Positive psychology revisited

I recently wrote on some concepts from positive psychology in a post entitled On grit, flow and 'vasbyt'. Now an extensive review about positive psychology, entitled An intellectual movement for the masses, has just appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The following quotes highlight some of the issues facing positive psychology:

"The world of positive psychology is vast and varied. The term is not trademarked, after all. Google it and you can find links not only to Seligman's Positive Psychology Center at the University of Pennsylvania but also to self-styled gurus describing their own "path of self-discovery" and to sites like Enlightenment Central, advertising neurofeedback and "consciousness exploration." A segment about positive psychology on National Public Radio in 2007 still makes researchers cringe: Its prime example of the field was the best seller The Secret, in which the television producer Rhonda Byrne argues that everything in the universe vibrates on a particular frequency; if people attune their thoughts to the same frequency as, say, money, they will attract wealth; ditto love, health, and unlimited happiness."

and

"Researchers in positive psychology are constantly fighting its image as a New Agey, self-help movement, a reputation that has plagued it from its inception and that persists not only in the news media but also among many in the broader discipline. 'The curse of working in this area is having to distinguish it from Chicken Soup for the Soul,' "

The whole article makes for good reading.

What is encouraging is that positive psychology seems to headed for a greater measure of evidence based methodology.

David Cameron on disability

David Cameron's son, Ivan, who suffered from cerebral palsy and epilepsy, died tragically earlier this year. In a recent article in The Independent, Cameron poignantly described his family's experiences and the lessons he learned about disability. Those of us who work with children with disabilities and with their families would do well to take note of his views.

Photograph by Roger Taylor from The Telegraph.

"The first lesson I learned was the importance of early intervention and help. The day you find out your child has a disability you're not just deeply shocked, worried and upset – you're also incredibly confused."

and,

"The second lesson was that life for parents of disabled children is complicated enough without having to jump through hundreds of government hoops. After the initial shock of diagnosis you're plunged into a world of bureaucratic pain."

I quote Cameron's third lesson fully, as it relates to inclusive education versus special schools. South African educational authorities have, somewhat reluctantly, accepted that there is a place for special schools. Overzealous inclusionists, however, often mislead parents with empty promises about support that never happens.

"The third lesson is that we've got to make it easier for parents to get the right education for children with disabilities. So many parents get stuck on a merry-go-round of assessments, appeals and tribunals to get a statement of special needs and the extra help their child needs. There's a structural reason for that. The people that decide who gets specialist education – the local education authorities – are also the ones who pay for it. We're seriously looking at how we can resolve that conflict of interest so that parents don't have to enter into such a huge battle for special education.

Something else that many parents have to fight tooth and nail for is a place in special school. Following the gospel of inclusion, the Government has closed dozens of special schools down in the last decade. Inclusion is great for some, but it's often the case that putting a disabled child in a mainstream classroom is a square peg-round-hole situation. So we're going to stop the closure of special schools and give parents more information and greater choice."

and,

"The fourth lesson is that like all other carers, parents need a break. One of the biggest challenges when your child is severely disabled is finding time to do normal family stuff – playing in the park with your other children, doing the weekly shop, mum and dad going out for a meal."

finally,

"The fifth and final lesson I'm going to share is this. The very painful thing about disability – whether your own or your loved one's – is the feeling that the situation is out of your control. When the system that surrounds you is very top-down, very bureaucratic, very inhuman, that can only increase your feelings of helplessness. So a really big difference we can make is to put more power and control right into the hands of parents, carers or those with disabilities ..."

Cameron concluded:

"This is the support, trust and respect that parents of those with disabilities deserve.

Because we can never forget what an amazing job they do. ... We need to recognise that by staying strong and holding their families together, these parents are doing a great, unsung service to our society."

Cameron's is a voice of reason in a field where emotion and sentiment often rule.

In the DSM-V by popular acclaim?

A campaign is currently on the go to include Sensory Processing Disorder, also known as Sensory Integration Dysfunction, in the DSM-V. It has been launched by the SPD Foundation and claims to currently have about 10 000 signatories. It is accompanied by a campaign to get physicians to support the diagnosis of SPD. This is an extract from the general letter from the SPD Foundation launching the campaign:

"We need your immediate help with an important effort to obtain diagnostic recognition of Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) in the upcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM).

