Aide Memoire 31 January 2009

This is the first Aide Memoire in Occam's Donkey. It is aimed at reminding me of a variety of material that may be useful in future blog posts, also of information that may be some other use or just interesting. Readers of my blog will also find valuable links to material that I may never get around to blogging about.

Complex beginnings from Mind Hacks by Vaughan traces early thinking about the concept "complex" in Psychology. He has some interesting thought about Carl Jung.

Reconstructing the brain in action: Motor re-programming from Developing Intelligence about reductionism in neuroscience and motor re-programming.

Games result in real learning from Donald Brown Plan B about enhancing learning through games.

Concussion In Former Athletes Can Affect Mental And Physical Processes Later In Life from ScienceDaily.

Giant killing from Mind Hacks by Vaughan about big pharmaceutical companies being caught out doing off-label marketing.

Google Google on the wall... Who's the Guru-est of them all? from Green Chameleon by Patrick Lambe about the criteria for determining the greatest leadership guru of them all. (Tongue-in-the-cheek).

Eating dirt is good for you from Deric Bownds' MindBlog reports on the negative effect on children's immune systems (lasting into adulthood) of too hygienic and sterile environments.

Is technology producing a decline in critical thinking and analysis? This title from ScienceDaily is self evident.

Lessons from Bob Woodward: A call for evidence-based management. Bob Sutton supports a call for Pres. Barack Obama to follow the principles of evidence-based management.

The straight dope on learning styles from Mind Hacks by Tom Stafford. A balanced look at learning styles.

Physically fit kids do better at school. From ScienceDaily, self0evident.

Buffett from Frontal Cortex by Jonah Lehrer about Warren Buffett and Colin Powell recognising the importance to distinguish what you know from wat you don't know (an acknowledging wat you don't know".

Marching to the beat of the same drummer improves teamwork by ScienceDaily. On the value of synchronized activities to improve teamwork.

War trauma and brain impact from Mind Hacks by Vaughan. On PTSD in war. Thoughts on EMDR and NLP.

The connectome from Frontal Cortex by Jonah Lehrer on "slicing" the brain. Also an interesting discussion on an inductive vs. deductive model of science. Points out that the brain is so complex that generating theories a priory does not work.

How to avoid procrastination: Think concrete from PsyBlog by Jeremy. Self-evident.

Require new congressment to undergo science training from Socratic Gadfly. Reports on a call for British MP's to be trained in science and suggests extending to congressmen.

Towards a Post-Newtonian era in Psychology: SIMPLE from Developing Intelligence by Chris Chatham. On reductionism and complexity in Psychology.

Spaced practice in learning - at last! from Donald Clark Plan B by Donald Clark. Overjoyed to find that someone in education is at last applying scientific principles of learning.

Unstructured play from The Frontal Cortex by Jonah Lehrer on the value of unstructured play and daydreaming for young children.

President Obama on parental responsibility in education

We have a new American president and I hope he'll be a great one. From President Obama's brilliant Inaugural Address:

"Our challenges may be new, the instruments with which we meet them may be new, but those values upon which our success depends, honesty and hard work, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism -- these things are old.

These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history.

What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility -- a recognition, on the part of every American, that we have duties to ourselves, our nation and the world, duties that we do not grudgingly accept but rather seize gladly, firm in the knowledge that there is nothing so satisfying to the spirit, so defining of our character than giving our all to a difficult task.

This is the price and the promise of citizenship."

Trusting that his words were not just political rhetoric, South Africans could do worse than to take note and apply them here. Such words, if acted upon, could restore the soul of a nation, not only America, but also South Africa.

Educational issues are obviously to a large extent country and culture specific, but Obama's view elsewhere on parental responsibility and is universally applicable (from Flypaper, the blog of the Fordham Foundation):

"There is no program and no policy that can substitute for a parent who is involved in their child’s education from day one. There is no substitute for a parent who will make sure their children are in school on time and help them with their homework after dinner and attend those parent-teacher conferences... And I have no doubt that we will still be talking about these problems in the next century if we do not have parents who are willing to turn off the TV once in awhile and put away the video games and read to their child. Responsibility for our children’s education has to start at home. We have to set high standards for them and spend time with them and love them. We have to hold ourselves accountable."

