RmtView wrote:

Or it could be that "There was original enthusiasm over NLP among the psychology community" so it was tested. But they changed their minds when the results were negative.

No, it couldn't. The results were misrepresented - usually by the experimenters, definitely by the reviewers.

I discovered last night that I've actually analysed most of the abstracts reviewed by Heap already, so I'll start putting them online next week - with links to the German database which holds the actual abstracts. Then what I think won't be an issue - people can make up their own minds.

Sure Andy


Here's a journal for publication of your findings:

Journal of Counselling Psychology



Rich

RmtView wrote:

Sure Andy


Here's a journal for publication of your findings:

Journal of Counselling Psychology

I guess they'll have to wait. I'm just finalising my review of Heap's review for his own annual journal for skeptics.

I thought it was only fair since he asked first

And anyway, the online version will be available to a far larger audience - and for free instead of at what I consider to be a rip off price.

Ok, we can do some peer review here also then

What do you suggest would be a good way for NLP peers to assess/evaluate each others ideas/conclusions?

Rich

Once again I have been gobsmacked at the crap put out by academic psychologists when they attack NLP.

This time it's another citation much beloved by skeptics and the like:
"Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology" by Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr. Lilienfeld is an associate professor and the others are professors of psycology. all at what seem like reputable universities. Yet their comments on NLP are almost entirely limited to quoting the words and behaviour of Tony Robbins who, in their ignorance, they presumably imagine is a big name in NLP.

Worse yet, they haven't even done any research of their own, as far as I can see, to support their claims - they just quote other authors, who seem to have taken exactly the same route.

So much for academic integrity.

What do you suggest would be a good way for NLP peers to assess/evaluate each others ideas/conclusions?

If only there was a real time online forum where we could share ideas and talk about all things NLP related and connect ourselves with other NLPers all across the world in a respectful and pleasurable way. NLPConnected, or Connections-in-NLP or something like that would be a great name for such a forum. I think there was one once, or did I dream about it?

Thanks

Matt

Hi Andy

Do you think they should run more experiments on scientology, reparenting, past-life regression, Primal Scream therapy, alien abduction therapy, angel therapy as well as NLP?

Also, who do you think really needs to provide support for claims?


Hi Matt

What do you consider the highest pleasure in discussion? What do you value most about an NLP newsgroup?

Rich

Andy B. wrote:

Once again I have been gobsmacked at the crap put out by academic psychologists when they attack NLP.

This time it's another citation much beloved by skeptics and the like:
"Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology" by Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr. Lilienfeld is an associate professor and the others are professors of psycology. all at what seem like reputable universities. Yet their comments on NLP are almost entirely limited to quoting the words and behaviour of Tony Robbins who, in their ignorance, they presumably imagine is a big name in NLP.

If it's written by professors, claims being scientific and takes a rigid position against NLP, then I'm sure it has Rich's approval.

Hi Damian

No, rigid opposition is what I am against, hence the application of 6 hats/parallel thinking.

Lilienfeld and others are quite flexible. The scientific skepticism point of view is useful in that way. It allows them to accept anything that has empirical support for concepts and for the efficacy of treatments.

As such, they have a lot to work with. And they generally don't view pseudoscientists as charlatans. Of course there are charlatans who know that their methods have been found to be ineffective, and continue to sell. But pseudoscientists often are simply misguided. Again, that would indicate that there are at least some parallel thinking avenues between scientific skepticism and some of NLP's presuppositions (intention).

A rigid position would mean that someone found that an intervention failed the test, yet they still continued to publish it as if it was a powerful treatment.

Rich

RmtView wrote:

Do you think they should run more experiments on scientology, reparenting, past-life regression, Primal Scream therapy, alien abduction therapy, angel therapy as well as NLP?

Only someone with your level of knowledge would even consider that grouping.

Mind you, the stuff I'm finding out does seem to reinforce the report I saw a few years back which claimed that many university professors have an IQ no greater than a high school graduate - and lower than that of many of their students.

Know what I mean?

Hello Andy


I don't know how accurate that is, but it leads to an interesting provocation:



Professors should be employed only if their IQ is mediocre

What could that lead to?



Black Hat:
It might lead to a group of professors who are dumbshits
It might lead to a reduction in research quality
It could lead to an increase in pseudoscience
It could lead to a situation where students are far more intelligent than their teachers
It could lead to mass abandonment of degrees

Yellow hat:
It could lead to a situation whereby professors know more about learning difficulties
It could lead to the scrapping of IQ as a concept
It could lead to professors being less likely to fall into the intelligence trap
It could lead to a situation where profs think things through even more carefully and deliberately



Feel free to add

Rich

RmtView wrote:

Hello Andy


I don't know how accurate that is, but it leads to an interesting provocation:



Professors should be employed only if their IQ is mediocre

What could that lead to?