The DSM committee has asked us to provide research showing that doctors would use an SPD diagnosis if it were added to the DSM-V. Showing use by international physicians is important, too, because diagnostic recognition in the DSM will lead to inclusion in comparable international manuals. In response to the DSM committee’s request, we have developed a very short online physician survey (it literally takes a doctor three minutes to complete).

WE NEED TO GET THIS SURVEY INTO THE HANDS OF PHYSICIANS WHO UNDERSTAND AND SUPPORT SPD AS A DIAGNOSIS.

You and everyone you know are crucial to this effort.

If you are a parent, please ask the pediatrician, psychiatrist, other physician (MD), or osteopathic doctor (DO) who treats your child to go online and take our survey. If you are a clinician, a teacher, or another professional, please ask any physicians you know - especially those familiar with SPD - to take survey. They will do this as a favor to you."

The physicians' survey can be found here. It has no control that I could see to ensure that only physicians take it.

Sensory Processing Disorder is strongly linked to two specific therapies, Ayres's Sensory Integration therapy (SI) and Tomatis and Berard's Auditory Integration therapy (AIT). Both of these are controversial, both because of theoretical issues and lack of evidence for effectiveness. SI gained some respectibility because it is widely practiced by occupational therapists. AIT on the other hand (especially the devices used in it), has been widely rejected by professional organisations.

Is Sensory Processing Disorder a valid diagnosis that can be reliably made and has an existence outside of the therapies mentioned? Dr. Peter Heilbroner in Quackwatch does not think so, but there should be only one question - is it supported by scientific evidence? Surely popular acclaim and pressure should not influence the decision?

In closing, I believe that a quote from Dr. Allen Francis's now well-known critique of the DSM-V process, has some relevance to my concern about SPD:

"There is also the serious, subtle, and ubiquitous problem of unintended consequences. As a rule of thumb, it is wise to assume that unintended consequences come often and in very varied and surprising flavors. For instance, a seemingly small and reasonable change can sometimes result in a different definition of caseness that may have a dramatic and totally unexpected impact on the reported rates of a disorder. Thus are false "epidemics" created. For example, although many other factors were certainly involved, the sudden increase in the diagnosis of autistic
disorder, attention‐deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and bipolar disorder may in part reflect changes made in the DSM‐IV definitions."

On grit, flow and 'vasbyt'

Gifted neuropsychologist Jonah Lehrer recently wrote on the psychology of grit in his blog, The Frontal Cortex, and in the Boston Globe. He described grit as:

"(grit is) ... about setting a specific long-term goal and doing whatever it takes until the goal has been reached. It’s always much easier to give up, but people with grit can keep going."

The primary researcher in the psychology of grit is Angela Duckworth. A grit questionnaire is available online. The concept seems to be drawing a lot of attention. The whole spring 2009 edition of In Character for instance, is devoted to the concept of grit. It is filled with entertaining anecdotes (in the best sense of the word) with examples of grit from Einstein to Seabiscuit.

I have seen many examples of what is described at grit in a career in special education. We would have described it as perseverance or "vasbyt" (An Afrikaans term which originated in the Border War, according to the Oxford Dictionary of South African English 'vasbyt': [fas beit] verb. usually imperative, interjection, equivalent of 'hang on', 'grin and bear it', 'keep going' etc. meaning endure). While I consider intelligence a very important attribute, I have often observed children with cerebral palsy achieve through pure grit, despite lacking what is conventionally described as intelligence. Certainly a concept worth looking into.

There are many other similar concepts and one would need to do some clarification and defining. The fields of Positive Psychology and Social Learning Theory may be especially important for this.

A commenter on Lehrer's blog linked grit with the concept of flow, which according to Wikipedia is:

"... the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity."

Other related concepts include resilience, locus of control and self-efficacy.

A few provocative (I hope) questions in closing:

Would Bernie Madoff, who systematically defrauded clients for the best part of two decades, be considered to have exhibited grit?

