ISN'T IT TIME WE GAVE UP THE 10% BRAIN MYTH?

Hollywood has a poor reputation when it comes to scientific accuracy.  Perhaps the classic example is the Rachel Welch's One Million Years B.C., which was premised on the claim that humans and dinosaurs co-existed and battled each other for survival.  In fact, the last dinosaurs became extinct around 65 million years ago, and the species of whom which Ms Welch is a particular fine example did not appear until round 200,000 years ago.

This film is not unusual: most films that touch on science seem to get it wrong in some major respects.  James Cameron is a notorious stickler for details, yet he felt compelled to change the starlight backdrop to Titanic for that film’s re-release when Neil Degrasse Tyson pointed out that the stars were in the wrong place in the original!  And almost every space film ever made, from Star Wars to the new Star Wars has failed to deal with the annoying fact that - what with space being a vacuum - there would be no noise.

The recent movie Lucy, starring Scarlett Johansson, joins this list of offenders by rekindling the myth that we use only 10 percent of our brains.  Johansson’s eponymous character undergoes a transformation when a bag of drugs she was forced to transport inside of her stomach leaks, and rather than causing an agonising, inevitable death, this event somehow gives her access to all of her brain’s potential.  With this gift Lucy is ability to learn languages in an instant, beat up gangsters, and throw around cars with the power of her mind.

The premise of the film is summarised by Morgan Freeman, who plays the world’s leading neuroscientist: “It is estimated most human beings use only 10 percent of the brain’s capacity.  Imagine if we could access 100 percent.”

The idea that we use only a fraction of our cognitive capacity has become something of a Hollywood cliche.  From Flight of the Navigator (1986), via John Travolta’s Scientology advertisement Phenomenon (1996), Inception (2010), and Limitless (2011), movies have asked ‘what if we really are using just a fraction of our true potential?’  Even The Simpsons succumbed, when Bart is prescribed a fictional hyperactivity drug that allows him to use the “full” potential of his brain:

“Most people use 10 percent of their brains. I am now one of them!”

Wouldn’t it be nice?
Many speculative ideas about the brain and learning seem to be motivated by a powerful drive, that I call the ‘wouldn’t it be nice drive?’, inspired by the Beach Boys paean to wishful thinking:

Wishful thinking has become one of the dominant themes in modern educational practice, and lies behind the waves of bullshit and pseudoscience that currently bombard schools. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if my son was not academically weak?  Oh look, it turns out that he isn’t!  He is a kinaesthetic learner, and the school system simply ignores his gifts!

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was some magical way to accelerate my daughter’s performance in mathematics?  Quick, get the chequebook: neuro-psycho-physio-gym can join up disconnected parts of her brain without her breaking a sweat!

Wouldn’t it be nice if I could become happier, healthier and wealthier, without investing any time or energy into making it happen?  Woo-wee!  There are lots of ways of doing this, and the only reason they aren’t better known is because scientists and governments are keeping them from us!

I suspect that ideas like those promoted in films like Lucy give fuel to this sort of wishful thinking by combining an allusion to 'sciency' brain talk with the intuitive power of a simple idea that is frequently repeated.  And people do believe it.  A 2012 survey of British and Dutch teachers found that 48% and 46%, respectively, accept the claim.  According to a 2013 study of Americans by the Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research, 65% of Americans believe it too.

The claim has now spread around the world, including into schools and workplaces.  I have heard doctors, teachers and academics cite it as if it were proven fact.  You probably have too.

The bad news
Unfortunately, it is not true.  We do not use 10% of our brains: most of us have access to 100%, and without the boost from a life-threatening injection of drugs.

The human brain has evolved over hundreds and thousands of years, at great cost.  The average brain weighs just 3% of the body's weight but uses 20% of the body's energy.  The idea that this process of development would result in an expensive organ that left 90% of its capacity unused is absurd.  And unused cells in the brain that are unused would turn to atrophy, anyway.  Not surprisingly, brain scans show the entire brain is active all of the time, even whilst resting or sleeping.  In fact, even the most basic functions of the brain - like those controlling breathing and balance - take up more than 10%, and these are needed just to keep us alive.

But don’t take my word for it …

So what?
The 10% Myth is unusual among contemporary brain myths as it does not seem to have originated from a misunderstanding of real science.  It seems that it was simply made up.  No one really knows where it began, although a popular culprit is American psychologist and philosopher William James, who once mentioned in passing that we “are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources".  This comment was repeated in the preface to Dale Carnegie’s 15-million-selling How to Win Friends and Influence People.

Does it matter that it is not true?

