Mind Myth 3: Energy and the brain

This is the third in my series on mind myths. I'm dealing with those myths mainly applicable to the educational arena and often found in alternative medicine and controversial therapies.

Some years ago a parent requested me to excuse her child from school as she was taking him to an enerologist. Because her child was attending our incontinence clinic, I initially thought she was referring to either a urologist or gastro-enterologist. It turned out that enerologist was a misleading term for a quack energy healer, in this case one who specifically claimed to be able to manipulate the brain by manipulating psychic energy. He no doubt believed that he could share in the status of mainstream medical science by using a term that sounded similar to that used by medical specialists.

References to energy and energy meridians (also known as acupuncture points or chakras) in any educational product or therapy that claims to affect the brain in some way, should immediately set the alarm bells ringing. What is referred to is psychic energy, sometimes also called chi, prana, etc. These are not scientific concepts and cannot be detected or measured by scientific means. This "energy" is referred to in practices such as homeopathy, some types of chiropractic and other forms of alternative medicine, but have no role to play in neuroscience.

Image from Scientific American.

















Practitioners of brain based pseudoscience sometimes deliberately or through ignorance confuse the scientific concept of energy and psychic energy. They may by design neglect to inform clients of the origin of some of their activities, i.e. have children press certain buttons (energy meridians) without informing them or the parents that the brain is supposed to be activated by the channelling of psychic energy. This reticence seemed to develop after parents of specific religious persuasions objected to psychic energy based activities.

Confusion through ignorance is often found where practitioners invoke Einstein's famous equation E = mc2 to prove the point of our "unlimited" capabilities. Fernando Sarav (see reference below) pointed out that they are confusing a simple combustion process occurring metabolically in the body with the transformation of matter into energy. The difference is staggering. One mole of glucose (180 g) would yield about 3,1 kJ through combustion, but 1,62 x 1013 kJ if transformed into energy. That amount of energy would power a mid-sized city for a year.

When these practitioners are honest about the origins of their techniques, they often invoke the "it can't be wrong, the Chinese have been using it for 5 000 years" argument. I quote Dr. Paul Dennison, the Brain Gym guru, from his embarrassing British television interview (see it here in a previous post):

"There are studies to show that we are electrical. Acupuncture and other procedures are based on the fact that there are electrical circuits in the body and we are building on the shoulders of these people have been doing this for thousands of years."

This is a fallacious argument, the so-called Argument from Age (Wisdom of the Ancients) fallacy.

In an excellent recent blog post on acupuncture, neurologist Steven Novella points out that Western societies had their own pre-scientific theory of disease:

"An example from Western culture of philosophy-based medicine was the humoral theory - the notion that health was the result of the four bodily humors being in proper balance while illness reflected one or more humors being out of balance. Treatments therefore sought to increase or decrease one or more of the humors (such as the practice of blood-letting) to re-establish balance. The humoral theory survived for several thousand years in Western societies, perpetuated by culture and the power of deception inherent in anecdotal evidence."

I would submit that the only reason for psychic energy based theories to be preferred to humoral theories (in the absence of evidence), would be another logical fallacy, the genetic fallacy. Could a reversed not made here bias be the only reason to prefer Eastern origin psychic energy theories to Western origin humoral theories?

For further reading, see:

Sarav, F.D. 1999. Energy and the brain: Facts and fantasies. In S. Della Sala (Ed.), Mind myths: Exploring popular assumptions about the mind and brain. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Also see Robert Todd Carroll's Energy Healing: Looking in All the Wrong Places

Other posts in the Mind Myth series:

The 10% myth
Left brain right brain

Schools' rugby concussion outrage

I have often been horrified by the lack of care shown by schools and parents when children are injured in school sport, especially in rugby. This, however, goes beyond even the worst that I've seen before.

A 16 year old school boy, playing rugby for his school, was assaulted after the game by two parents. The two adults hit and kicked him in the face and on the head. He suffered severe concussion, was hospitalized and treated with cortisone to prevent brain edema (swelling). A doctor quoted after the incident mentioned the danger of brainstem herniation.

Despite what was clearly a serious concussion, the boy was playing again a week later in the final match of the Beeld Trophy. That was three days after his discharge from hospital.

Read the newspaper reports here and here (the last in Afrikaans).

School boy, Lee-Jay Kotze, playing the rugby final a week after suffering severe concussion.

