When someone presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary further entrenches themselves in a belief, we're no longer dealing with a matter of knowledge, but of belief. Reading your response, you're just trying to debunk overwhelming evidence, and rejecting most of it out of hand. Or rejecting it in a way that indicates you don't understand how to interpret it. There's no real point in carrying on.

* * *

> if you're willing to pick some actual scientific studies

And I have. Meta-reviews are considered important, effective, and valuable ways of probing the state of the literature. Dismissing it out of hand because you dislike who prepared it is fallacious.

> Dismissing it out of hand because you dislike who prepared it is fallacious.

Please, it's like you cited a paper called "Do Ghosts Exist?" prepared by a member of the There's No Such Thing as Ghosts club. You don't feel at least a little bit silly?

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Anyway, I'm reading the paper now.

He starts out well, with a DB of 315 articles, but then discards all but 63 of them "based on the criterion of whether the journal in which the given articles were publisher was recorded on on the Master Journal List of the Institute for Scientific Information in Philadelphia. This operation does not require justification in more detail."

Okay...

That's about 20%. Didn't you just say that "18% is statistically insignificant"?

But for the sake of discussion, let it pass: we will assume that these 63 papers are a good sample of the available information.

He goes on to select "Thirty-three empirical articles, which tested the tenets of the concept and/or the tenets-derived hypotheses."

He breaks them down into three subcategories:

> 1. Nine works supporting the NLP tenets and the tenets-derived hypotheses (27.3%).

> 2. Eighteen works non-supportive of the NLP tenets and the tenets-derived hypotheses (54.5%).

> 3. Six works with uncertain outcomes (18.2%).

Note that in the abstract the numbers for "supporting" and "uncertain" have been exchanged:

> Out of 33 studies, 18.2% show results supporting the tenets of NLP, 54.5% - results non-supportive of the NLP tenets and 27.3% brings uncertain results.

Is 27.3% statistically insignificant?

Anyway, I'll dig through these papers but I doubt I'm going to find a "smoking gun" that invalidates NLP.

As for this meta-study, it's really just Skeptic propaganda:

> My analysis leads undeniably to the statement that NLP represents pseudoscientific rubbish, which should be mothballed forever.

That doesn't really sound like an objective scientific statement does it?

What I find extremely weird and a bit concerning is where he writes:

> Here I would like to refer to the statement expressed by O’Donohue and Ferguson (2006), who propose that each type of therapy that does not have empirical supportive evidence of its effectiveness should be called experimental. They also put forward a suggestion that each case of performing such therapies without informing the clients about its experimental status should be referred to and treated as criminal activity. I fully agree with this view.

I mean, talk about gatekeeping, eh?

He wants people to be charged with a crime for not prefacing their work with his disclaimer.

He believes that NLP is nothing, yet it's somehow so dangerous that it needs a warning label? That seems irrational.

Anyway, I'm going to look through the referenced papers and see if I can figure out what's going wrong...

Cheers!

I've looked over the "works non-supportive of the NLP tenets and the tenets-derived hypotheses" and, well, in the words of Inigo Montoya, "I do not think it means what you think it means."

Basically, in the mid-80's some researchers badly misunderstood a facet of NLP, researched it badly, and then declared the whole thing to be baloney. Here's a good (brief) paper describing some of the problems with the "research":

Einspruch, E. L., & Forman, B. D. (1985). Observations concerning research literature on Neurolinguistic Programming. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 32, 589-596.

Since then, as far as I can tell, almost no one has done anything like proper science to NLP at all, at all. The NLP people are merrily doing their thing, the research psychologists are doing their thing, and "never the twain shall meet", eh?

It's a sad state of affairs really.

I see you edited your comment to take a swipe at Bandler, eh?

Why are you carrying on if there's no real point? (Sorry. I shouldn't tease you. I do appreciate the opportunity to hash this out in a public forum.)

AFAIK people call him "Dr." out of respect for his genius and contributions to humanity, it's never occurred to me before to wonder whether he actually had a PhD. I mean, it's not really relevant? He doesn't need a piece of paper to do what he does.

(BTW I think he was at UC Santa Cruz, not SF.)

Except that's not at all what Doctor means, not even remotely. It's absolutely relevant. If someone is claiming to have credentials they don't have, then they're untrustworthy.

If I promise never to call him "Doctor" again will you look through the referenced papers with me?

I just woke up, I've got my coffee, and I'm ready to go...

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Gatekeeping the term "Doctor" is uninteresting, and it doesn't make your side of the argument look good. You have nothing stronger to dun him on?

If you really want to focus on character assassination rather than truth and science, well here you go: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-01-29-mn-26470-... Have fun.

I'll be busy reading papers. You know where to find me if you change your mind.

> Gatekeeping the term "Doctor" is uninteresting, and it doesn't make your side of the argument look good. You have nothing stronger to dun him on?

I think the fact that he's claiming to have credentials that he does not is pretty damning. You have this utterly backwards. If I claim to have founded something groundbreaking, and it turns out I lied about my credentials, that casts doubt on everything I've done.

So he calls himself "Dr." but he doesn't have a PhD. I get it. So terrible. Much deceptive. Wow.

Do you want to discuss some scientific studies or not?

Not if you're going to sarcastically dismiss valid points that discredit what you're talking about like this.

So if I'm not completely respectful and I don't admit defeat before even we begin you're unwilling to examine the scientific evidence?

Given the continued sarcasm, I'll take that as a no. I'll also point you over to these: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine. Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community. Edit out swipes.

I'm sorry. I had no idea Doge Meme would offend you so much. Please accept my apology.

- - - -

I've had a chance to look over the papers discussed in the meta-study you cited.

I think you should look them over too, you might want to "adjust your priors" as they say in Bayesian modelling. The evidence really doesn't support your position.

Like I said above, Skeptics perform an important and valuable function in the intellectual life of man. James Randi has done a lot of good and important work, for example. However, in this case, it's clear to me that the Skeptics have erroneously identified NLP et. al. as "woo-woo". It's truly unfortunate.

In any event, thank you for prompting me to actually go look at the papers. It was kind of a waste of time (for me at least) but at least now I know (to my own satisfaction) what went wrong in the scientific study of NLP. One day we'll do proper science to it. I look forward to that day.

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"See ya space cowboy."