A commenter to the blog expanded on this with the following:

"Poorly educated parents can’t help their kids write a research essay or solve an algebra problem, but they should be able to set a time for homework or reading, enforce a bedtime, limit TV on school nights, teach manners and self-control to their children. Most can read aloud to young children or listen to them read."

As a school principal I can only concur.

Bullshit Blue Monday

Today (19 January 2009) is "officially" Blue Monday Day, the worst day of the year. I'm not sure whether it applies to the Southern Hemisphere though. It is "calculated" by means of a "mathematical" formula by a Dr. Cliff Arnall. The formula reads as follows:

where:

W = weather; d = debt; T = time since Christmas; Q = time since failing our new year’s resolutions; m = low motivational levels; Na = the feeling of a need to take action

D is not specified and no units are mentioned. My mathematics is somewhat rusty, but if this is considered mathematics, the discipline has surely changed since my varsity days.

Some apparently take the Blue Monday idea quite seriously. Vaughan from Mind Hacks reported on a transparent attempt by Green Communications, the PR company promoting it for mental health reasons, to anonymously delete criticism of the idea from Wikipedia. Vaughan (I think) has appropriately re-named the day Bullshit Blue Monday. Mind Hacks had a number of interesting posts on the Blue Monday idea up to now during January 2009.

Well, I thought to get in on the act and make Bullshit Blue Monday applicable to the Southern Hemisphere and the restaurant and the end of the universe, if you happen to be there. I have slightly changed Arnall's formula for universal application. As can be seen below, I have added a Quantum Consciousness Constant (QCC) to the formula. By just thinking about your current or preferred location, your thoughts will instantly through quantum mechanics generate the QCC and synchronize Bullshit Blue Monday over time and space with that location. Be careful though, it could ruin your day!

Have a good Bullshit Blue Monday, wherever you are!

Those English are crazy!

Mad dogs and Englishmen ..., the song goes. Or to (mis)quote Obelix: "Those English are crazy!" Like in political correctness outweighs common sense crazy.


Consider these (possibly unrelated, certainly not causally related) issues:

Fairytales scare English parents

English teachers hesitant to restrain violent nursery school children for fear of being sued

More than 4 000 children aged 2 to 5 expelled fron English schools

Yes, I know that the Scots and Welsh would have me keelhauled for lumping them with the English, but from far-off South Africa all Poms look the same.

Fairytales are the latest victims of politically correct Pom parents. The Mail Online carried this list of the fairytales that English parents found less appealing.


Snow White is not PC, apparently because it is not nice to talk about dwarfs (I thought the dwarfs in Snow White referred to mythical creatures, i.e. knomes). Cinderella does not make it either, I suppose the USSA (Ugly Stepsisters Association) complained. Little Red Riding Hood? Way too scary for sensitive little ears. For the life of me, however, I can't imagine what the problem would be with the Emperor's New Clothes.

Consider that many of the fairytales we know are already heavily sanitized versions of traditional fairytales as captured by the Grimm brothers. Fairytales are typically good stories with good storylines, heroes, villains, tension, the possibility of exploring different outcomes, different storylines and so forth. I've never read one of the new favourite stories, The Very Hungry Caterpillar, but I somehow doubt it has these features of a good story.

In considering the role of fairytales in childhood, a starting point can be Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. Be aware though of its Freudian slant.

As a passing shot, please read the origin of the story about British parents' views on fairytales on the TheBabyWebsite.com. Note that their survey showed that only one in four British moms rejected traditional fairytales. Put otherwise, four out of five had no problem with them. Many parents preferred to keep these fairytales for daytime reading and for when toddlers were slightly older. These seem good commonsense measures, but was not always reflected in press reports on the survey. Moral of the story, don't trust the press to get it right, check the evidence.

My blog title should therefore probably have read Some English (and Australians, Americans and South Africans) are crazy! But what the hell, to an Afrikaner of Irish descent, Those English are crazy!, is much more satisfying.

Occam's Donkey - the image

I've had numerous positive comments about the thinking donkey image used in this blog. It was drawn specifically for my blog by an excellent cartoonist, Rob Hooper of Flaming Pencil. The brief was to draw a thinking, skeptical donkey, based on Rodin's The Thinker. In line with the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 South African License, you may use the image non-commercially. I do ask that Occam's Donkey be acknowledged and that a link to Occam's Donkey be provided. I can recommend Rob's work strongly.