The parents and coach would have been advised by the neurologist of the dangers of concussion and the consequences that repeated concussions hold for the developing brain. The child wanted to play, but surely the adults should have exercised greater responsibility. Their actions to my mind border on criminal negligence.

Read more on concussion in childhood in Can we manage sport related concussion in children the same as in adults?

An excellent local (South African) resource on concussion in sport is Sports Concussion South South Africa.

School sport in many South African schools is very competitive. Schools' reputations and the future teaching careers of teacher coaches depend on the performance of their teams. This is especially the case in rugby, a national sport and for some almost a religion.

Rich schools buy often buy players with bursaries and other incentives, stripping poorer schools of their players and the opportunity to perform well. They also pay professional coaches and reward teacher coaches with incentives. This is one way in which less wealthy parents can get their children into top schools, but often at high cost to the children. They are removed from their circle of friends and often experience huge pressure to perform from the schools who paid to get them. Their parents, especially fathers, often also put pressure on them, vicariously achieving through their children what they could not when they were at school. The know-all, beer-bellied fathers who heckle referees and constantly admonish their sons, sometimes getting into fights with other parents and even players, are common sights next to South African school boy rugby games.

Silly season: The SCIO/QXCI

Ben Goldacre in Badscience, calls it the silly season - gullible journalists and others singing the praises of quack devices. Under discussion is a device I've recently blogged about, the Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, or SCIO/QXCI (also known as the EPFX).

Goldacre and some of the commenters to his column, point out some significant facts about the originator of the QXCI, "Professor" Bill Nelson, aka Desiré Dubounet. Much of their information is from an exposé by The Seattle Times, entitled How one man's invention is part of a growing worldwide scam that snares the desperately ill. Other information comes from Bill Nelson's tranvestite alter ego's website Desiré Delicious Dubounet.

Here is what The Seattle Times had to say about Nelson:

"Nelson makes extraordinary claims about his life. He said he worked as a contractor for NASA, helping to save the troubled Apollo 13 mission as a teenager. He boasts that he was an alternate member of the 1968 U.S. Olympic gymnastics team. He says he has eight doctorates, including degrees in medicine and law.

None of it checks out. NASA has no record of his employment; he was not an Olympic athlete. And his "degrees" came from unaccredited schools and mail-order businesses."

The Seattle Times related several cases where cancer patients were deceived by QXCI practitioners into substituting their medical treatments for QXCI treatment, with inevitable painful deaths resulting. They may of course have died in any case, but the cruel deceit by QXCI charlatans removed all hope of survival.

The husband of one of the QXCI victims was a former Microsoft manager. He analysed the device's software source code and found it to generate results randomly. He concluded that it was a complete fraud.

I find it inconceivable that anyone in their right mind can look at Nelson's history and have any confidence in his invention. His Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface is so obviously bogus, designed to fool those gullible souls who believe that wherever the word "quantum" appears, anything is possible, especially making a lot of money out of other gullible souls.

While one can excuse those from the "alternative" fraternity falling for Nelson's scheme (it fits their model well), I cannot see that the same leniency can apply to registered medical practitioners, psychologists and therapists who knowingly or unknowingly bullshit their patients with the QXCI. They were exposed sufficiently to critical thinking and the scientific method during their training that they should have been able to see through the pseudoscience. They should surely have considered both ethical (bullshitting and potentially harming their patients) and financial (the QXCI costs 14 000 Euros or R150 000,00) issues before they acquired and used it; or did the potential income from it cloud their judgement?

A previous post on the QXCI in South Africa can be found at Quackery in South Africa: The SCIO/QXCI.

Mind myth 2: Left brain right brain

Practically all brain based pseudosciences encompass some version of the left brain right brain / whole brain myth. The myth is actually nothing new and dates back at least to Broca and Wernicke's findings in the 1860's about the role of the left hemisphere in language. This lead to a dichotomania, much as we have now, for the rest of the nineteenth century. It culminated in the Victorian educational ideal of ambidexterity, in order to promote two-brainedness. Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of the Boy Scout movement, was one of the supporters of the ambidexterity movement - in order to get more effective soldiers! This history was almost forgotten, but fortunately brought to light again in 1985in separate publications by Anne Harrington and Lauren Harris (see references at the end of this post). Also see my previous blog posting Whole-brain Half-wittedness.