Lance Armstrong would without doubt be a prime example of grit in action. Should, however, the drug allegations that dogged his career prove true, will it still be considered grit?

What about Carlos Hathcock, who single-mindedly pursued a career as a top target rifle shooter and later as the top American marine sniper (93 confirmed kills)in Vietnam? He later battled burn injuries and multiple sclerosis, but continued to train military and police snipers.

Mostly wrong, but never in doubt

How do quacks and charlatans so easily gain the confidence of their victims? I have long believed that the answer was to found in their ostensible utter confidence in their products. Rarely will these hucksters admit to any doubt about the scientific merits of their snake oil, in fact most could't care less. Hat tip to Tracy Allison Altman from Evidence Soup for pointing me to scientific evidence to substantiate my view.

A simposium of the Association for Psychological Science entitled Often in Error, Rarely in Doubt provided some answers. Don Moore, the chairperson, summarised the conference as follows:

"Excessive confidence in the precision of one’s knowledge is both the most robust and the least understood form of overconfidence. This symposium investigates its ultimate causes. The evidence suggests that overprecision is caused by limitations on the working capacity in human memory, conversational norms, and social pressure."

I would have liked to add greed and gullibility, but that is just my opinion.

A hat tip again to Evidence Soup for the article Humans prefer cockiness to expertise in the NewScientist. Quoting Don Moore, the article points out that people tend to believe the more confident message, regardless even of a poor track record of the messenger. This creates difficulties for scientists who, ethically acknowledging the limits of their knowledge, will always be at a disadvantage against activists and lobbyists.

I would extend this to the medical and educational arenas, where individuals who emphasize the necessity of evidence supported practices will always be at a disadvantage to unscrupulous quacks who ostensibly have no doubt about their scams.

There are also legal reasons for quacks not to admit to any doubt about their snake oil cures (and for critics not to allege that quacks know they're quacks). A case in point is the legal battle about libel between Simon Singh and the British Chiropractic Association (BCA). The key issue is this battle revolves around the word bogus. The judge ruled that in using the word bogus, Singh implied that the BCA knew that their cures were worthless. Read about it in my post UK chiropractors sue themselves in the foot.

Mind Myth 9: Primitive reflexes, a new old fad

If you studied in any field related to child development, you would have learned about primitive reflexes. These reflexes are present in early childhood, but are inhibited and disappear in normal children. They may be retained in conditions such as cerebral palsy and may re-appear after serious brain injury, especially of the frontal lobes. Where significant primitive reflexes are retained or re-appear in later life they are invariably signs of significant brain injury. Persons with athetoid cerebral palsy sometimes learn to utilize some of their retained primitive reflexes to induce more reliable and predictable movements, i.e. the asymmetric tonic neck reflex to induce arm movement.

A new (old) fad has developed around the phenomenon of primitive reflexes. It is based on the old idea that ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny (or the development of the individual organism repeats the evolution of the species), the basic idea behind one of the classic 20th century quackeries, Doman and Delacato's patterning. One of Doman and Delacato's aims were to inhibit primitive reflexes in severely brain injured children through long term, intensive therapy.

Now in the 21st century, some modern, controversial therapies claim that physically normal individuals typically still have retained primitive reflexes that hinder achievement and that their particular brand of therapy can correct that unfortunate state of affairs in short order. Predictably, with many gullible educational officials and teachers always on the lookout for a magical silver bullet, therapies that claim to integrate putative primitive reflexes have taken a foothold in education.

This is from an interview in The Herald (Edinburgh) with Professor Sergio Della Sala, Professor of Human Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Edinburgh, on the issue of the newfound popularity of primitive reflexes in quack therapies:

Professor Della Sala adds: "A primitive reflex is a very serious thing - people with cerebral palsy have it. Did they win a Nobel Prize for this? Because someone who could treat a primitive reflex would be in line for one." ...

The professor adds that he is "greatly sceptical" about the science behind it. "Why not report proper studies and proper trials?" he asks.

In fairness to the therapy under discussion, the Institute of Neuro-Physiological Psychology, it seems to have done some research. As Professor Della Sala pointed out, however, where is the evidence?