I would prefer the blog not to become Occam's Ape, but here is another animal thinker, Hugo Rheinhold's Affe mit Schädel (ape with skull):

Image from Wikipedia.

According to Wikipedia:

"Hugo Rheinhold's original inscription "eritis sicut deus" (sometimes wrongly "eritus …."), either suggests that Darwinian understanding may lead to Frankenstinian abuse of life's essence, or a more inclusive innocence that recognises a place for other advanced life‑forms on our intellectual podium, if only we can just accommodate those guests."

Another "thinker" I recently came across on a farm in the Northern Transvaal (Limpopo). The two meter high figure was fashioned out of hardwood, probably by an illiterate Zimbabwean illegal immigrant (although you never know with the Zimbabweans, some of them are well educated, their education system was quite good before Mugabe destroyed it). The huge figure of the thinking baboon can be scary when your headlights suddenly illuminate it late at night on a dusty farm road.

Occam's Donkey makes radio appearance

For South African followers of Occam's Donkey, I shall be interviewed tomorrow on Radio Sonder Grense ("Radio without borders"), the national Afrikaans radio station. I shall be interviewed at 14:15 SA time by Fanie du Toit, the presenter of the programme Die leefwêreld van die gestremde ("The living world of the disabled"). I shall try to guide parents of children with disabilities, as well as adult persons with disabilities, on how to research and decide upon suitable therapies to deal with their child's or their own disability. I shall also touch on quackery and give guidelines on how to avoid it.

Readers of this blog who are not within range of RSG broadcasts will be able to follow the transmission on the internet at this link.

Prof Della Sala slates neuroscience quacks

Prof. Sergio Della Sala, a major figure in the fight against neuroscience quackery, was the first winner recently of the University of Edinburgh Tam Dalyell Prize for Excellence in Engaging the Public with Science. On 10 December 2008, coinciding with the presentation of the award, he delivered a lecture entitled Tall Tales about the Mind and Brain. The video of the lecture is available online here on the University of Edinburgh website. Watch out for the thinking donkey image from this blog, which featured briefly in the presentation!

Prof. Della Sala is well known as the editor of two books on mind myths, the first one that featured extensively in some of my seven posts on mind myths up to now (three more to go). The books are:

Della Sala, S. (Ed.)(1999). Mind myths: Exploring popular assumptions about the mind and brain. New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Della Sala, S. (Ed.)(2007). Tall Tales about the Mind and Brain: Separating Fact from Fiction. London: Oxford University Press.

Tall tales seems to be based on a conference Tall tales about the mind and brain that was held in Edinburgh in 2007. Based on the speakers and abstracts I would venture that it was excellent. Wish I could have been there!

Here is a list of just some of the stuff Della Sala addressed in his Tam Dalyell lecture and press interviews coinciding with the lecture:

The Mozart effect

Brain Gym

Institute of Neuro-physiological Psychology (INPP)

Left brain, right brain

Genetic Brain Profiling

Some of these I have previously blogged about, follow the links. Others I shall attend to later. It was good to see that academics are also weighing in on issues of quackery. Maybe we'll win the fight yet!

The newspaper articles reporting on his lecture and the interviews can be found at:

Is "Brain Gym" scientific? The Herald
Celebrated neuroscientist to set the record straight. The Journal
Brain exercises are 'waste of time'. The Guardian

A year of Occam's Donkey

Well, Occam's Donkey has survived its first year intact.

I have found the experience of blogging and following other blogs enormously enriching. I have been forced to blow the cobwebs of years of neglect from an ageing brain and hopefully detached and untangled some of the plaques and tangles(metaphorically). I have enjoyed being a thorn in the side of some of the South African quackeries.

Has this blog (and thousands of others like it) made a difference? Is pseudoscience and quackery on the retreat? Is there an upward trend in the use of critical thinking and evidence supported practice? In the immortal words of Shrek's Donkey:

"Are we there yet?"

Dr. Ben Goldacre and one of his commenters supplied the answer in Bad Science:

"It’s only when you line these jokers up side by side that you realise what a vast and unwinnable fight we face."

and

"I sometimes think the woos have won and we’re fighting a guerilla campaign in occupied territory."