Almost 60 years passed before the myth was resurrected again following on Roger Sperry's split brain research in the 1960’s. Sperry and colleagues bisected the corpus callosum and other cerebral commissures of patients in order to control intractable epilepsy. They then found the separated hemispheres of their patients to have different specialised abilities, the left’s mainly related to language comprehension and production, the right’s mainly related to spatial perception.

The myth-makers jumped into action and soon long lists of supposed left brain and right brain functions were generated. The left brain was associated with Western logic and the right brain with Eastern mysticism. Western education was supposed to neglect the right hemisphere and whole-brain learning became the goal. Children were classified as left brained or right brained on the basis of simple tests of undetermined validity and reliability. Predictably this lead to views that the right hemisphere was inactive and had to be activated by various simplistic means.


Neuroscience moved on and most of the above were soon proved wrong. It became clear that while differentiation of function occurred at a fine-grained level of analysis, the brain functioned mainly in an integrated fashion under all circumstances.

Hemispheric asymmetry related to language was especially revealing. The left hemisphere in almost all right handers and most left handers is dominant for language, including speech production, comprehension, semantics and syntax. The right hemisphere, however, simultaneously deals with contextual issues, such as intonation, metaphor and humour.

One must realise that the corpus callosum and other cerebral commissures (white matter connections between the hemispheres) have to play important roles in integrating the function of the two hemispheres. Both inhibitory and excitatory roles have been suggested for the corpus callosum. I have found the mind model of Norman Cook useful in order to explain the integrated functioning of the brain, especially as related to language lateralization. His model deals well with the left and right hemisphere language processing, as described above. In his theory of topographic callosal inhibition, excitation of columns of neurons in the left hemisphere inhibits equivalent columns in the right, but promotes surrounding context-associated processing. The diagram below demonstrates the proposed process. Dark circles represent columns of neurons that are firing. It is quite complex and one really needs to read Cook's paper, or the summary in Springer and Deutsch's book (see at the end of this post).




Cook's brain code, as he called it, is now somewhat dated. I shall welcome newer information that any reader of my blog be aware of.

To conclude, most of the popular left brain right brain ideas are myths - whole-brain half-wittery. The myth-makers, however, at most only pay lip service to that fact. The left brain right brain myth is good for business and they are not about to let science stand in the way of prosperity.

I cannot put it better than Michael Corballis:

"The main difficulty is that reference to the brain can be seen as a legitimizing force that gives scientific credence to dubious practices."

"The problems arise when we allow myth to escape from scientific scrutiny and become dogma, and when dogma creates financial opportunities for charlatans and false prophets. That is what I thinks has happened with the left brain and the right brain."

"Another secret that I can reveal is that lying on the left side enhances left-brain function, while lying on the right side tunes up the right hemisphere. Lying through the teeth is best left to the therapist."

Some useful references:

William CalvinThe throwing madonna: Essays on the brain.
Jeremy Dean Two brains for the price of one?
Cook, N.D. 1984. Callosal inhibition: The key to the brain code. In Behavioral Science. Vol. 29, pp. 98-110.
Harrington, A. 1985. Nineteenth-century ideas on hemisphere differences and "duality of mind". In Behavioral and Brain sciences. Vol. 8, no4, pp. 617-659.
Harris, L. 1985. Teaching the right brain: Historical perspective on a contemporary educational fad. In C.T. Best (Ed.), Hemispheric function and collaboration in the child. Orlando: Academic Press.
Springer, S.P., & Deutsch, G. 1998. Left brain right brain: Perspectives from cognitive neuroscience (5th Ed.). NewYork: W.H. Freeman.
Corballis, M.C. 1999. Are we in our right minds? In S. Della Sala (Ed.), Mind myths: Exploring popular assumptions about the mind and brain. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Mind myths: The 10% myth

This is the first of a series of posts on mind myths. Mind myths typically arise as a result of hucksters' attempts to use the allure of neuroscience to sell New Age type self-improvement products. I would place such mind myths in one of four categories:

Representing the originator's fantasy and bearing no resemblance to any neuroscience findings. The 10% myth would be one of these.

Misinterpretation or misrepresentation of actual neuroscience findings. The whole-brain craze comes to mind.

The inappropriate or premature application of actual neuroscience findings, for example attempts to implement neuroscience findings before they have been well replicated.

Using neuroscience explanations redundantly for well-known cognitive processes in order to sound more scientific. Much of so-called brain based education and brain based management would fall into this category.

