The significance of unlikely events

At a wedding reception recently, a cork from a bottle of champagne recoiled off the roof, hit the tip of my hors d'oeuvre fork and expertly flipped it into my glass of punch. Now try to achieve this by design; you probably will not get it right in a thousand attempts. Yet such unlikely events occur every day. Throw some paper clips together and try to get them to link. Yet out of every box a number of linked paperclips will appear. Discuss an acquaintance with someone and he or she suddenly appears, as if called.

Are such events significant? The answer is typically no, these are just random events of no significance. The cork had to hit somewhere, it just happened to be the fork. The paper clips just happened to be pushed in such a way that they linked. Your friend just happened to be close when you were discussing him - you are conveniently forgetting the instances where you discussed him and he did not appear.

Such unlikely and probably random events typically have no significance and lead to nothing, but then again sometimes they may. An unlikely event, recognized by you as significant, may become what Nassim Taleb call a black swan. He describes a black swan event as an outlier that carries extreme impact and is only retrospectively predictable. Talib's black swan is therefore not quite the same as the black swan from science, the discovery or event that falsifies a scientific theory and proves it wrong (Popper).

Evidence-based education?

Neurologist Steven Novella over at Neurologica, poses the question why there's not a stronger link between science and the practice of education? Why is there no evidence-based education, analogous to evidence-based medicine?

I have been asking essentially the same question for the past year here at Occam's Donkey. I have pointed out many of the quackeries found in education and will continue to do so, as I've not even scratched the surface.

We have been been working for some time on implementing evidence-based education at the school where I am the headmaster, Muriel Brand School. A page on the school's website deals with what we're trying to achieve:

Policy on evidence supported approaches to teaching and therapy

The school's mission statement reads as follows:

The provision of excellent, evidence supported, special education
and therapeutic treatment to learners with special educational needs.

The school recognises that due in part to the difficulties of research in applied settings, sound empirical evidence for the efficacy of specific therapies and teaching methods is not always available. We believe, however, that given,

1. A coherent theoretical base consistent with current scientific knowledge
2. Congruence between the theory and the practical application of the approach
3. The responsible and transparent implementation of the approach by its practitioners
4. The critical evaluation of available research, even if flawed
it is possible to distinguish between acceptable approaches and those that tend towards pseudoscience or even quackery.

All therapy and teaching approaches used in the school, have been judged according to the criteria above.

In a previous post on evidence-supported practice, I touched briefly on what I meant by that term and why evidence-supported rather than evidence-based in the educational context.

We are not close to there yet, whether evidence-based or evidence-supported. We pay lip service to the ideal, but the reality is that we often fall short. The South African branches of the professions represented within the school - education, the therapies (physio, speech and OT), and to some extent psychology - do not typically insist on a strong evidence base for their activities. Scientific thinking does not feature at all in the training of teachers and did not do so enough in the past in the case of therapists (it seems to be improving). Scientific evidence to support teaching and therapy is available, but is fragmented and not easily accessible at school level. Passive resistance with the unstated objection - "I've always done it this way and it works for me" - is sometimes an obstacle. No, we're not there yet, and I doubt it's different for other schools.

In South Africa, some teacher unions have played a valuable role in teacher development through teacher training. Regrettably, however, they currently do not seem to insist on any form of evidence base for their courses. Two prominent unions, NAPTOSA and SAOU, have for instance supported approaches that in my opinion are total nonsense, namely Mind Moves and Neurolink.

Prof. Faith Bischof (Physiotherapy, Wits University) and I recently oganized a conference on cerebral palsy with the theme of "Towards the evidence-supported management of cerebral palsy in South Africa: Are we there yet?". We were able to get Dr. Charlene Butler as the keynote speaker. She was one of the initiators of the valuable range of AACPDM reviews of evidence in the field of cerebral palsy. Her input was valuable in getting therapists and teachers to buy into the ideal of evidence-supported practice in the field of cerebral palsy. Regrettably, however, the conclusion of the conference had to be that we're not there yet. And in education as a sector? Not even close.

Making sense through argument

In a recent op-ed article in the New York Times, academic Gerald Graff made the point that students who derived most from being at college (more like university in South Africa), were those who made sense of their experiences by constructing arguments. In his article, An argument worth having, Graff pointed out that many students coped with the cognitive dissonance brought about by different lecturers' views, by briefly taking on particular lecturer's philosophy and regurgitating his or her views as required. This process, according to Graff, limits the benefit the student could derive from the intellectual culture of university.

Graff found that the most successful students applied critical thinking to the problem of,

"(cutting) through the clutter of jargons, methods and ideological differences to locate the common practices of argument and analysis hidden behind it all."

He suggested the following steps:

Recognizing that diverse knowledge becomes more useful when turned into arguments.

This should be done by summarizing the arguments and assumptions underlying the views of lecturers

When summarizing, the thesis of an argument should be considered, but also points of controversy.

Using the summaries and the arguments one constructed, the aim would then be to develop one's own considered and expressed opinion.