I'm afraid gullibility still rules and will continue to do so in the foreseeable future, especially in my field of interest, education. Quackery, especially those with neuroscience pretentions, often aided and abetted by the educational authorities and the teacher unions, flourish. Let's see what we can do about it in 2009.

Cartoon (somewhat altered) from Philosophy and Reasoning Network.

Welsh rugby and papal deaths

Rugby (the religion of Wales) and its influence on the Catholic church: should Pope Benedict XVI be worried?. This authors of this tongue-in-the-cheek article in the British Medical Journal investigated a Welsh urban legend that:

"... every time Wales win the rugby grand slam, a Pope dies, except for 1978 when Wales were really good, and two Popes died."

A graphic from the article, indicating the winners of the Six Nations Championship (its current name), grand slams achieved (winning all the games) and papal deaths.


The authors' conclusion?

"We found a borderline significant (P=0.047) association between Welsh performance and the number of papal deaths but no significant associations between papal mortality and performance of any other home nation."

They believe that the pontiff should just be a wee bit concerned, considering Wales' dominance in the Six Nations this year. Its less sterling performance against the Southern teams such as the Springboks and All Blacks was not considered.

Not to be outdone, a group of medical doctors from Italy, one of them on the Vatican medical team, commented that they were more worried about the general performance of the Welsh rugby team than about the health of the pope!

Hat tip to Dave Snowden for this story. As he pointed out, it is a satire on the old correlation proves causation fallacy.

Bringing this closer to home, with the current ascendancy of the South African rugby and cricket teams, similar correlations could "cause" a veritable massacre. The sorry record of our soccer team, however, should allow one to cherry pick suitable celebrities who should put their trust on the Bafana Bafana's continued poor performance. Their only achievement of any note was winning the African Nations' Cup in 1996. Francois Mitterrand died during the tournament, but I sure Nicholas Sarkozy will not lose any sleep about it.

Metaphors for woo and war

My previous post was about the use of metaphor and framing in the fight against pseudoscience. I continue this theme with some amusing examples of metaphor and onomatopoeia for woo and war.

Woo

I'm using the word woo as a synonym for pseudoscience and quackery (and because it rhymes better with war than bullshit).

Quack

Quack is short for quacksalver, which is derived from the Dutch kwakkensalver. Kwakken refers to boasting, salve an ointment. Quacksalver therefore literally boasting about an ointment. The term therefore was literal initially. Somewhere along the line it became associated with the sound ducks make, therefore quacking like a duck. The initial literal kwakkenzalver became the metaphor quack. See for instance this image of a duck on Dr Stephen Barrett's well-known website Quackwatch:

Based on the sound it makes and its flocking behaviour, South Africans know of an equally appropriate avian simile or metaphor for quacking, the Redbilled Woodhoopoe, or the more telling Afrikaans name, the "kakelaar" (literal English translation, the cackler). This is how it's described in Newman's Birds of Southern Africa:

"The call is a high-pitched cackling started by one and taken up by others to produce a cacophony of hysterical laughter similar to but more musical, less mechanical-sounding than the Arrowmarked Babbler (see Katlagter later in post). Fly from tree to tree in a straggling procession, settling low down and working their way to the top before flying of to the next tree."

A single kakelaar. Their crazed cackling and seemingly senseless scurrying behind each other from the the bottom to the top of a tree before flying off to the next, make for great entertainment. An appropriate metaphor for a quacking granfalloon? (Did I mention that kakelaars stink?)

War

The Devil's Paintbrush

Some years ago I did research on the use of Maxim machine-guns in the Anglo-Boer War (1899 - 1902). The Maxim was the first really effective mass-produced machine-gun. Hiram Maxim, an American, invented it after being told by friend that the way to get rich was to:

"... invent something that will enable these Europeans to cut each other's throats with greater facility."

The Vickers-Maxim machine-gun and its licenced German version, the Spandau, were in large part responsible for the horrible slaughter that occurred in no-man's land between the opposing trenches of the First World War. This earned the Maxim the grim nickname and descriptive metaphor, the Devil's Paintbrush.

A Maxim Extra-Light Model 1895 used by Boer forces.