I'm starting the series with the most common of the myths, the claim that we only use 10% of our brain. Hucksters commonly claim that their products can activate the other 90% and that we all could then become Einsteins! Barry Beyerstein indicated that the myth was already common early in the 20th century. This myth is typically encountered as “… scientists say we use only 10% of our brains”. Who these "scientists" are and how they determined this fact is never indicated.

Beyerstein and others exposed the myth on a number of grounds:

The brain comprises 2% of body weight, but accounts for 20% of the body’s oxygen consumption. There would no evolutionary advantage in maintaining such an extravagant organ that is only 10% functional.

If we used only 10% of our brain, damage to large areas of the brain should have no effect. There is, however, virtually no area of the brain that does not result in some deficit when it is damaged.

The principle of "use it or lose it" also applies to the brain. If we used only 10%, the remaining 90% would deteriorate permanently. That has never been found in histological examinations of normal brains at autopsy.

Modern brain imaging research has completely refuted the idea that large areas of the brain are inactive most of the time.

What we and our brains could have looked like if we used only 10% of it! (Image from Internet, origin unknown)

The 10% myth, however, is good for business and the myth-makers are not about to let it go. Under the premise that if 10% is good for business, less will be even better; there has been claims that we may use as little as half a percent (0,5%) of our brain! This claim, incidentally, was in a magazine called Insight and was by who else but a Brain Gym practitioner!

See more on this myth in or at:

Beyerstein, B.L. 1999. Whence cometh the myth that we use only 10% of our brains? In S. Della Sala (Ed.), Mind myths: Exploring popular assumptions about the mind and brain. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

See Beyerstein online at Do we really use only 10 percent of our brains?

Jeremy Dean's PsyBlog:
Seriously, Would You Admit to Only Using 10% of Your Brain?

Also see Eric Chudler's excellect Neuroscience for Kids: Do we use only 10% of our brains?

Anecdotal evidence

In How Anecdotal Evidence Can Undermine Scientific Results, Michael Shermer has some interesting thoughts on anecdotal evidence. He states that humans are more inclined to think anecdotally than to think scientifically. He puts this down to an evolutionary imperative to pay attention to perceived danger, with false positives (i.e. false alarms) being relatively harmless, but false negatives (perceiving there to be no danger when in fact there is) potentially fatal. According to Shermer the human brain is therefore not adapted to weed out false positives. This requires scientific thinking, which does not come naturally to most people.

Shermer describes how the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy and correlation causation confusion led to anecdotes triumphing over science in the autism caused by vaccine controversy.

More on anecdotal evidence can be found in this Wikipedia article.

Brain Gym SA: Have they done the right thing?

Brain Gym South Africa has just had a national conference in Cape Town. Have they come clean and done the right thing? Did the bigwigs of the quacking granfalloon inform the rank and file of the organisation, as well as their unsuspecting customers, of the crisis of scientific legitimacy they're facing? If not, I would suggest that they now have a serious ethical problem.

Brain Gym has long been controversial and many observers have held it to be pseudoscientific nonsense and to lack evidence for effectiveness. The scientific evidence against core Brain Gym theories and claims is now very convincing. The past year has been an annus horribilis for Brain Gym International, it being exposed to be quackery by Dr. Ben Goldacre in the British press and its founder, Dr. Paul Dennison, being humiliated on British television. I've described the whole affair fully a previous post, Brain Gym faces a Perfect Storm!, links included.

The press exposé forced Brain Gym in Britain to make the following admission on its website:

"The UK Educational Kinesiology Trust makes no claims to understand the neuroscience of Brain Gym®. The author has advised that the simple explanations in the Brain Gym Teachers Edition about how the movements work are hypothetical and based on advice from a neurobiologist at the time the books were written."

The admission, however, now seems to have been removed from their website and I could find no indication on any Brain Gym affiliated website of these and other admissions and the events that preceded them. Brain Gym seems to be lying low and hoping that the storm will pass.

This is another admission published in the British Times Online:

"The creators of an educational exercise programme used in hundreds of schools in England have agreed to withdraw unsubstantiated scientific claims in their teaching materials. ... Paul Dennison, a Californian educator who created the programme, admitted that many claims in his teacher’s guide were based on his “hunches” and were not proper science."