Many people find the idea inspiring in some way.  Perhaps we should continue to use the idea, but as a metaphor rather than a factual claim.  We do know that performance in almost every domain can be significantly improved through lots and lots of high quality practice, so maybe the 10% Myth can become a memorable ‘meme’ for emphasising the difference between our potential and our current performance.  Perhaps.

But the simple fact is that most people who repeat the 10% Myth are not using it in this way.  They are making a claim about the brain that is not true, and is not even plausible.  And since gullibility and scientific illiteracy tend to like company, this myth is often accompanied by a host of other nonsense.  So, Lucy does not just become brighter and stronger.  She develops telekinesis!  Advocates in the wonderful world of social media use the 10% Myth as the jumping-off point for an endless stream of equally unsubstantiated claims, from NLP and learning styles to spoon-bending and spiritual healing!

We do not use 10% of our brains.  Not even people who believe the claim do.  Perhaps it is about time we put this particular myth to rest?  Believing bullshit is a dangerous habit to acquire.

The Art and Science of Crap Detection

One of the ironies of modern culture is that, despite the remarkable advances of science and medicine, many people continue to believe utter nonsense.

The sea of dubious information has clearly been fed by the emergence of social media.  Anyone who uses Twitter or Facebook will be confronted with a continual stream of bold claims, shocking controversies, and supposed secrets for improved health, wealth and happiness.  Some of these claims come from genuine experts, some come from people trying to make a fast buck, and some come from fools.

Telling the difference can be frustratingly difficult.

Two examples.  I've just been reading a report in a newspaper about advances in cancer treatment. The same issue also includes an article about the powers of Chinese "internal healing".  Another source, this time an online magazine, juxtaposes a piece about recent advances in brain science with a quiz inviting readers to find out whether they are "left brain" or "right brain" thinkers.

In case you are not clear yourself (and who could blame you?), there is no compelling evidence in favour of either internal healing or left/right brain thinking.  They might be attractive ideas. They might conceivably turn out to be true at some point in the future. But, in the words of the late, great Carl Sagan, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence".  And, at the moment, the evidence is missing.

The genius of social media is that it has democratised knowledge. Information is no longer the preserve of a select few.  We can all access vast amounts of information.  But democracy cannot work without an educated population.  It assumes that people have sufficient knowledge, skills, and understanding to make informed judgements about the decisions confronting them.

The simple fact is that the vast majority of people have not been educated to make such judgements.

The writer Ernest Hemingway famously said, "The most essential gift for a good writer is a built-in, shockproof, shit detector."  That inspired Neil Postman to claim:

As I see it, the best things schools can do for kids is to help them learn how to distinguish useful talk from bullshit.

Most schools do not do anything that remotely resembles this. Consequently, they send young people out into the world inherently vulnerable to bullshit.  And that seems rather shameful.

Of course, it is not just schools who have failed to prepare their charges.  Many universities force their students to complete 'learning styles' assessments, despite the fact that it is well-known that most experts on learning and the brain deny that such styles exist at all.  Even worse, an informal review of sports coaching education programmes in the UK by my colleagues and me revealed that all of them taught questionable or erroneous theories as scientific fact.

Remember Power Balance?  The bracelets that used "hologram technology" to "resonate with and respond to the natural energy field of the body", resulting in the improvement of sporting performance.  Sounds implausible?  Not so much that it prevented tens of thousands of sports coaches, athletes, and normal people from from around the world buying one, just in case they actually worked.

People bought the devices even after scientists demonstrated that they had no effect at all.  Television news items even demonstrated, with the most basic of tests, that the bracelets were useless.  But people continued to buy them, right up until the company that produced them went out of business, mainly due to a court ruling that the company should stop making unsubstantiated claims and that dissatisfied customers should be given a full refund.

Anyway, the company has relaunched under a new name, and people have started buying the bracelets again.

What is to be done?

Surely, the ultimate solution must be to change education programmes to better prepare people to do with the barrage of bullshit with which they will inevitably be confronted during their lives. This is as much to do with a sceptical mindset as specific techniques.

For a start, though, consider this list of questions from the writer Michael Shermer, which make up his "Baloney Detection Kit".

THE TEN QUESTIONS

1. How reliable is the source of the claim?
2. Does the source make similar claims?
3. Have the claims been verified by somebody else?
4. Does this fit with the way the world works?
5. Has anyone tried to disprove the claim?
6. Where does the preponderance of evidence point?
7. Is the claimant playing by the rules of science?
8. Is the claimant providing positive evidence?
9. Does the new theory account for as many phenomena as the old theory?
10. Are personal beliefs driving the claim?

