Scientific consensus

Steven Novella from Neurologica posted on the value of scientific consensus and how it differs from the logical fallacy of an argument from authority. Some selected quotes:

"... we advocate rigorous and robust scientific methodology as the best way of understanding nature, we trust this process to some degree. We understand there can be fraud or sloppy studies, but generally if the research of others is all pointing toward one answer, we trust that research and its conclusions.

... science is complex, and few people can master more than a fairly narrow range of scientific expertise. And so outside our area of expertise (which is all of science for non-scientists) the best approach to take, in my opinion, is a hybrid approach – first, try to understand what is the consensus of scientific opinion.

... those interested in science will want to understand the evidence directly and how it relates to the consensus. But at the same time it must be recognized that a non-expert understanding of the evidence is a mere shadow of expert understanding.

... it is extreme hubris to substitute one’s frail non-expert assessment of a detailed scientific discipline for the consensus of opinion of scientific experts."

Novella continues to also point out that consensus of opinion is not always right – it is just usually right. He addresses important issues and I would recommend reading his whole post.

Increasing brain plasticity through diet

The Independent reports on research that indicates that brain plasticity is improved by the availability of magnesium to the brain.

"The international team of researchers from MIT, Tel Aviv University (TAU), Tsinghua University in Beijing and University of Toronto found an increase in 'brain magnesium enhances both short-term synaptic facilitation and long-term potentiation (LTP) and improves learning and memory functions.'"

Said Inna Slusky, PhD:

"We are really pleased with the positive results of our studies, but on the negative side, we've also been able to show that today's over-the-counter magnesium supplements don't really work. They do not get into the brain."

Supplements not being effective, the alternative is eating magnesium-rich foods such as spinach, almonds, cashews, soybeans, oatmeal, halibut and even chocolate pudding.

See the actual study in Neuron.

Why consumers buy snake oil

Steven Novella from Neurologica reports on a behavioural economics analysis of why people buy snake oil (and modern supplements) even when its ineffectiveness is apparent. It boils down to: "What can I lose?" I've previously blogged on this in Snake oil for rusty snakes and quoted this delightful remark by author Terry Pratchett just after being diagnosed with early onset Alzheimers:

"Some of them wanted to sell me snake oil and I’m not necessarily going to dismiss all of these, as I have never found a rusty snake."

Here are some selected quotes from Novella's discussion of research by Werner Troesken:

"... people still wanted to buy patent medicines, even after their previous experience with such products resulted in failure.

... Troesken’s basic model – medicines do not work, consumers judge them solely on whether or not they work, and consumers correctly perceive that they do not.

... consumers felt that they had little to lose and the world to gain, leading to repeated experimentation with, and even high demand for, patent medicines."

Other factors for the continued popularity of snake oil, as pointed out by Novella, include the effect of false positives (false anecdotal "evidence") and the placebo effect. Of particular interest is that the very success of science based medicine leads to people living longer and their age related ailments creating a larger market for snake oil.

Novella makes the point that, based on the above, it cannot be expected that market forces will result in better and more effective health products, or even keep entirely worthless or even harmful health products from the marketplace.

Some genetic and epigenetic correlates of vulnerability and resilience

Hat tip to Andy Smarick from Flypaper for alerting me to a fascinating article by David Dobbs in The Atlantic. It relates to the interaction between genetic and environmental factors to produce either vulnerable or resilient phenotypes based on the same risk allele. The specific risk allele is one for ADHD and externalizing behaviours.

Dobbs explained as follows:

"Most of us have genes that make us as hardy as dandelions: able to take root and survive almost anywhere. A few of us, however, are more like the orchid: fragile and fickle, but capable of blooming spectacularly if given greenhouse care. So holds a provocative new theory of genetics, which asserts that the very genes that give us the most trouble as a species, causing behaviors that are self-destructive and antisocial, also underlie humankind’s phenomenal adaptability and evolutionary success. With a bad environment and poor parenting, orchid children can end up depressed, drug-addicted, or in jail—but with the right environment and good parenting, they can grow up to be society’s most creative, successful, and happy people."

Related: Can the right kinds of play teach self-control?

Music training helps with dyslexia?

By now it is known that the so-called Mozart Effect is a myth. Just listening to music does not have the specific cognitive benefits claimed.

There has, however, been some research suggesting that music training and playing a musical instrument does have cognitive benefits. It is known that lack of phonemic awareness is one of the most important determinants of dyslexia.