Some years ago I challenged a Brain Gym practitioner at the then Witwatersrand Technikon, to reveal to students who were being subjected to Brain Gym, the pseudoscientific nature of its claims. He declined and admitted that any positive effect of Brain Gym was due to placebo and Hawthorne effects; also that suggestion played a role in any positive effect. He could thus not agree to my challenge. Predictably, he ascribed placebo and Hawthorne effects to the "unpredictable and mystical" influence of quantum physics. I questioned the ethics of bullshitting the students of a university of technology about scientific facts, but never received an answer.

I suspect that Brain Gym is now in the same quandary, it can't reveal its true pseudoscientific nature, as that would destroy any placebo-based positive effects. Its credibility is at stake as well. That's the price it is paying for quacking and for mispresenting itself as a science, when in fact it is very much an alternative and controversial form of therapy.

I've probably spent too much time on Brain Gym on the blog - hopefully this will be the last for a while. It was necessary because it is the most widespread and influential form of quackery in South African education. I shall continue checking Brain Gym websites to see whether they come clean, but I won't hold my breath.

Quackery in South Africa: The SCIO/QXCI

In July 2007 the South African press reported gleefully about strange diagnoses made by a rural medical doctor using a so-called quantum diagnostic device, the Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface, or SCIO/QXCI. The initial report appeared in the Beeld newspaper under the heading Man 'angry with wife's vagina'. Now I realise that the press often misquotes people and that sensational reports of this nature should be taken with a pinch of salt. To my knowledge, however, the doctor concerned has never publically repudiated the newspaper report. He explained to the newspaper reporter that:

One had to understand quantum medicine to correctly interpret the findings of the device

It could detect a virus's frequency if one had been in touch with someone carrying the virus

It could pick up HIV frequencies in the evening if one had contact with HIV positive people during the day

If the device had "read" you once, it could read you again even if you were thousands of kilometers away

The diagnoses made by SCIO/QXCI-device re. the patient (a 50 year old male) included:

Hepatitis C

Roundworms mostly found in horses

Other parasites that normally occur in India and Bangladesh

Vaginal problems

Prostate problems (the patient's had been removed)

Various other problems, including migraine, hart, back, eye and testosterone

According to the patient the doctor indicated that the machine probably detected vaginal problems because he was angry with his wife's vagina! To the press the doctor said that the vaginal symptoms arose because the system picked up frequencies of problems in the subconscious mind, or problems experienced by the women in one's life, like one's wife, sister or mother.

Up to this point it was just a single rural doctor who had made a fool out of himself. The report indicated, however, that more than 130 of these devices are in use in South Africa. Another report in the Rooi Rose, a women's magazine, indicated that many more similar devices are in use.

I'm neither a medical doctor, nor a physicist, but on just common sense reading of the South African SCIO/QXCI website, it was clear to me that it is total nonsense. While I can understand homeopaths and others from the so-called alternative health professions falling for this kind of nonsense, I find it inconceivable that conventional medical practitioners and others trained in scientific medicine do so as well.

Dr. Stephen Barrett's Quackwatch is normally a good resource when researching dubious devices and practices. He has an informative article on the SCIO/QXCI and its inventor, one William C. Nelson. It is clear from Barrett's article that the device's history is steeped in controversy and misrepresentation. The character of its inventor, Nelson, certainly does not inspire confidence in the what is so clearly a quack device.

Barrett concluded:

"The Quantum Xrroid device is claimed to balance "bio-energetic" forces that the scientific community does not recognize as real. It mainly reflects skin resistance (how easily low-voltage electric currents from the device pass through the skin), which is not related to the body's health. It is promoted with elaborate pseudoscientific explanations and disclaimers intended to protect its practitioners from prosecution. Use of the device can cause unnecessary expense as well as delay in getting appropriate treatment. If you encounter a practitioner who uses one, please ask the appropriate government agencies to investigate."

Medical practitioners, therapists and psychologists who use this device may find it instructive to read Barrett's article (if they did before they may never have acquired it in the first place). They should then realise the danger it holds for their professional reputations.

A further post on the SCIO with more information the scam can be found at Silly season: The SCIO/QXCI.

Holiday in Stilbaai

What a privilege - being on holiday in the beautiful Southern Cape seaside village, Stilbaai (translated from Afrikaans - "quiet or still bay"). We come here roughly every two years with whichever family members can make it. It's like being in another country; relaxed and practically no crime (the locals know why). A few years ago the town briefly made news when it became known that the police were using a donkey cart to patrol the streets.

It's winter now and the weather varies from balmy winter sunshine to cold and wet. Southern Right whales have arrived for their breeding season and can be seen blowing in the bay.