Crap detection can be framed even easier than this, as one simple but profound question:

How do you know?

If every student was taught to ask this whenever confronted by a new idea - no matter who offered it - they would be making a giant step towards being genuinely educated.

On the Duty of Being a Pain in the Arse

When I recently invited people to share their views on the so-called Olympic legacy, a colleague tweeted that she hoped people would remain optimistic in their responses.  Another respondent worried that sports professionals had a tendency to be too negative about issues like legacy, and maybe it was time we all positive-up!

These comments struck me at the time as extremely revealing, entirely reflecting a certain way of thinking that finds a welcome home in central sports agencies and some national governing bodies in the UK, and sometimes elsewhere.

Perhaps it is a natural response to a policy environment that is so unstable.  Some times we are flush with cash, other times not.  Sometimes that cash is directed into the shiny, beautiful world of elite sport, justified with, let's face it, a series of ludicrous claims about benefits tricking down to the dirty, much less glamorous worlds of community sport and school sport.  At other times, sport is hailed as the new public health prescription.  And then, in the blink of a general election, it changes again.

So 'keep smiling and carry on' has become something of a motto in British sport, much as a sense of humour became a defence against the horrors of bygone Britain.  Who can argue with that?  A certain wilful hopefulness has characterised the sports profession for as long as I have known it.

The only problem arises when this chirpy optimism is incompatible with intelligence.  Positive thinking is a worthy strategy, but it should not be at the expense of reason and evidence.  Just as there is a vital difference between an open mind and a whole in the head, there is a difference between constructive optimism and truth-blindness.  And here lies a bit of a problem for sport in UK, and elsewhere.  Criticism of policy has traditionally been as welcome as a fart in a duvet.

Critics are trouble-makers.  Stirrers.  Awkward questions are spoilers.  One senior sport leader used to publicly condemn the 'yes but' folk who could not just accept new schemes and initiatives without piping up and pointing out their potential problems.  The way these poor fools were described and the laughter of derision they inspired made it perfectly clear that, in this context at least, a critical friend was a contradiction in terms.

No UK government in recent times has sought out expert opinion in sport in any serious or meaningful way.  And this applies whether that expertise lies in Universities, sports agencies or professional associations.  From time to time, and out of a sense of grudging obligation, new policy documents are waved at the professional community, and they are warmly invited to send their comments by last Tuesday.  Generally speaking, the people who run sport for a living are seen as obstacles to be overcome, rather than resources to be tapped.

There are many reasons for this situation.  For example, a great deal of money is invested in even the most small-scale schemes, and perhaps those charged with promoting them feel under pressure to defend them too.  A more plausible explanation is that sport suffers and benefits from being politically sexy.  All sorts of people, including the general public, have views about it.  So any sports policy carries with it expectations both of politics and public opinion.  So, some policies need protecting from criticism because they are bullshit (in the sense I have defined elsewhere in this blog: "The bullshitter does not care if he or she is lying or telling the truth; only whether the statement advances a particular objective.  The bullshitter makes claims to persuade, or sell, or convince.  Whether they are true or not is irrelevant.").

Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s account of the most gifted bullshitter of recent history is helpful because it makes the art more real for us:

“Blair isn’t a liar, not in the sense that most of us are.    That is, most of us have on occasion told untruths, usually to get out of trouble of some kind or another .. but we crucially knew what we were doing .. By contrast, Blair is something different, and far more dangerous: he s not a liar but a man with no grasp at all of the distinction between objective truth and falsehood.”

A more recent example of policy bullshit is Education Secretary Michael Gove's repeated calls to increase the amount of competitive sport in schools.  One clue that this is the case is the fact that it was Mr Gove, himself, who was responsible for undermining one of the most effective competitive school sport structures in the world, when he attacked the PESSCL/PESSYP scheme, and especially the School Sport Coordinators role.  Apart from this, I am willing to bet my liver that Mr Gove has never given school sport a second thought since he was a pupil himself (I assume he failed to make any of the teams, and was forced to watch the matches with the wheezy children with notes from Matron).  But he must say something stirring about competition in schools because he is a Tory minister, and that is the sort of thing they have to say.

Of course, open discussion is not a panacea.  It may be that certain issues are too complex to be laid open to genuine discussion, although I have never come across an instance where this applies in sport or education.  Is the bases of ideas and schemes are made clear to everyone, and open dialogue on any problems or concerns takes place, those with greatest influence can be challenged to justify their views all to change them.  And, of course, it may well be that these ideas turn out to be entirely reasonable. The whole point of open discussion and dialogue is to allow all sides to detect errors and correct them, for the greater good. And also that, where changes need to be made, they must emerge from the discussion, and not be made in advance by those with power or control.