A range of other therapies have joined the primitive reflexes bandwagon, despite the lack of evidence. These are typically what I would call shotgun therapies, therapies that are so eclectic that they incorporate just about any nonsense ideas into their therapeutic approaches. Those that I have seen include Brain Gym, Mind Moves and HANDLE. In my opinion, all of these are long on claims and short on evidence.

HANDLE is particularly 'comprehensive' and claims to encompass aspects of INPP, Montessori‘s educational concepts, Kephart‘s visual-perceptual-motor programs, Ayres‘ sensory integration and praxis therapies, Bobath neurodevelopmental therapy, developmental optometry, Tomatis and Berard auditory therapies, Irlen‘s scotopic sensitivity screening, Piaget‘s cognitive psychology, Lindamood‘s approach to language learning, the effects of nutrition on neurodevelopment, homeopathy, reflexology, myofascial release, cranio-sacral therapy and energy therapy. With such a hodgepodge of ideas, how can you miss? The therapist should be able to fit any sign (normal or abnormal) the patient/client presents with somewhere in the framework. I wonder whether insurance and medical aid companies will fall for this?

The myth of the creative, right-brained child

I'm getting tired of tilting at windmills. The whole-brain half-wits are at it again. This time they want children to become creative risk-takers, as this is what they believe the job market will require in future. They propose that the way to promote such skills is "... getting the right brain to mix with the left." This of course is Daniel Pink and company at it again.

I wonder to what extent "creative risk-takers" have landed the world in the mess it is in right now. Be that as it may, the reality is that not everyone can or should be a risk-taking leader, not everyone can be exquisitely creative, and fortunately for us, not everyone has the greed to go with these "skills".

Let us also not forget that Pink's view of brain function is a myth and that there is little or no scientific evidence that creativity and risk-taking are specifically right-brain functions.

Germany honours bravery

Der Spiegel reported on 7 June 2009 that for the first time since World War II, Germany has introduced a military award for bravery, the Military Cross. It was awarded to four sergeants of the Bundeswehr for saving the lives of other soldiers and children after a suicide bomb attack. While one understands Germany's reticence in the past, given its terrible history, it was long overdue. Having sent its soldiers in harms way in Afghanistan, it seemed unconscionable not to fully support them, even when engaged in combat.


Images from Der Spiegel.

Feeling validated vs being correct

A recent article in the Psychological Bulletin did a meta-analysis and found that people typically preferred information that supported their pre-existing positions (normally called confirmation bias, but called congeniality bias in the article), rather than correct information that challenged these positions. This tendency is moderated by various variables. This is as expected and reinforces my view that one should use critical thinking techniques consciously to avoid fooling yourself.

Read the article by Hart et al, Feeling Validated Versus Being Correct: A Meta-Analysis of Selective Exposure to Information.

Here is the abstract from the article:

"A meta-analysis assessed whether exposure to information is guided by defense or accuracy motives. The studies examined information preferences in relation to attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors in situations that provided choices between congenial information, which supported participants’ pre-existing attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors, and uncongenial information, which challenged these tendencies.

Analyses indicated a moderate preference for congenial over uncongenial information (d
0.36). As predicted, this congeniality bias was moderated by variables that affect the strength of participants’ defense motivation and accuracy motivation.

In support of the importance of defense motivation, the congeniality bias was weaker when participants’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were supported prior to information selection; when participants’ attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were not relevant to their values or not held with conviction; when the available information was low in quality; when participants’ closed-mindedness was low; and when their confidence in the attitude, belief, or behavior was high.

In support of the importance of accuracy motivation, an uncongeniality bias emerged when uncongenial information was relevant to accomplishing a current goal."

Hat tip to BPS Research Digest for the reference.

The most elegant description of confirmation bias that I've encountered was from The Times obituary of Thomas Carlyle:

"Though incapable of lying, Carlyle was completely unreliable as an observer, since he invariably saw what he had decided in advance that he ought to see."

On dignity

David Brooks recently wrote an op-ed column in the New York Times entitled In Search of Dignity. He pointed out the importance that George Washington, the first president of the USA, attached to what Brooks called the "dignity code". Washington drew up a list of etiquette rules, Rules of Civility and Decent Behaviour and also lived his life in accordance with these rules.