Never mind "lead to", look where we already are - this has nothing to do with NLP (so I shan't mention it again), but a lot to do with the reliability of academics:

Scopes Trial Errors

Professors should be employed only if their IQ is mediocre

That is not what was said, but I think I do understand why you decided to read it in that way.

The comment was made as to the bunching of

Do you think they should run more experiments on scientology, reparenting, past-life regression, Primal Scream therapy, alien abduction therapy, angel therapy as well as NLP?

displays a lack of fundamental understanding about NLP and what NLP is about, how it works and where it is going. For what it is worth, I do believe that more research IS and WILL continue to happen in these areas. When our scientific ability catches up with the significance of areas of human development such re-parenting etc then it can join in developing ways to manage its problems and solutions to problems. Until scientific tools are good enough to join in with the studies then it is left to people who have the ability to think outside the box.

Language is not science, shall we give it up?
Expression through Art and is not science, shall we give it up?

The progress of scientific study is not held back, pushed forward or affected in anyway by NLP. Where is the link that you are opposing?

Getting a high score in a driving test does not make you a good driver and getting a high IQ score does not make you intelligent.

No, rigid opposition is what I am against, hence the application of 6 hats/parallel thinking.

You seem to be stuck in opposition of any kind despite if it is repeatedly shown to be flawed, misquoted or naive.

If someone was stuck in a rut and unable to see other peoples opinions then I can see the hat thing working well, but you are in a room with people who are pretty much damn good at being able to understand variety and unusual concepts in thought and thinking. It is a fundamental ability you must have to becoming capable in NLP. To be able to talk to another person in their way of thinking and help them to experience new ideas without your bias influencing them is paramount. Your passion for the hat thing, to me, shows that this may be something you struggled to do in a free and fluid manner. I am glad it works for you but distancing yourself from a stated opinion does not make an engaging debate or encourage me to want to engage you on it. It is a little like a bull fight, if I were the bull I would enjoy charging at the man more than the red flag waves as you know he will whip it away or move it as soon as you make progress towards it.

As for science being the quest for facts. That sounds great, may I dabble into this box of facts and lift out the solution to low self esteem, depression, anxiety and paranoia. This is a serious request, MacBain, show me the facts that science has in these areas. If, as I know will happen, you will come back with the notion that science can not offer any help in these areas then I now want to ask you, how would you treat a loved one who has one of these problems?

I know I am back on this thread after twice stating my intention to back off but I am back for a reason.

I have noticed this hat thing is forcing you, admitedly a little wobbly and with stabilisers, but none the less you are starting to see other peoples opinions and your comments have started to relate to previous posts by other people. Nice one, do you feel more progress have been made in recent pages of this thread? Do you think that a line can be drawn here and this thread can be laid to rest and another can start up starting from where, for you, the science/pseudo science debate is currently at?

What do you consider the highest pleasure in discussion? What do you value most about an NLP newsgroup?

Thanks for asking, I think I will answer this in a new thread I will start and then other people can add their thoughts without de-railing this thread.

Thanks buddy,

Matt

Hi Matt

You said

“
Language is not science, shall we give it up?
Expression through Art and is not science, shall we give it up?

The progress of scientific study is not held back, pushed forward or affected in anyway by NLP. Where is the link that you are opposing?
“

The question on giving up or moving forward is more productively directed to discovering its value. People tend to move away from something if they find it is ineffective, broken, or too complex to use effectively.

Language works for people. You say something, it registers in the recipient’s mind in a meaningful enough way, and it works. It does more or less what it’s supposed to do. The same with art.


The study and testing of NLP did bring science forward – just that little bit. That is of great value in the particular field. It was found to be conceptually overcomplex (wrong and not in line with ock’s razor) and ineffective as an influence method.

People continue to believe in it despite the lack of connection to recognizeable or consistent concepts. Its pretty much set up for confirmation bias. It prioritizes subjectivity rather than objective independent measures, and it puts personal intuition(feeling) whether something works, above reason. That makes it a central candidate for a new age following and considering its usual associations with the occult (shamanism, magick, and so on) the image of pseudoscience is complete.

So from a science perspective, it was something to remember that NLP is generally pseudoscientific. Other avenues of research are more productive, and science continues to discover more by moving away from it and that sort of thing (new age pseudosciences with proponents who keep trying to bias the picture towards the misleading confirmation of incongruent actions and concepts).


Whether that view is wrong or right doesn’t matter. The main thing is that its useful information for moving forward.

