little brother. She said that his hearing had been fading and the ear candle restored it.

So I interviewed my brother, in as scientific a way as I can manage. As it turns out, he was swiming in a man made lake, earlier in the week, which has a reputation for not being sanitary (the particular lake, not man made lakes in general), and the hearing loss had manifested shortly there after. Now i'm no doctor, or even wish to be, but a loss of hearing, slowly building pressure, and pain when a cotton swab is used to clean the ear, sounds alot like a middle ear infection to me, he's even been acting like he was sick for the last few days.

Which for a few minutes threw a monkey wrench into my otherwise rock solid debunking. But then I found a link, from the wikipedia, to pictures of an ear candling test, and when I scrolled up to read the text, the doctor who performed the test claimed that ear candling actually does work on middle ear infections. He stated that the bacteria that cause such an infection were aerobic, and the smoke from the ear candle and possibly the slight pressure could be attributed to it working. He backed this up by giving an anecdote about a student he had, who's mother would blow cigarette smoke, through a straw, into his ear when he had ear infections.

So again in my mind myth busted, to borrow a phrase, unfortunately not the case with my mother. She insists on performing this dangerous pseudo medicine, on both my younger siblings, and has a near fanatical obbession with them.

My question, which I explained perhaps to lengthily, is this:

where can I find, unbiased, rock solid research data, concerning ear candles?

Unfortunately I don't think even that will work, I found a page on a .Gov website explaining the dangers and misinformation, but she still didn't believe it. According to her, the wikipedia was biased, the government was pushing an agenda (i guess that's biased also), and quackwatch, which she has refered to many times before and even writting to the webmaster thanking them for such a nice website, didn't know what they were talking about.

Help!!!!