According to Brooks:

"They (the rules) were designed to improve inner morals by shaping the outward man. Washington took them very seriously. He worked hard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remained acutely conscious of his own rectitude.

In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men."

More of a few of South Africa's public figures would do well to heed Washington's rules, dignity in public life being in short supply these days. How often do we see public figures making spectacles of themselves by behaving with absolute disregard of dignity and decency? But, no names, no pack-drill. I'm sure readers of Occam's Donkey can fill in the blanks.

UK chiropractors sue themselves in the foot

The British Chiropractic Association sued scientist and author Simon Singh for libel because of the following statement he made:

"You might think that modern chiropractors restrict themselves to treating back problems, but in fact they still possess some quite wacky ideas. The fundamentalists argue that they can cure anything. And even the more moderate chiropractors have ideas above their station. The British Chiropractic Association claims that their members can help treat children with colic, sleeping and feeding problems, frequent ear infections, asthma and prolonged crying, even though there is not a jot of evidence. This organisation is the respectable face of the chiropractic profession and yet it happily promotes bogus treatments."

The full article by Singh is available on Svetlana Pertsovich's website, where she placed a copy after the original in The Guardian was removed.

In a recent preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice, Judge Eady found that in using the words "happily promotes bogus treatments", Singh was implying that the British Chiropractic Association was knowingly dishonest in promoting chiropractic for treating the relevant children's illnesses. This finding exposed Singh to further expensive litigation. This issue brought into focus British libel laws and the danger of those laws for science not only in Britain, but worldwide.

The proper way to silence critics about doubts about the scientific value of something, is to produce the scientific evidence to prove the critic wrong. The abuse of the courts by the UK chiropractic association to settle a scientific dispute and to silence free speech, led to widespread anger. The Sense About Science organisation launched an online petition which soon had more than 10 000 signatories, many from prominent scientists and other public figures. The button to support their campaign appears below.



The affair had an interesting aftermath and it soon became clear that the British Chiropractic Association had sued itself in the foot and disadvantaged even those chiropractors who did not engage in the practices in question. Zeno from Zeno's Blog laid a large number of complaints against individual chiropractors at the British Chiropractic Council for performing actions they had no evidence for. This resulted in another chiropractic association advising its members in a confidential letter to lie low. The existence and text of the letter was disclosed by a disgruntled chiropractor. Here are selected excerpts, hat tip to Josh Witten from The Rugbyologist in his post Chiropractors Scared Siteless?:

"Dear Member

If you are reading this, we assume you have also read the urgent email we sent you last Friday. If you did not read it, READ IT VERY CAREFULLY NOW and - this is most important – ACT ON IT. This is not scaremongering. We judge this to be a real threat to you and your practice.

Because of what we consider to be a witch hunt against chiropractors, we are now issuing the following advice:

The target of the campaigners is now any claims for treatment that cannot be substantiated with chiropractic research. The safest thing for everyone to do is as follows.

If you have a website, take it down NOW."

"REMOVE all the blue MCA patient information leaflets, or any patient information leaflets of your own that state you treat whiplash, colic or other childhood problems in your clinic or at any other site where they might be displayed with your contact details on them. DO NOT USE them until further notice."

"If you have not done so already, enter your name followed by the word ‘chiropractor’ into a search engine such as Google (e.g. Joe Bloggs chiropractor) and you will be able to ascertain what information about you is in the public domain e.g. where you might be listed using the Doctor title or where you might be linked with a website which might implicate you."

Cartoon, slightly changed, from the Union of Concerned Scientists.

On a quick search I could find nothing about the controversy on the British Chiropratic Association website. In taking this issue to court, I believe they've damaged their members much more than any critical article or comment could have. Well done.

Late breaking news: Dr. Ben Goldacre from BadScience has an excellent account of the saga, with a lot of information I did not cover here. He has a specific slant on the issue that I did not cover, but which is critically important. I quote:

"..., while you may view this as a free speech issue, there are also some specific worries raised when people sue in medicine and science.

