Three years ago Brain Gym was comprehensively discredited and faced a perfect storm. What has happened to them since? My observation is (no specific evidence) that they had been lying low. Certainly in South Africa they seem to have been less visible, which may however, have been due to the rise of competing quackeries rather than the bad publicity.
Image from liveandlearn.net.au
During the storm faced by Brain Gym in 2008, I tried to find a comprehensive online response from them without success. In preparing for this post,I finally found a response by Paul and Gail Dennison, the founders of Brain Gym. They responded specifically to the excellent review by Sense about Science. I had hoped for an honest appraisal of Brain Gym, taking into consideration all the science based criticism they have previously ignored. As shown below, that was not to be and I can only describe their response as disingenuous.
The Dennisons' general reasoning was that Brain Gym worked, that they did not know and had never claimed to know why it worked. Further that they did not understand the neuroscience underlying the putative effects of Brain Gym and had never claimed to do so.
Brain Gym works?
Let's consider the Dennisons' first claim, Brain Gym works. They base this on "... more than a hundred anecdotal, qualitative, and quantitative studies and reports, ... available in the Research Chronology and published in Brain Gym Journal". Now that will only fool the Brain Gym faithful, whom of course the Dennisons' piece was written for. Anecdotes are not evidence. I've seen most of the studies they refer to. Mostly they were performed by Brain Gym practitioners (not independent), no control groups were used, or if there were control groups blinded designs were not used. Being published in the Brain Gym Journal obviously mean that the studies were not published in independent, peer reviewed journals. The Dennisons surely knew that the lack of credible evidence has been one of the main objections against Brain Gym, see for instance, Hyatt, K.J. 2007. Brain Gym: Building stronger brains or wishful thinking? Remedial and Special Education, Vol. 28, No. 2, 117-124. Who are they trying to fool?
The next line of "evidence" to support their claim that Brain Gym works is the self report of their subjects. Now keep in mind that Brain Gym is used primarily in primary schools (although you find the odd high school and even corporate that values the dignity of their students or staff so little as to subject them to such nonsense).
Here are two typical quotes from their article:
"Our students report that, after holding the Positive Points, they are better able to think clearly, make choices, consider consequences, and let go of emotional overlay from past experiences."and
"Many students notice that their abilities to comprehend and think independently have improved upon increased spinal flexibility."
Keep in mind that one of Brain Gym's claims is that their techniques work almost instantaneously. I've known some pretty bright people, but that level of instant introspection and insight I've never experienced. It is well-known that people's self-assessments are inaccurate and that on average, people rate themselves above average in any skill (which makes no statistical sense). See for instance this article Flawed Self-Assessment: Implications for Health, Education, and Business, hat tip and more information in Barking up the wrong tree.
Look, however, at any Brain Gym manual and you see that the improvements their subjects (whether teachers or children) report are based on suggestion, acquiescence bias and confirmation bias. Children in particular are known to be suggestible and acquiescent to adults. What do you expect a child to report after reading in the Brain Gym manual for kids that:
"We hold (our Positive Points) ... whenever we feel nervous of afraid. We know we can achieve our goals when we stop worrying about things and start working on them. In less than a minute, we begin to feel peaceful about planning for the future."That is the kind of evidence the Dennisons advance for their claims for the effectiveness of Brain Gym. It is sad to realise that many parents,teachers and even educational administrators will find that sufficient.
They were clueless about the neuroscience?
I've shown the Dennisons' claim that Brain Gym works to be without evidence. That makes the rest of their argument, i.e. they cannot be blamed for getting the neuroscience wrong as they never claimed to understand it in the first place, irrelevant. It is cynical and disingenuous, however.
I've read numerous Brain Gym documents and attended a number of Brain Gym presentations over the years. Never once did I hear any Brain Gym consultant, including the Brain Gym gurus in South Africa at the time, admit to not understanding the science behind it. Their modus operandi was always to dazzle the audience with pop neuroscience, including Paul Maclean's triune brain, Roger Sperry's split brain and neurophysiology claims purportedly by Paul Dennison himself and also by Brain Gym's Carla Hannaford. I had one Brain Gym consultant telling me that he knew very well that the neuroscience claims were nonsense, but that he could not say that to the university of technology students he was working with as would destroy the placebo effect (which he claimed was due to quantum mechanics and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle)!
I've looked again at Dennison's Switching On and Hannaford's Smart Moves. While much of what they wrote was scientifically questionable, nowhere did they admit to being clueless about the neuroscience. They were bullshitting then about the science behind Brain Gym and they're bullshitting now about never claiming a scientific basis for Brain Gym.