Rich

The study and testing of NLP did bring science forward – just that little bit. That is of great value in the particular field. It was found to be conceptually overcomplex (wrong and not in line with ock’s razor) and ineffective as an influence method.

As an influence method, what about the rest of the NLP skillset?

What about Outcome based thinking?

What about learning behavioural flexibility?

What about improving your prospects of your future through timeline therapy and state management using anchors?

What about using pictures with enhancee submodalities to enable children to remember how to spell words.

I could go on for a long time about the real changes I make in my own life and other peoples lives using NLP on a daily basis. Read the archive on this forum and see for yourself real accounts of what impact the NLP skillset has had, when used in the right hands, on real people.

Either the studies you are quoting are wrong or you are misquoting their findings but I am sorry to do this to you but parts of NLP works very well and 100% of the time. Everytime you say "NLP is ineffective, broken, or too complex to use effectively", I just see that the researchers found it too complex to use.

No matter how many times you say NLP is found to not work then it is untrue. You can change 'NLP' to 'x part of NLP provides inconsistent results' and I will bet with you that that very same disclaimer of inconsistency is delacred when it is taught by a reputable company and a follow up action of y is advised. In the very same way that 'if your broadband is not working try rebooting the router, if that doesnt work try rebooting your PC'. That doesnot make rebooting the router incorrect even if it works only 10% of the time, it is the right step forward at that time. Knowing what doesnot work is a great step to finding what does work. Scientific exploration if full of 'failed' attempts but each one is closer to the right result.

People continue to believe in it despite the lack of connection to recognizeable or consistent concepts

People who are able to get recognizable and consistent results believe in it, those who cannot get the results, those people of course will not believe in it and to those people may fear NLP is pseudoscentific (once again I will add that nobody in authority has claimed NLP to be science thus it cannot be pseudoscience) but it is their inability (not judgement but factual inability) to enagage the successes of NLP which is the root of their problem. Right back when you bought up this issue you mentioned about how to engage these people and my response is the same now, let them be, leave the door open and model best practice yourself. More often than not they will ask to be shown through the door again. If they never ask then apply your behavioural flexibility skills and continue to a nice and supportive person yourself. Their inability to engage NLP should not affect the positives you experience. If you are more interested in handing the sceptics a fool proof NLP package then it is possible that being a fool and NLP is not meant to go hand in hand? People are entitled to express what they like and dislike, to me their review of what is good and bad describes their experience of the activity and not the activity itself. If people fail to 'get' NLP then that is down to their experience of NLP and not a problem with NLP itself.

Thanks for the good stuff,

Matt

Thanks

Matt

RmtView wrote:

Hi Damian

No, rigid opposition is what I am against, hence the application of 6 hats/parallel thinking.

Lilienfeld and others are quite flexible.

I have to ask. Are both you and Andy referring to exactly the same study? Because you seem to draw completely opposite conclusions of it. I wouldn't mind quotes from the study (since I don't have it available myself) that backs the claim up.

RmtView wrote:

The question on giving up or moving forward is more productively directed to discovering its value. People tend to move away from something if they find it is ineffective, broken, or too complex to use effectively.

"if they find" (emphasis mine). That's a subjective judgement, Rich. As is every judgement. Anything someone finds is what THEY find, including researchers (who are not - can not be - without bias in the way in which their experiments are designed and results interpreted) and your "scientific" sceptics. And then some will agree with those judgements, while others will not. Whose judgement is correct? By whose further judgement?

Where academicians are concerned, it's vital to job security, grant status, and peer status, among other things, WHOM one agrees with. This seems to me to be one reason why throughout the history of "organized" science - let's say 17th century onwards - there is a long, sad chain of scientists ridiculed in their lifetime for the very ideas and results that came to be accepted after time, and sometimes death, made political concerns and current scientific fashions less important.

RmtView wrote:

Language works for people. You say something, it registers in the recipient’s mind in a meaningful enough way, and it works. It does more or less what it’s supposed to do...

Careful - you're talking a pretty radically NLP idea here... No, don't bother. I assume that was accidental.

RmtView wrote:

The study and testing of NLP did bring science forward – just that little bit. That is of great value in the particular field. It was found to be conceptually overcomplex (wrong and not in line with ock’s razor) and ineffective as an influence method.