It is possible in healthcare to do great harm, while intending to do good, and so medicine thrives on criticism: this is how ideas improve, and therefore how lives are saved. The three most highly rated articles in the latest chart from the British Medical Journal are all highly critical of medical practice. Academic conferences are often bloodbaths. To stand in the way of ideas and practices being improved through critical appraisal is not just dangerous, it is disrespectful to patients, ...

Neither the General Medical Council nor the British Medical Association have ever sued anyone for saying that their members are up to no good. I asked them. The idea is laughable."

In one of the comments to Goldacre's blog, Methuselah (?) pointed out that this was an example of the Streisand Effect. This was new to me, but is described by Wikipedia as:

"The Streisand effect is an Internet phenomenon where an attempt to censor or remove a piece of information backfires, causing the information to be widely publicized."

More on the legal issues can be found on the excellent Jack of Kent blog. Some choice quotes from Jack of Kent:

On the quality of evidence a skeptical critic has to provide:

"The BCA are stating that Simon Singh has to meet a far higher standard of knowledge of chiropractic research in criticising the BCA than the BCA itself has to meet in promoting chiropractic in the first place."

Hat tip to Jack of Kent for a quote from Adventures in Nonsense. This quote goes to the heart of how UK chiropractors sued themselves in the foot:

"For some time, chiropractic has managed to get away with being the acceptable face of alternative medicine. With some evidence to show that it helps with lower back pain, and many chiropractors only using the therapy for this purpose, it was seen by many as a legitimate therapy and largely escaped criticism from sceptics.

"That all changed when the BCA decided to sue Simon Singh for libel. In a fine example of the Streisand effect, all the energy usually reserved for criticising homeopaths and reiki healers was redirected straight at those chiropractors making wild and outlandish claims to treat colic, asthma and a host of other problems unrelated to the spine."

Chopra and Oprah, stoking the fire?

I'm wasting way too much time on Oprah, but this is too important to pass by. I'll keep it short though.

My last post was on Oprah and her support for Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccination propaganda: Oprah, quacking with fire. It related to an article on Oprah in Newsweek, Live Your Best Life Ever! Deepak Chopra of quantum healing fame has now also weighed in on this issue. As could be expected, he supports her.











Chopra's article is full of errors of fact and logical fallacies, but I'll leave two bloggers more qualified than I am to deal with that. Read Orac from Respectful Insolence in Oprah and Chopra sittin' in a tree..., and Massimo Pigliucci from Rationally Speaking in Deepak Chopra Defends Oprah, Commits Endless Logical Fallacies for more on that.

My concern is more with what Chopra did not say that with what he did say. He advanced a list of red herrings, but said almost nothing about Oprah's support for Jenny McCarthy's anti-vaccination drive. The crucial question is whether he (a physician) supports those who would stop or delay childhood vaccinations?

Oprah, quacking with fire?

An article in Newsweek exposed the extent to which Oprah Winfrey has and is promoting (often dangerous) pseudoscience nonsense on her programme. There was also this recent article in the Readers Digest along the same lines: The Trouble with Celebrity Science. These articles pointed out the inordinate influence she has on more than 40 million avid followers. Here is just some of the nonsense she has given airtime to or supported:

The Secret, wishful thinking at its best (or worst)

Suzanne Summers on using hormones (bioidenticals) and other potentially dangerous techniques to try to stay young

Dr. Christiane Northrup on the unproven dangers of vaccines, thyroid dysfunction in women caused by "suppressing utterances", other quack cures for female problems

Actress Jenny McCarthy on the putative role of vaccines in Autism, urging parents to delay or stop vaccinating their children.

The desperate attempts by some people to cheat ageing are saddening. The efforts of Suzanne Summers are gruesome and pathetic - for Oprah to promote them, unworthy. The effects, however, will only be felt by those sad individuals who put their trust in Oprah's judgement.

Now, Oprah is by all accounts a wonderful person who does a lot of good, especially for women. She is also a very influential person. As such she should be held to higher standards of care and responsibility. Surely she should temper her natural trustfulness (someone less charitable may say gullibility) with a little caution?