The "katlagter" (literally, the laughing cat)

Maxim's machine-guns were used extensively by both sides in the 2nd Anglo-Boer War. Some interesting similes, metaphors and onomatopoeia describing Maxim's machine-guns and their effect, arose during the conflict. One of the Boer soldiers' names for the Maxim .303 caliber machine-gun, was the katlagter. It is the Afrikaans name of a bird, the Arrow-marked Babbler. Roberts Birds of South Africa describes its call as follows:

"... a grating churr which is uttered by all the birds in a party one after the other. The effect is a whirring, grating, crescendo of sound, getting louder and louder as each bird joins in and dying away as they stop one by one."

Some years ago a friend and I went hunting in the Northern Tranvaal (a bushveld area of South Africa). At our campsite, I suddenly heard a racket exactly as described above. It sounded exacly like a machinegun and I knew it had to be katlagters (babblers). I scanned the noisy culprets through my binoculars and checked my Roberts bird book. Yes, they were Arrow-marked Babblers. The nickname my Boer ancestors had given the Maxim machine-gun was quite appropriate.

A katlagter (Arrow-marked Babbler), thank you to Dries vd Merwe's photostream.

The Pom-Pom

The Maxim-Nordenfelt, or Pom-Pom, was an overgrown Maxim machine-gun that fired one pound shells. It was quite ineffective, but scared the enemy and was a great morale booster on your side. Its nickname was an onomatopoeia, based on either the sound of the shells being fired, or the explosion of its shells one after the other. Here are some more descriptions of the Pom-Pom, rich in figurative language:

Arthur Conan Doyle (describing how hardened soldiers):

"... found a new terror in the malignant 'ploop-plooping' of the automatic quick-firer".

In another account Pom-Pom shells are described as having:

"... flapped and clacked along the ground in a straight line like a string of geese".

A Boer War Maxim-Nordenfelt Pom-Pom.

To call a quack a quack has become politically incorrect and even illegal in some places. A war a hundred years ago provides us with some alternatives. How do cacklers, babblers and pom-poms sound?

Metaphors for countering pseudoscience

Kruglanski and others have an interesting article in the October/November 2008 edition of Scientific American Mind on the use of metaphor to determine framing in countering terrorism. It holds some lessons for those of us who try to counter pseudoscience and quackery in education and other related fields. The article is not fully available online and I shall therefore summarise it briefly.

Kruglanski et. al. point out that terrorism and counterterrorism was framed differently by successive US administrations, especially by the use of different metaphors when discussing these issues. These metaphors and the resulting framing influenced the actions taken against terrorism. Presidents Nixon and Reagan used disease metaphors. Clinton used justice metaphors, while Bush used war metaphors. According to Kruglanski et. al., framing couterterrorism as war has certain costs:

"It threatens to corrupt society's values, disrupts its orderly functioning and reshuffles its priorities. War calls for the disproportunate investment of a nation's resources, with correspondingly less left for other concerns, including the economy, health care and education."

This was clearly written from a specific ideological perspective and someone else may have concluded differently about the implications of the war metaphors being used. The fact is, however, that the metaphors used had some influence on the actions of participants.

There is a great deal of controversy in Psychology on issues of metaphor and framing. To misquote Bob Sutton, this is a field where strong opinions are strongly held. I am not current with the details of disagreements in this field. Different views that need to be considered are those of Steven Pinker, George Lakoff and Daniel Kahneman. A much discussed debate between Pinker and Lakoff, with some informative comments, can be found at this link. Chris at Mixing Memory commented extensively, if somewhat ad hominem, on the debate.

Framing the fight against pseudoscience

In using the word fight, I am already framing the action against pseudoscience as a war. In fact, it it difficult to avoid war metaphors. In a recent post on the blog Neurologica, neurologist Steven Novella made extensive and conscious use of war metaphors. He justified it thus:

"We are also in the midst of an endless culture war, a struggle between two aspects of human nature. On the one hand are the proponents of mysticism, superstition, pseudoscience, and anti-science. On the other are the defenders of science and reason.

Some of my skeptical colleagues have objected to the military analogy, but we are engaged in a real struggle, and we are fighting over more than bragging rights. The stakes are real: control of resources, support and recognition of government, the running of institutions, access to the media and to the halls of academia and education."