Although the past few days have been too cold, my son (Dieter) and I had our first experiences of sea kayaking just before the cold spell. My next purchase will be wetsuits so that we can become all-weather kayakers! The whales have arrived just after our last outing two days ago, but we did see dolphins playing in the waves.

Here are two holiday scenes from Stilbaai:


Skulpiesbaai ("Shell Bay"). Stone age tidal fish traps used by the San and Khoisan peoples are visible in the foreground. The area is rich in archeological sites; the well-known Blombos Cave archeological dig is near Stilbaai.


Dieter and I entering the bay through the mouth of the Goukou River.

Science and belief in God

I have been avoiding and will in future be avoiding discussions of science and religion on this blog. I find the posturing and intolerance of fundamentalists on both sides objectionable.

Here, however, is a fresh breeze on the subject. Michael Shermer of the Skeptic Magazine and the Templeton Foundation co-operated in producing a balanced booklet in which prominent commenters on both sides of the debate made reasoned contributions.

The question at issue was:

Does science make belief in God obsolete?

Schermer commented as follows on the process in eSkeptic:

"Since I am aware of the reputation that the Templeton Foundation has within the skeptical, atheist, and humanist communities for harboring a right-wing Christian agenda, I would like to note that, in fact, they invited me to select the commentators and edit their essays, and insisted that I include skeptics, atheists, and humanists, which you will see that I did. There was never any hint to me that I should edit the commentaries to come out a certain way to match the alleged agenda ..."

Contributors on the "Yes" side were:

Victor Stenger: Yes. Worse. Science renders belief in God incoherent.

Steven Pinker: Yes, if by science we include secular reason and knowledge.

Pervez Hoodbhoy: Not necessarily. You must find a science-compatible God.

Stuart Kauffman: No, if we redefine God as creativity in the universe.

Chrisopher Hitchens: No, but it should.

Michael Shermer: It depends: belief no, God yes.

Contributors on the "No" side:

Mary Midgley: Of course not, belief in God is not a scientific question.

Kenneth Miller: Of course not. Science expands our appreciation of the Divine.

William D. Phillips: Absolutely not! Belief in God is not a scientific matter.

Robert Sapolsky: No. Belief offers something that science doesn’t.

Jerome Groopman: No. Not at all.

Keith Ward: No.

Christoph Cardinal Schönborn: No.

The booklet is available online from the Templeton Foundation here.

On bullshit, quacks and charlatans

I became aware of "bullshit" as an academically "respectable" term with the 2005 publication of the philosophical mini-book On Bullshit by Prof. Harry Frankfurt. It was surprisingly successful and triggered widespread media and public interest. Prof. Ben Kotzee of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Cape Town pointed out the reason for this success here:

"What people enjoy about Frankfurt’s book, it seems, is that having a theory of bullshit available makes it possible now to do with a straight face what you previously had to hide in a cough: say that someone is talking bullshit. (We might say that, after Frankfurt, “bullshit” is a technical term.)"

The South African press also took notice, especially in 2006 after a public lecture entitled Our vision and our mission: Bullshit, assertion and belief by Prof. Kotzee.



South African readers can get On Bullshit here from Kalahari.net.

What then is "bullshit" when it is not the excrement of a male bovine? It is clear that it is human communication of some kind, whether verbal or written, and that its purpose is to deceive. Animals also deceive, but do they bullshit?

Kotzee distinguishes between "Frankfurt-bullshit" and "Cohen-bullshit" (See Cohen reference in Kotzee's article).

According to Kotzee:

"... Frankfurt holds that bullshit involves a “deliberate misrepresentation”; like lying, bullshitting amounts to someone trying to deceive another. Bullshitting involves deceptive intent, making whether an utterance is bullshit dependent on the state of mind of the bullshitter rather than on features of the utterance itself. (p. 3)"

while,

"Cohen-bullshit is bullshit with a life of its own and is bullshit independently of the bullshitters (sic) intent to deceive. (Cohen-bullshit) ... is a species of nonsense: specifically, it is 'unclarifiable nonsense'. (pp. 7-8)"

Kotzee points out that for both Frankfurt's bullshit (deception) and Cohen's bullshit(nonsense), the question whether someone can believe their own bullshit, holds a problem. In Frankfurt's case, it would require self-deception, which Kotzee believes is unlikely to be conscious. With Cohen-bullshit, being nonsense, the bullshitter according to Kotzee, also cannot believe his/her own bullshit.