Prof. Nina Kraus, Hugh Knowles Professor of Neurobiology, Physiology and Communication Sciences at Northwestern University, recently claimed that music training enhances brainstem sensitivity to speech sounds. She added:

"Playing an instrument may help youngsters better process speech in noisy classrooms and more accurately interpret the nuances of language that are conveyed by subtle changes in the human voice."

According to ScienceDaily, her and other neuroscientists' research suggest that music education can be an effective strategy in helping typically developing children as well as children with developmental dyslexia or autism more accurately encode speech. Something to think about for schools who have scrapped music training.

but, a contrary view that came to my attention later:

Music therapy no help to dyslexics.

Related: Children who grow up in noisy homes may have lower verbal abilities.

Repeat after me: "Teaching to learning styles does not work"

I despair of ever weaning gullible teachers of the nonsense of teaching to learning style. Educational consultants are not going drop learning style theory from their repertoire while there is good money to be made. Thank your to Donald Clark and Wil Thalheimer for the following from the Association of Psychological Science:

"We conclude therefore, that at present, there is no adequate evidence base to justify incorporating learning-styles assessments into general educational practice. Thus, limited education resources would better be devoted to adopting other educational practices that have a strong evidence base, of which there are an increasing number. However, given the lack of methodologically sound studies of learning styles, it would be an error to conclude that all possible versions of learning styles have been tested and found wanting; many have simply not been tested at all." (p. 105)

Reference: Pashler, H., McDaniel, M., Rohrer, D., & Bjork, R. (2008). Learning styles: Concepts and evidence. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 9, 105-119.

Concussion is serious, really

From ScienceDaily, Mild traumatic brain injury, not so mild after all. I've blogged before here and here about the negligent manner in which childhood concussion is often handled, especially at sporting events. ScienceDaily reports on the molecular mechanisms involved in mild brain injuries, as determined by a team led by Douglas Smith, MD, the director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair and professor of Neurosurgery at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine.

"Despite the prevalence and impact of mTBI, little is known about how mTBI affects nerve cells and connections in the brain, and therefore clinical outcomes after injury. Smith and colleagues have begun to amass data from human and animal studies on mTBI at 2-4 days after injury using advanced neuroimaging techniques. They have found distinct changes throughout the white matter in the brain. Also, protein markers of brain pathology were identified after mTBI in the blood of mTBI patients."

This is significant, especially in view of the greater importance ascribed to white matter and to disconnection syndromes in modern neuroscience.

Orac trashed the EPFX/QXCI!

The redoubtable Orac from Respectful Insolence comprehensively trashed the Quantum Xrroid Consciousness Interface (a quack name for a quack device used by ???) in a recent post. It's a repeat of a previous post that I wish I've known about when I previously blogged on the same issue. Read Orac's post, The miraculous quest for quantum woo, before you waste you money on this scam. All you gullible South Africans so taken in by "quantum medicine", hear Orac speak:

"The beauty of this woo is that quantum theory is invoked to explain almost every "alternative medicine," from homeopathy to acupuncture, and it's all packed into a single volume of concentrated woo (a veritable black hole of woo, so to speak)."

How to scam someone

Jeremy Dean from PsyBlog has a typical insightful post on the how scam artists deceive. In The 7 Psychological Principles of Scams, he identifies these principles as:

1. Distraction
2. Social compliance
3. Herd principle
4. Dishonesty
5. Deception
6. Need and greed
7. Time pressure

Read his post and try not to be the next victim.

Irrationally positive

Donald Clark from Donald Clark Plan B reviewed the new book by Barbara Ehrenreich, Smile or Die, in a post entitled Beware of the happy campers. I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my to buy list, as I've always enjoyed Barbara Ehrenreich's columns.

From Amazon:

"This brilliant new book from the author of Nickel and Dimed and Bait and Switch explores the tyranny of positive thinking, and offers a history of how it came to be the dominant mode in the USA. Ehrenreich conceived of the book when she became ill with breast cancer, and found herself surrounded by pink ribbons and bunny rabbits and platitudes. She balked at the way her anger and sadness about having the disease were seen as unhealthy and dangerous by health professionals and other sufferers. In her droll and incisive analysis of the cult of cheerfulness, Ehrenreich also ranges across contemporary religion, business and the economy, arguing, for example, that undue optimism and a fear of giving bad news sowed the seeds for the current banking crisis. She argues passionately that the insistence on being cheerful actually leads to a lonely focus inwards, a blaming of oneself for any misfortunes, and thus to political apathy. Rigorous, insightful and bracing as always, and also incredibly funny, "Happy Face" uncovers the dark side of the 'have a nice day' nation."