I believe that war metaphors are inevitable in this "fight". This holds the danger of alienating possible converts to science and reason, but there is hopefully little chance that the war metaphor will become literal.

A second frame is that of ridicule. Examples of this are to be found in many posts on the blog Bad Science by Ben Goldacre. Words (not necessary metaphoric) that signal a frame of ridicule include bullshit, nonsense, woo, quack, granfalloon, gullibility and so forth. The danger of using this frame is the thin line between legitimately ridiculing the opponent and his/her position on the one hand, and the use of ad hominem and straw man fallacies on the other (not Goldacre, just generally). Ridicule, even more than using the war metaphor, will harden attitudes and may prevent converts to science and reason. Having said that, the chance of converting the pseudoscience huckster gurus is slim. The targets for conversion should be the camp-followers (i.e. franchise holders) and the consumers (i.e. parents, teachers, schools). Well directed ridicule (against the gurus) may sway their attitudes. An example here was the ridicule Paul Dennison, the founder of Brain Gym, was subjected to on television.

A third and last frame (I'm sure there are more) is education. Words that would signal an educational frame include information, knowledge, evidence, training, science and so forth. A good example of an organisation that operates according to an educational frame, is Sense about Science in Britain. The targets of activities from within an educational frame would mainly be the potential consumers of pseudoscientific approaches. The vehicles through which education should proceed include the mass media, the internet and blogs such as this one. Education has the problem that it often assumes pre-existing knowledge and attitudes that its targets do not always have, often because of inadequate school and tersiary education. These include inadequate knowledge of science and scientific methods, of critical thinking, added to which a general lack of mindfullness and questioning attitudes.

In conclusion, different metaphors and frames should be geared to the intended targets one wishes to influence. There is a place for war talk, ridicule, education and probably for many additional frames I did not think about. So let the fight against pseudoscience continue (metaphorically)!

More views on metaphors and framing:

Grey, W. (2000). Metaphor and Meaning.

Iyengar, S. (2005). Speaking of Values: The Framing of American Politics.

Ward et al. (2008). Metaphors are mindfunnels (Mainly reflecting George Lakoff's views). Hat tip to Sonja from Narrativelab for this last reference.

Neuromythologies in Education

I place this abstract as a whole and unchanged, as it reflects much of what this blog is about and says it better than I can. Hat tip to Monica Pignotti, contributing to Psychologists Educating Students to Think Skeptically (PESTS-I) , for this reference and abstract.

Geake, J. (2008). Neuromythologies in Education. Educational Research, 50, 2 123 – 133.

Abstract:

Background: Many popular educational programmes claim to be 'brain-based', despite pleas from the neuroscience community that these neuromyths do not have a basis in scientific evidence about the brain.

Purpose: The main aim of this paper is to examine several of the most popular neuromyths in the light of the relevant neuroscientific and educational evidence. Examples of neuromyths include: 10% brain usage, left- and right-brained thinking, VAK learning styles and multiple intelligences

Sources of evidence: The basis for the argument put forward includes a literature review of relevant cognitive neuroscientific studies, often involving neuroimaging, together with several comprehensive education reviews of the brain-based approaches under scrutiny.

Main argument: The main elements of the argument are as follows. We use most of our brains most of the time, not some restricted 10% brain usage. This is because our brains are densely interconnected, and we exploit this interconnectivity to enable our primitively evolved primate brains to live in our complex modern human world. Although brain imaging delineates areas of higher (and lower) activation in response to particular tasks, thinking involves coordinated interconnectivity from both sides of the brain, not separate left- and right-brained thinking. High intelligence requires higher levels of inter-hemispheric and other connected activity. The brain's interconnectivity includes the senses, especially vision and hearing. We do not learn by one sense alone, hence VAK learning styles do not reflect how our brains actually learn, nor the individual differences we observe in classrooms. Neuroimaging studies do not support multiple intelligences; in fact, the opposite is true. Through the activity of its frontal cortices, among other areas, the human brain seems to operate with general intelligence, applied to multiple areas of endeavour. Studies of educational effectiveness of applying any of these ideas in the classroom have failed to find any educational benefits.