The real issue here is Oprah's ill-founded support for Jenny McCarthy and others' claims that childhood vaccinations cause Autism and that these vaccinations should therefore be delayed or stopped altogether. This is what Dr. Harriet Hall had to say about these claims recently in an article entitled Vaccines and Autism in eSkeptic (her views reflect the scientific consensus on this issue):

"The evidence is in. The scientific community has reached a clear consensus that vaccines don’t cause autism. There is no controversy.

There is, however, a manufactroversy — a manufactured controversy — created by junk science, dishonest researchers, professional misconduct, outright fraud, lies, misrepresentations, irresponsible reporting, unfortunate media publicity, poor judgment, celebrities who think they are wiser than the whole of medical science, and a few maverick doctors who ought to know better. Thousands of parents have been frightened into rejecting or delaying immunizations for their children. The immunization rate has dropped, resulting in the return of endemic measles in the U.K. and various outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases in the U.S. children have died. Herd immunity has been lost. The public health consequences are serious and are likely to get worse before they get better — a load of unscientific nonsense has put us all at risk."

Oprah's support of people such as Jenny McCarthy - she's reportedly giving her her own show - is inexcusable. She is quacking with fire.

Left brain right brain once more

Joseph Le Doux is the latest eminent neuroscientist to take on the left brain right brain myth. Writing in the Huffington Post, Le Doux reveals Why the "Right Brain" Idea is Wrong-Headed. He links a resurgence of right brain nonsense to Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind and the mindless promotion of it by celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey. I also commented on this on Occam's Donkey at Is Oprah a whole-brain half-wit too?

Some choice quotes from Le Doux on why the right brain idea is wrong-headed:

"Attributing functions to one side or the other just divides the "black box" in two. This kind of over-simplification is unnecessary given all we've learned about how the brain work."

"We have very detailed information about various tiny areas on the left and right side, how cells in these areas are connected to other cells in the same or different areas, and what neurotransmitters, enzymes, and genes are in the many of the cells that allow them to do their job as part of a network or system."

" ... there is no overall function of a side. Areas, whether on a small or large scale, don't have functions. Functions are products of systems. Systems are made up of cells that are interconnected by synapses. Systems span the brain vertically and horizontally -- they are not isolated in one hemisphere."

Le Doux concedes that Pink probably used the term right brain as a metaphor for thinking styles. This tired excuse is wearing thin, however. Right brained should perhaps rather be used as a metaphor for the gullibility of those whose who fall for the idea and the greed of those who propagate it for financial gain.

Also see my post on the left brain right brain mind myth.

It's not right, it's not even wrong

In science there can be no worse insult than being accused that one's activities are not science. Physicist Wolfgang Pauli committed the classical insult when he reportedly said of a younger colleage's paper:

"This isn’t right. It’s not even wrong."

This reflected the Popperian view of science in which a theory which is not falsifiable (cannot be proven wrong) is not considered scientific. The idea of falsifiability is well defined in Stanford University's article on Karl Popper (hat tip to Wikipedia):

"A theory is scientific only if it is refutable by a conceivable event. Every genuine test of a scientific theory, then, is logically an attempt to refute or to falsify it, and one genuine counter-instance falsifies the whole theory."

Most alternative medicine approaches are considered unfalsifiable and are therefore unscientific, or if they claim scientific justification, pseudoescientific. Consider homeopathy where solutions are diluted to the point where the supposed critical ingredient is no longer detectable. The water in which it was diluted is then said to retain a "memory" for that ingredient. This "memory" cannot be detected, the concept cannot be proven wrong and according to Popper's view is not scientific. Homeopathy is not right, it's not even wrong.

An well-known example of a falsifiable statement was that there were only white swans. It could be falsified simply by finding a black swan, which duly happened. Compare this with claims that parapsychology experiments fail because of the skeptical attitude of experimenters through the measurement effect in quantum mechanics affect the outcomes. If this is accepted, falsification becomes impossible and believers in parapsychology will always be able shift the goalposts.

Much of what is commonly called pseudoscience or quackery, can be described as not even wrong. In other words - it's bullshit.