From: lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu (Lee Lady)
Subject: Re: Neuro-Linguistic Programming (FAQ)
Followup-To: sci.psychology
Summary: It ought to be a perfect partnership.  
Keywords:  NLP   NeuroLinguistic Programming
Organization: University of Hawaii (Mathematics Dept)
Date: Sun, 13 Dec 1992 23:35:42 GMT

In article <MAS.92Dec9193200@porgy.jpl.nasa.gov> mas@porgy.jpl.nasa.gov 
       (Marc A. Sarrel) writes:
>In article <1992Dec10.015242.20409@news.Hawaii.Edu> lady@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.Edu
>   (Lee Lady) writes:
>
>   As you know, there are many who claim that many parts of psychology, and
>   especially clinical psychology, are a "cargo cult science" -- in Richard
>   Feynman's phrase.  What they mean is that these fields have all the
>   trappings of science and have various well developed rituals which they
>   consider the essence of being scientific, but they don't actually produce
>   results that work.  These fields, it is claimed, are more interested
>   in their rituals than in actually trying things out and making them work
>   and are in fact a parody of science -- a mockery of science.  
>
>   I'm glad that you think about things like the Pons-Flieshman affair,
>   because this is how real science is done.  The P-F claims seemed very
>   implausible, but physicists didn't simply ignore them or try to settle
>   their validity by arguments on usenet -- they tried them out.  
>
>But, I think you missed my point.  The only reason that the physics
>community tried to reproduce P&F's results was because they
>_published_.  Without such publication, the community is unable to
>repeat the experiment.  If you remember, P&F held a news conference
>before their paper appeared.  There was much snarling and gnashing of
>teeth, but no attempts at experimental reproduction, until after
>publication.  In effect, without publication, there is no scientific
>claim.  Scientific claims must be specific, detailed, complete,
>unambiguous and probably several other things, as well. 
>....
>I don't claim that everything that claims to be science _is_.  But
>certainly something that doesn't outwardly follow scientific precepts
>is not.  This is a much more grey area than what we're arguing here.

Sorry, my mistake.  I withdraw my compliment.  

> [Lee Lady writes: ] 
>   It should be very easy to discredit a procedure as simple and fast as
>   the Fast Phobia/Trauma Cure or some of the other techniques I've
>   described on usenet.  These techniques are not secret, after all.
>   They're described in print and can be watched on videotape.  They take
>   less than half an hour to do and the claim is that the results are
>   apparent immediately.
>
>I think that your tests for verification are oversimplified.  First of
>all, immediate relief is not permanent relief, or cure.  A shot of
>morphine provides immediate relief from, but does not cure, a bone
>fracture.  However, let me reiterate that science can only veryify 
>well defined claims.  Also, it is the responsibility of a scientist to
>point out not only where a work being reviewed is incorrect, but also
>where it is incomplete.  In the case above, the study would be
>incomplete at least in that there is no long term followup.  All these
>sorts of concerns are detailed in peer review procedures of various
>journals and professional societies.

This is why NLP does not have a legitimate claim to scientific
recognition at this time.  (I don't know of any responsible NLPers who
make such a claim.)  On the other hand, to the extent that academic
psychologists assert that "NLP is bunk"  without being willing to make
extremely simple (and certainly imperfect) tests such as I have described
to see if further investigation is warranted, I think it's understandable
that many refer to their discipline as a "cargo cult science."  

On the one side, we have a group of people with academic positions that
support their research, who do careful studies using fancy statistics and
other paraphernelia of science, and publish their results in refereed
journals.  This certainly *looks* like science.  The only thing is, there
seems to be a lot of methodology but a very small amount of real
creative scientific thinking.  (In fact, a devil's advocate might claim
that the very educational process someone goes through to become a
researcher in clinical psychology is intended to discourage creativity.)
And it produces very little in the way of results that actually work.  

On the other side we have the NLPers, who are incredibly inventive with
great insight and have produced hundreds of techniques that seem to work
incredibly well -- at least according to those who have actually tried
them.  However although most of the leaders in the NLP training have
conventional advanced degrees in clinical psychology (Connirae Andreas
has a PhD), for whatever reason they do not test their results using the
generally accepted methodology, rarely publish in journals (except for a
few NLP publications) and in general do not play the game of science.  

One might think that here would be the makings of a perfect partnership.
The NLPers could supply the ideas and the academics could develop
and test them in scientific fashion and get the scientific credit, which
apparently most NLPers aren't concerned about.  

Or the academics can continue the solipsistic game of writing follow-up
papers to other follow-up papers and the NLPers can gradually take over
the job of providing therapists with tools that actually work.  

--
It is a poor sort of skepticism which merely delights in challenging
those claims which conflict with one's own belief system.  
                                                          --Bogus quote 
lady@uhunix.uhcc.hawaii.edu         lady@uhunix.bitnet
Newsgroups: sci.psychology