How can these ideas be applied to quacks and charlatans? These two terms are often used interchangeably, but as the definitions below show, charlatan has a stronger connotation with fraud.

Dr. Stephen Barrett of Quackwatch defines quackery as the promotion of unsubstantiated methods that lack a scientifically plausible rationale. Wictionary defines a charlatan as a malicious trickster; a fake person, especially one who deceives for personal profit.

In reality, it must be said that it will often be practically impossible to distinguish quacks from charlatans. Let us do so for present purposes, however. Then it would seem that quacks would be more inclined to Cohen-bullshit and charlatans more to Frankfurt-bullshit. With the charlatan the line between bullshit and outright lies and fraud may be a thin one.

Read these links to Quackometer and Neurologica
to see good examples of the application of the theory of bullshit to quackery.

Also see Neil Postman's Bullshit and the art of crap-detection

The concept of "occurring"

Many years ago, probably in the early 1990's, I attended a clinical neuropsychology workshop presented by Dr Muriel Lezak. She is the writer of one of the foremost books in clinical neuropsychology, Neuropsychological Assessment.



At the workshop Dr. Lezak introduced an idea that I found useful ever since, the concept of "occurring". She related it to the disinhibition often found in persons with pre-frontal lobe injuries. Appreciation of the inappropriateness of their disinhibited behaviour and the effect thereof on others "just does not occur" to them.

The concept of "occurring" is useful in helping parents and teachers understand the cognitive effects of brain injuries and some developmental disorders on children. I believe that the concept can be extended to explain in simple terms the misunderstandings that often arise due to sexual, cultural and generational differences. We often do not appreciate the extent to which differences in culture, education and life experiences influence our perceptions, habits and the understanding of our environment. If the neural capacity, memory trace or access to it, or specific knowledge does not exist or is destroyed, a simple "it just did not occur to him/her", may sometimes be the key to understanding and acceptance.

Brain Gym faces a Perfect Storm!

I keep getting enquiries about Brain Gym, also known as Educational Kinesiology. Its scientific validity and effectiveness have been questioned for years, but it carried on regardless, spreading like wildfire in British schools and to a lesser extent, South African schools.

Then Dr Ben Goldacre, writing the column Bad Science for The Guardian, took a hand. His caustic questioning of Brain Gym triggered a torrent of derisive comment from scientists and the public about the Brain Gym organisation and its methods. It was exposed as a pseudoscientific educational technique with a nonsensical theory base and very little evidence of effectiveness. As the furore spread, the technique's originator, Dr Paul Dennison, was eventually forced to concede that it's unscientific.

Here is Dennison on British television being confronted about his technique:



I have this statement issued by Brain Gym UK, courtesy of Dr Aust's Spleen:

"The UK Educational Kinesiology Trust makes no claims to understand the neuroscience of Brain Gym®. The author has advised that the simple explanations in the Brain Gym Teachers Edition about how the movements work are hypothetical and based on advice from a neurobiologist at the time the books were written."

I've tried to collect important recent information on Brain Gym in this one post for anyone who may wish to learn more. Here follow some online resources that provide information on Brain Gym controversy, with one salient quote from each. I'll start with their official website, then progressing from academic articles to blog posts (the links marked with asterisks are the more scientific ones):

Brain Gym official website

"Educational Kinesiology (or Edu-K) is the study and application of natural movement experiences to facilitate learning."

The Wikipedia entry

"Its theoretical foundation and claimed results have been thoroughly discredited."

* Hyatt, K.J. 2007. Brain Gym: Building stronger brains or wishful thinking? Remedial and Special Education, Vol. 28, No. 2, 117-124.

"Educators are encouraged to become informed consumers of research and to avoid implementing programming for which there is neither a credible theoretical nor a sound research basis."

* Howard-Jones, P., Pollard, A., et al. 2006. Neuroscience and education: Issues and opportunities. London: The Economic and Social Research Council.

"The pseudo-scientific terms that are used to explain how this works, let alone the concepts they express, are unrecognisable within the domain of neuroscience."

* Sense about science: Brain Gym

"Brain Gym is a programme of teacher-led physical exercises which are claimed to improve the cognitive abilities of primary school children. These exercises are being taught with pseudoscientific explanations that undermine science teaching and mislead children about how their bodies work."