Excuse me? "Wrong" is a scientific definition of "overcomplex?" And is there an influence method that's been "found" (by whatever finders you've neglected to mention here) to be effective by virtue of the kinds of studies you demand as proof? For that matter is there a method of therapeutic intervention recognized by your authorities that's met those tests? And I'm not talking "generally recognized," 'cause you probably know by now what I'd make of that, but tested and proven. Scientifically. And mind you I don't really give a flying flip, 'cause what's proven to one person isn't at all proven to another, even by means of a controlled study and published papers. In my unhumble opinion there is no possibility of an objective opinion, because for something to be an opinion of any kind (including beliefs and judgements), SOMEONE has to have it. We're not objects; we're subjects. It's what we do. But make no mistake, Rich, as people using the NLP skillset, we get results. And one major reason, I think, that most of us don't care about "moving forward" to acceptance by certain other people is that results are what we're going for. Let me repeat that without the implied mindread: I don't care. I get results. Have your skeptic homies meet me on the street.

RmtView wrote:

People continue to believe in it despite the lack of connection to recognizeable or consistent concepts.

Bugger concepts, Rich - what's considered (by whom? I dunno, and I suspect you don't either) to be "recognizable" and "consistent" in any context (since you didn't name any) has got to be one of the most malleable and changeable things in the universe next to Silly Putty. And at least Silly Putty picks up pictures from the funny papers.

RmtView wrote:

Its pretty much set up for confirmation bias. It prioritizes subjectivity rather than objective independent measures, and it puts personal intuition(feeling) whether something works, above reason.

It puts whether something works above reason. Hmm... It puts the experience of the person wanting to change against that of... whom, exactly? Someone else who'd know? Golly. Wotta concept.

RmtView wrote:

...considering its usual associations with the occult (shamanism, magick, and so on) the image of pseudoscience is complete.

So you'd consider a diagnostician to be a scientist, I suppose, having a medical degree and all, and being engaged in state-of-the-medical-art scientific pursuit all day long. But what of a diagnostician who believes in God? Or Odin? Or attends the full-moon meetings of a Wiccan community? Or who joins the Freemasons? Does he invalidate the science of medical diagnosis? Does he make it less than it was? Do his beliefs invalidate his skillset and doom his patients? Or does medical diagnosis go on pretty much as it would have if he did none of those thing? In other words, what the hell does whether some people practice things you don't approve of in addition to NLP have to do with NLP? I mean, really.

RmtView wrote:

So from a science perspective, it was something to remember that NLP is generally pseudoscientific. Other avenues of research are more productive, and science continues to discover more by moving away from it and that sort of thing (new age pseudosciences with proponents who keep trying to bias the picture towards the misleading confirmation of incongruent actions and concepts).

I'm so glad science has you to speak for it, and to decide which avenues of research are more productive (Of what? Damned if I know) than others, not to mention having an overview of the entire direction of that particular nominalization.

Do you get it yet, Rich? You're speaking to several thousand people who probably know that you have no idea what you're talking about. I respect that you have an opinion, as I do. But an opinion is all it is. A thought. An idea. A judgement.

RmtView wrote:

Whether that view is wrong or right doesn’t matter. The main thing is that its useful information for moving forward.

I don't find any of it useful, nor do I find useful the direction in which you want NLP to "move forward" by not being NLP (Wha'?). My 2p; my opinions; worth exactly what you didn't pay for them. And if you reply to this and I'm not interested in continuing the discussion, please don't take that to mean I agree with anything you say. If I do agree, I'll be sure to tell you so, but don't wait under water.

Hey Rich

Now "6 Hats" is psuedoscience - you do know that don't you?

James

RmtView wrote:

Lilienfeld and others are quite flexible. The scientific skepticism point of view is useful in that way. It allows them to accept anything that has empirical support for concepts and for the efficacy of treatments.

"Flexible"? "empirical support"?

I think you've finally succeeded in blowing your entire foot off, "Rich".

Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr seem to have no idea what NLP is about, yet they are willing to write it off as pseudoscience on the basis of a 1985 article in 'Life' magazine about Tony Robbins.

Where's the "empirical support" in that?

Still, I guess that's pretty much the level of intellectual activity we find in your posts.

Birds of a feather, indeed.

BYW, Damian, that IS the "study" - an articvle in a monthly magazine (by Griffin and Clark).

Check this out yourself. Find "Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology" by Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr on Amazon; then search inside for NLP and Neurolinguistic programming.

Apart from a couple of places where it is just named, there's one paragraph on page 446 about Tony Robbins, and a supposed definition of Neurolinguistic Programming on page 455. You can search for Griffin as well to get the article reference.

This seems to demonstrate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that "Rich's" own claims are based on no research whatsoever beyond cribbing stuff from other sites such as the infamous NLP page on Wikipedia (now considerably improved, I must say, though still not error free).

Anyone remember this thread:

Apples, Oranges & Complex Equivalence

... and round and round and round and round and ...