Back to Donald Clark. He echoed my thoughts in many of my previous posts when he wrote:

"There’s something odd about relentlessly jolly people, a sort of deep sadness. But this is nothing compared to the people who sell ‘happiness’ as a commodity – behind the smile lies a lie and a hefty daily rate. I have an instinctive distrust of motivational speakers, positive psychologists, life coaches, NLP fanatics and other happy-clappy types. Call me old fashioned, but I’m a sucker, not for pessimism, but for realism."

Well said.I agree with him distinguishing "jolly people" from those who sell "happiness" for a living. Even among the latter group, you have those who are sincere and those are charlatans. I would not be so negative about naturally upbeat people, they are great to be around, even if their views sometimes have to be tempered with realism.















The childrens' cartoon series (also enjoyed by many adults, including me), Spongebob Squarepants, has two characters on the two extremes of being positive and being negative. Spongebob and Squidward, to my mind both deliciously dysfunctional.

Some research bearing on the issue: Brain Activity Levels Affect Self-Perception: 'Rose-Colored Glasses' Correlate With Less Frontal Lobe Use

Bohr was a gunfighter!

Niels Bohr needs no introduction. He was one of the pioneers of quantum mechanics, often being associated with the Copenhagen interpretation. The Bohr-Einstein debates on the nature of quantum physics have become legendary.


Bohr made headlines again more than forty years after his death, not due to his contributions to physics, but due to his contributions to the science of gunfighting! Bohr was a gunfighter. His "gunfights" with fellow physicist, George Gamow, may also become legendary! I quote from a recent article, The gunfighter's dilemma:

"It turns out that the celebrated Danish physicist and Nobel laureate, Niels Bohr, liked to take time off from figuring out the structure of the universe by watching westerns. Bohr noticed that the man who drew first invariably got shot, and speculated that the intentional act of drawing and shooting was slower to execute than the action in response. Here was a hypothesis that could be tested, and with the aid of cap guns hastily purchased in a Copenhagen toyshop, duly proved it. In a series of mock gunfights with colleagues Bohr always drew second and always won."

Bohr's "research" was recently replicated in a laboratory:

"Welchman's team organized simulated "gunfights" in the laboratory, with pairs of volunteers competing against each other to push three buttons on a computer console in a particular order. The researchers observed that the time interval between when players removed their hands from the first button and when they pressed the final button was on average 9% shorter for the players who reacted to an opponent moving first. However, those who reacted to a first move were more likely to make an error, presssing the buttons in the wrong order. Welchman speculates that this rapid, if somewhat inaccurate, response system may have evolved to help humans deal with danger, when immediate reaction is essential and the risk of an error worth taking."

The effect, however, was small, not enough to overcome the time lost by drawing second. So why did Bohr always win? Simple, he was a gunfighter. Good thing for Einstein that their debates never became duels!

The Midmar Mile - again!

Last year I swam the Midmar Mile and vowed not to do another dam swim. It was for frogs, I said.

Here is part of it, the biggest open water swim in the world!

Photo from the Midmar Mile website.

Well, here I am again, not quite as fit as I should be, but preparing to swim the Midmar Mile again. Not that great an achievement, there are some octogenarians also taking part! In my case it's for a good cause; to get sponsorships to have an internet Wi-Fi linked notebook computer in every class in Muriel Brand School. This is the school of which I am the principal, a special school mainly for children with cerebral palsy. Every class has been challenged to get R5 000,00 (about $650,00) in sponsorships, which will buy a basic notebook computer. The sponsorships are coming in and while we shall probably not reach the target, we'll get some way to doing so.


My swim, for men 31 year and older (wish there was a separate one for the over 50's!) will be on Valentine's Day, 14 February. At least I won't be alone, Rolandi Greyvenstein (one of my teachers), my son and four of his school friends, as well as some of his teachers (Hoërskool die Anker - The Anchor High School) will also swim. In addition to this, we form part of the Blackfin Swimming Club contingent, probably about 30 swimmers in all.

Any reader of my humble blog who would like to contribute to the cause, can e-mail Muriel Brand School at mbrand at uskonet dot com for details on how to go about it. If we get enough computers, I can stick to the swimming pool in future!

Daydreaming, neural connectivity and intelligence

Jonah Lehrer from The Frontal Cortex reports on research that links resting state activity (the state in which daydreaming occurs) in the brain with the stimulation of long-range neural connectivity and hence intelligence. He refers to an article by Whitfield-Gabrieli and Gabrieli in Mind Matters and states:

"(they) ... outline some interesting new research on the link between resting state activity - the performance of the brain when it's lying still in a brain scanner, doing nothing but daydreaming - and general intelligence. It turns out that cultivating an active idle mind, or teaching yourself how to daydream effectively, might actually encourage the sort of long-range neural connections that make us smart. At the very least, it's time we stop discouraging kids from staring out the classroom window, because mind wandering isn't a waste of time."