* Dr Steven Novella. Brain Gym: This is your mind on pseudoscience. Neurologica Blog

"Unfortunately, Edu-K is little more than pseudoscientific wishful thinking and an example of researchers who refused to abandon their (lucrative) claims simply because they are wrong."

Experts dismiss educational claims of Brain Gym programme

Two leading scientific societies and a charity that promotes scientific understanding have written to every local education authority in the the UK to warn that a programme of exercises being promoted to help child learning relies on "pseudoscientific explanations" and a "bizarre understanding" of how the body works.

Brain Gym claims to be withdrawn

"The creators of an educational exercise programme used in hundreds of schools in England have agreed to withdraw unsubstantiated scientific claims in their teaching materials. ... Paul Dennison, a Californian educator who created the programme, admitted that many claims in his teacher’s guide were based on his “hunches” and were not proper science."

Here are some of the Ben Goldacre's posts that sparked the controversy, in chronological order:

Work out your mind

"In an ideal world, we would be teaching children enough science in school that they were able to stand up to a teacher who was spouting this kind of rubbish."

Brain Gym - Name & Shame

"Because telling stories about fairies and monsters is fine, but lying to children about science is wrong. ... With Brain Gym, the same teacher who tells children that blood is pumped around the lungs and then the body by the heart, is also telling them that when they do “The Energizer” exercise (far too complicated to describe) then “this back and forward movement of the head increases the circulation to the frontal lobe for greater comprehension and rational thinking."

Banging your head repeatedly against the brick wall of teacher stupidity helps increase flow of blood to your frontal lobes

"Brain Gym continues to produce more email than almost any other subject: usually it is from teachers, eager to defend the practice, but also from children, astonished at the sheer stupidity of what they are being taught."

My own previous posts that touched somehow on Brain Gym were:

Badscience smites Brain Gym

Loyal dissent

Poor misled consultants

Not only teachers are gullible

Kluge in decision making

Professor Gary Marcus's book "Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind", sounds fascinating.

This is part of the review from Publisher's Weekly, as found at Amazon:

"Why are we subject to irrational beliefs, inaccurate memories, even war? We can thank evolution, Marcus says, which can only tinker with structures that already exist, rather than create new ones: Natural selection... tends to favor genes that have immediate advantages rather than long-term value. Marcus ..., refers to this as kluge, a term engineers use to refer to a clumsily designed solution to a problem. Thus, memory developed in our prehominid ancestry to respond with immediacy, rather than accuracy; one result is erroneous eyewitness testimony in courtrooms. In describing the results of studies of human perception, cognition and beliefs, Marcus encapsulates how the mind is contaminated by emotions, moods, desires, goals, and simple self-interest.... The mind's fragility, he says, is demonstrated by mental illness, which seems to have no adaptive purpose."

I've not yet had a chance to read it, but Jeremy Dean at PsyBlog has a useful summary of how Marcus suggests we overcome the deficiencies of the human mind in decision making (see descriptions on Jeremy's blog):

1. Whenever possible, consider alternatives

2. Reframe the question

3. Correlation doesn't equal causation

4. Never forget the sample size

5. Anticipate your impulsivity

6. Make contingency plans

7. Make important decisions when relaxed and rested

8. Weigh costs against benefits

9. Imagine your decision will be spot-checked

10. Distance yourself

11. Beware the vivid, personal and anecdotal

12. All decisions are not equal

13. Be rational!

Woolly-thinker's guide to rhetoric

This is from Butterflies and Wheels via Jeffrey Ricker at PESTS. It is a tongue-in-the-cheek guide to using rhetoric to amuse and confuse. A fuller description of each tactic can be found here at Butterflies and Wheels.

The Woolly-Thinker's Guide to Rhetoric

* Be Courageous
* Be dismissive
* Cheers and catcalls
* Claiming is Succeeding
* Clumsy sarcasm
* Define words in your own special way
* Develop sudden hearing loss
* Do a Procrustes
* Embrace contradiction
* Emotional Blackmail
* Evasive Tactics
* Fly under the radar
* Go Ahead, Contradict Yourself
* Histrionics
* Imply
* Mention the Armchair
* Moral One-upmanship
* Pat yourself on the back
* Pave With Good Intentions
* Play the theory card
* Pretend to be amused
* Repetition
* Say the methodology was flawed
* Say the outcome was predictable
* Translate
* Translate Even More When the Subject is Religion
* Use 'Obscure' as a First Name
* Use obscurity