Conclusions: The main conclusions arising from the argument are that teachers should seek independent scientific validation before adopting brain-based products in their classrooms. A more sceptical approach to educational panaceas could contribute to an enhanced professionalism of the field.

Have leadership myths brought us to the brink?

In a deliciously bitter post, Donald Clark slates leadership theories and asks whether leadership training was the cause of the global economic meltdown.

"Has the cult of ‘leadership’ contributed to megalomaniac behaviour that ultimately led to the financial crisis? All of this leadership lark is quite recent. For years we got by with management training, good old sensible stuff about being nice, clear and organised. Then, around the Millennium, the training world went all evangelical about ‘Leadership’."

Clark echoes many of the thoughts of Francis Wheen in an equally delicious chapter, Old snake-oil, new bottles, in his book How mumbo-jumbo conquered the world.



Clark continues and points out that leadership training has:

"... no solid core of theory it’s a potpourri of ideas. The cult of leadership, a relatively recent phenomenon, was grabbed with glee by the training community. A mishmash of management theory, culled from a few airport management books, they put their slides together and became leadership zealots, simply padding out the word ‘Leadership’ into a course, a miscellany of mumb-jumbo."

He has particularly harsh words for leadership gurus:

"I‘d call these false prophets, as they are basically song and dance men, all performance and no substance. It’s good old fashioned preaching with stories, parables, miracle cures, and live performance."

Though he does not draw the link specifically, this last quote illustrates something I've referred to before, the misuse of the look and feel of religion, sometimes even the substance, as a tool for manipulation and marketing. ENRON was a good example.

Donald Clark continues and questions the popular distinction between management and leadership. He points out that mission statements and hubris have replaced intellectual analysis and common sense. Peter Drucker and Jim Collins according to him had it right, good leadership is no more than good management.

I recall that some years ago the educational authorities in South Africa got on to the vision/mission/leadership bandwagon and exhorted school principals to become CEO's and inspirational leaders. Fortunately sanity prevailed, for as Jeffrey Pfeffer and Bob Sutton pointed out in their book, Hard facts, dangerous half truths and total nonsense: Profiting from evidence-based management, such jobs come with much responsibility, but little authority and few resources. School principals remained just ordinary managers, hopefully still inspiring the odd child or teacher.



In another context Bob Sutton quotes the populiser of the management / leadership distinction, Warren Bennis:

"Managers are people who do things right and leaders are people who do the right thing."

I wonder what the victims of the subprime crisis, of ENRON and Worldcom, of Fidentia in South Africa, would say to that? Are the mining magnates of the mining companies that are raping South Africa's water resources by strip mining pristine wetlands for coal doing the "right thing"? How about the executive mayors of towns and cities that are flooding our rivers with raw sewerage. Or have they read the latest management tomes in airport bookshops, Hitler's guidelines for inspirational leadership and Manage like Mugabe?

Typing this blog

You can now have your blog typed at Typealyzer, as in Myers-Briggs. Hat tip to Dave Snowden and the Neurocritic. Just like the Myers-Briggs, it should not be taken too seriously. So, what's the verdict?

This blog (and the blogger, I quess) is of the INTP type:

"The logical and analytical type. They are especialy attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality. Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about."

Well, it seems that no more than 20% of this blogger's brain is active. Right side is a bit neglected. The rear is a dead loss. An excellent case study for the whole-brain half-witters.

CSIR suspends scientist

In my previous post I reported on the executive board of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) suppressing the keynote address that one of its scientists, Dr Anthony Turton, would have delivered at its biennial Science: Real and Relevant conference. The board of the CSIR has now followed up its ill-considered action with the suspension and planned disciplinary hearing of Dr Turton. Not only this, it has vindictively forced him to vacate his office, surrender his computer and terminate his internet access.

A number of prominent scientists and environmental activists has expressed their disgust about these events, including Drs Carl Albrecht (CANSA), Francois Durand (University of Johannesburg) and Ms Mariette Lieferink (Federation for a Sustainable Environment). All expressed their concern about the suppression of science and scientists.

According to IOL, Dr Turton is to be charged with insubordination and bringing the CSIR into disrepute. If anyone brought the organisation in disrepute, however, it would seem to be its executive board for bowing to whatever political and/or corporate pressures it is being subjected to and for not standing by its scientists and their scientific findings.