Graff, of course, is describing part of the process of critical thinking. I see one problem (in South Africa at least), very few students starting out have any understanding of critical thinking or the construction of arguments of this nature. Critical thinking is one the critical outcomes of South African outcomes based education (OBE), but this outcome is seldom aimed at and is rarely achieved. I believe that critical thinking should be explicitly taught. I have found Rationale, the argument mapping software from Austhink, useful in this regard.

Revisiting nonsense

I have covered many nonsense educational techniques and therapies since starting Occam's Donkey almost two years ago. I have not really been doing the recommended activities to increase the blog's popularity and I do not typically get more than 50 hits per day. It has nevertheless been gratifying to find that Google searches on the names of some of the techniques I have been writing about, often find Occam's Donkey on the first page of results. At least some people are getting the message that pseudoscience and quackery are rife in education and its allied disciplines. Caveat emptor.

Here are some of the ideas, techniques and products I've covered. To see posts related to each idea, just type the italics printed words in the search box at the top of the blog home page.

The mind myths underlying many fads and scams

Brain Gym

Mind Moves

Brain profiling and genetic brain profiling

Left brain right brain

BioStrath for ADHD

Betakit Study System

Primitive reflexes

Quantum physics

Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, or SCIO/QXCI

Human Pin Code

Learning styles

Multiple intelligences

Motivational speakers

Those are some of the ideas and techniques I have concerns about. A valid question would be whether there is anything I support? Well, many of the techniques under discussion are promoted as silver bullets that will solve all educational problems. There are no silver bullets in this field. I believe that not all problems can be solved. Those that can be solved are normally solved through hard work directly on the problem, a back to basics approach.

Science based (evidence based or evidence supported) solutions are the best route to go. While there have been recent scandals in the Big Pharma, medical interventions for conditions such as ADHD are still the best. So called "natural products" for conditions such as ADHD are typically ineffective and a waste of money. The most effective "treatment" for ADHD is a combination of medication (typically stimulant) and behaviour modification.

Foot-in-the-mouth disease

I remember as a child the campaigns in South Africa to eradicate foot-and-mouth disease. More common these days are foot-in-the-mouth disease.





Image from the howling latina.



Here are the Top 10 examples of celebrity nonsense from the Telegraph:

George Bush: "Our enemies are innovative and resourceful and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we."

Arnold Schwarzenegger, in 2003: "I think that gay marriage should be between a man and a woman."

Donald Rumsfeld, in 2002: "Reports that say that something hasn't happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the ones we don't know we don't know."

Murray Walker, motor racing commentator: "The lead car is absolutely unique, except for the one behind it which is identical."

John Motson, football commentator: "For those of you watching in black and white, Spurs are playing in yellow."

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, explaing budget plans to lawmakers in July this year: "Total spending will continue to rise and it will be a zero percent rise in 2013-14."

Clinton, in 1998 grand jury testimony about Monica Lewinsky: "It depends upon what the meaning of the word 'is' is. If 'is' means 'is and never has been' that's one thing - if it means 'there is none', that was a completely true statement."

Cantona, 1995: "When the seagulls follow the trawler, it's because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea."

Bush, once again, in July 2001: "I know what I believe. I will continue to articulate what I believe and what I believe - I believe what I believe is right."

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, on British satirical gameshow Have I Got News for You in 2003: "I could not fail to disagree with you less."

Thank heavens there's no-one to follow me around and record the nonsense I may come up with from time to time!

CP children more affected by H1N1

There are some early indications of a higher mortality rate due to H1N1 influenza among children with cerebral palsy and other neurodevelopmental disorders. The vulnerability of this group of children to complications from flu has been known for some time. The current situation in the USA, according to the report referred to above, is:

"Almost two-thirds of the children who died with swine flu had epilepsy, cerebral palsy or other neurodevelopmental conditions. In a previous flu season, only a third of the children who died had those conditions."

"Two-thirds of the children who died had high-risk medical conditions. Nearly all of them had an illness related to the nervous system, including mental retardation, cerebral palsy, epilepsy and other seizure disorders."

"Years ago experts recognized that children with neurodevelopmental conditions run a higher risk of serious complications from the flu. But the proportion of swine flu victims with that kind of underlying condition is high compared to a previous flu season."

"It's not clear how significant that finding is, because many of the children had other medical problems besides the neurological conditions that had weakened their bodies."

Keep in mind that this report is based on limited numbers of children and that it is too early to draw definitive conclusions from it.

Read the full report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Don't move away, move toward ...

From George Siemens on his blog Connectivism, something that an advisor had told him in his youth:

"... never move away from something - you never know where you’ll end up…always walk toward something - this ensures you end up where you want to be."

Thinking back on my different careers, that would have been good advice early on. More than once have I found myself, or seen others, changing things without a clear idea of where we were headed, often without a clear understanding of the dynamics of whatever we were changing. Matters often ended up in a mess, if not in a disaster. Post-Apartheid South Africa would make an excellent case study in this regard.