National Public Radio’s Morning Edition aired a report by Margo Adler about Mel Levine on Monday 24 January 2005. An audio account of the story as well as related materials is available from the ME site, so I shan’t recount it in detail here.
I was intrigued by Adler’s note about Levine’s critics. She reported that Levine’s methods have been criticized for having only anecdotal evidence of benefits, without peer-reviewed research. Levine responded (I’m working from memory here, paraphrasing) that researchers work on topics that are too narrow, that research isn’t likely to affect policy, and that he’s interested in promoting a humanitarian movement. That’s a topic for a later posting, but the gist of it will be “Bologna!”
NLP bunk
When confronted with Don A. Blackerby, whose Web site says he’s “recognized as the foremost Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) authority on Learning Disabilities, including Attention Deficit Disorder”; Shannon Sumrall of Advanced Behavioral Consultants who wrote “Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Education“; and Gordon Dryden and Jeannette Vos, who have a book called The Learning Revolution that incorporates NLP to fix just about anything, it is a pleasure to know that there are senisble folks like Steven Novella in the neighborhood. Dr. Novella, who’s an academic neurologist at Yale and a principal element in the New England Skeptics Society, published a sensible commentary on NLP that I strongly encourage readers to review. He goes well beyond debunking the woo (did I spell that correctly, Liz?) and discusses why NLP persists and what it will take to make the world safe from such nonsense.
This is not an April Fools’ Day post.