He quotes Whitfield-Gabrieli and Gabrieli in their discussion of research by Ming Song:

"Like prior researchers, they found that the posterior cingulate cortex is the hub of the human brain - it is the most widely and intensively connected region of the human brain at rest. Moreover, the strength of connectivity among distant brain regions was greater in people with superior than average IQ scores. Another 2009 study came to a similar conclusion, and noted that the strongest relations between resting connectivity and IQ were observed in the frontal and parietal brain regions, which have been most associated with performance on IQ tests.

Thus, remarkably, the strength of long-distance connections in the resting brain can be related to performance on IQ tests. We are often impressed when people make creative connections between ideas - perhaps long-range connectivity in the brain empowers such mental range."

Interesting stuff indeed, but still no justification for therapies that focus without evidence for effectiveness on the claimed improvement of inter- and intra-hemispheric connectivity.

Trauma debriefing in schools ineffective?

I have long wondered about the effectiveness of trauma debriefing in schools and whether it may not cause more harm than good. ScienceDaily may have the answer:

Recent systematic reviews indicate that psychological debriefing of adults does not prevent post-traumatic stress disorder and it may even increase the risk of this disorder. While there is little research on the effectiveness and safety of these interventions in schools, "the evidence clearly points to the ineffectiveness of these interventions in preventing post-traumatic stress disorder or any other psychiatric disorder in adults. (They) urge that psychological debriefing not be performed after traumatic incidents in schools, and that more research is needed to assess psychological and mental health interventions prior to implementation in schools.

It has become the custom in South Africa that after traumatic events trauma debrievers from different disciplines and presumably different competencies descend on schools en masse. I'm not sure that they do any good, or may even cause harm.

Vygotsky and Piaget: Outdated theories?

Donald Clark in Donald Clark Plan B can usually be trusted to cut through to the quick. His take on Vygotsky and Piaget will not endear him to educationists who hold them dear. Vygotsky especially is held in high regard by so-called progressive educators.

Donald Clark has the following to say about Vygotsky:

"Why have learning academics been so keen to resurrect an old Marxist theorist, dress up half-baked sociology and pretend it’s psychology? Having worked my way through 'Thought and Language' and 'Mind in Society' along with several other Vygotsky texts, I'll be damned if I can see what all the fuss is about. He is to the psychology of learning what Lysenko was to genetics. Indeed the parallel with Lysenko is quite apposite. Forgoing the idea of genetics he sees interventionist, social mediation as the sole source of cognitive development. Vygotsky is a sort of ‘tabla rasa’ Lamarkian learning theorist. ... Vygotsky puts learning before development - a sort of social behaviourist. This is in direct contradiction to almost everything we now know about the mind and its modular structure (this sentence used outside the original sequence). He is simply wrong."

He also does not spare Piaget:

"... there’s almost nothing left of his theories that is remotely useful to a new teacher. His four-stage theory of child development has been so completely wiped out by subsequent studies, that there’s nothing left. It’s merely an exercise in the history of science. What’s shocking is the way he’s still revered and taught in (such) courses. It’s like teaching Lamarck, not Darwin.

The good news is that his mistakes led to more rigorous studies that really did unravel child development, although one wonders why he is taught at all. The bad news is that the hole was filled by an even less rigorous and more flawed theorist, Lev Vygotsky. Don’t get me started on him!

What's worrying is the fact that teachers are coming out with a fixed view of child development based on 'ages and stages' that are quite wrong. This leads to amateurish teaching methods and a lack of understanding of when and how to teach numeracy and literacy. The 'whole-language' teaching fiasco in primary schools was the perfect storm of this amateurish approach.

The sad fact is that education and training is still soaked in this dated theory, as they suffer badly from 'groupthink'. The community literally thinks that theories are sound if a) they've been around for a long time (sorry, but in science, especially psychology, the opposite is true) b) everyone does it (that's precisely the problem)."

I'm not an expert on Vygotsky and Piaget, but I can't fault Donald Clark's conclusions. My concern is that these theories are often taught uncritically in education faculties at universities (at least in South Africa). As I've remarked in the past, critical and scientific thinking do not feature strongly in most teachers' training (in South Africa). Purveyors of scientifically questionable educational techniques often mention Piaget and Vygotsky as influences on their eclectic theories. This makes their theories seem more familiar to teachers and fool their bullshit detectors, which are rarely effective in any case. My solution? Teach student teachers the rudiments of critical and scientific thinking!