This is so radically different from the model assumed by most public agencies in the UK and elsewhere that it might seem naive. When I have asked why there is so little open consultation before new schemes are finalised, I have been told that it would not be practical, and that special interest groups merely slow-up the process of implementation.  In many cases, the special interest groups contain far more expertise then is held by the government and quasi-government agencies, so this position is clearly ludicrous.  Experts only cause "trouble" if they let errors or inconsistencies or nonsense slip by into practice.

If this is accepted, then we need to think again about the importance of discussion and criticism in public discussions of sport.  Those in control need to reflect a little on their own limitations. The rest of us need to step up and take our responsibilities seriously as active participants in the exchange and improvement of ideas.

And those people who we have been told are the most loyal and most supportive, who stand behind policy no matter what, should be exposed for what they are: freeloaders. There is a large numbers of people and groups in the current climate who have identified that compliance is a safe and secure strategy. There are outraged at criticism of any sort, and imply that those disreputable folk who criticise the creators of policy are not team-players. In fact, the opposite is true. These bland, cowardly individuals add nothing to the quality of public discussions. They contribute nothing to learning, and merely act as anchors, resisting change and progress.

Humans, all humans, make mistakes.  We are fallible.  Criticism is the best way we know to put those errors in check.  So criticism is vital.  It should not be merely tolerated; it should be invited, encouraged, and celebrated.  And those who seek to protect their ideas from criticism should be exposed and condemned.

Coaches' Cross-Training: 10 steps to becoming a better coach (and human being)

According to Wikipedia ...

Cross-training (also known as circuit training) refers to an athlete training in sports other than the one that athlete competes in with a goal of improving overall performance. It takes advantage of the particular effectiveness of each training method, while at the same time attempting to neglect the shortcomings of that method by combining it with other methods that address its weaknesses.

Why should athletes have all the fun?


Research suggests that coaches tend to rely on a relatively narrow range of professional development practices. It also shows that these practices rarely lead to significant improvement in performance.


So, perhaps we need to try something new ...


Learn something new. By far the best way to understand your students is to become a student yourself. It doesn't really matter what you learn, although the less 'relevant' the better. Experience being a beginner, and all that it entails.


Read. There is a huge amount of information available today, and some of it is not completely crazy! The internet, in particular, gives mostly free access to endless books, articles, blogs and newspapers. Quick tip: if you are searching for something wholesome and challenging to read, don't use Google; turn, instead, to its geeky, bookish half-brother Google Scholar (http://scholar.google.com). Your life will never be the same again.





Take time considering your own body. Apart from the obvious benefits of practices like Yoga or Tai Chi, or other 'somatic' methods, these practices encourage attention on the internal experience of the body.  And the body, after all, is the thing all sports people have in common.


Watch others coach. By all means, watch those who do your sport. When you do that, you pick up tips and ideas from those who have followed - more or less - the same training programme as you. But if you are looking for radically new ideas that force you to rethink your whole philosophy of coaching, you really need to connect with those from completely different backgrounds. For a start, how about one of the following: a golf professional; a PE teacher; a martial arts instructor.


Go to conferences. Sport conferences are a mixed bag. Some are great; others are poor. The best events have inspirational keynotes from leaders in the field, stimulating workshops and seminars, and good food. But even the most desperate affair has one compelling reason to attend: other coaches to talk to. Oh, and the bar.




Keep a journal. In this modern world, it is possible to keep a journal online, and there are some excellent IT programs to help you structure your thoughts, and even remind you to write in the first place. Personally, I prefer old-fashioned paper (Moleskine, to be precise). Either way, there is little doubt that keeping a regular journal helps record and clarify thoughts in way that simple reflection sometimes cannot. As the great philosopher Karl Popper once said, "My pen is cleverer than I am!"


Learn to spot bullshit. Sport, like almost every other of life, is bombarded by bullshit: from special training gizmos, from physio-neuro-psycho-bollocks, to gurus. There are some great books discussing the dangers of bullshit, such as Ben Goldacre's Bad Science, and Michael Shermer's Why People Believe Weird Things, and countless websites [search "skepticism"]. Next time someone claims that a little crystal in a magical wristband improves balance or coordination or 'energy', hit them with one fo the books.



Read business books. Business books have two great virtues. First, they talk about many of the topics that occupy sports coaches. Obviously, some of them talk specifically about coaching, and it is a fascinating exercise to compare the assumptions and practices of sports and business coaches. But there are also books about communication skills, leadership, change, values and vision; all topics of interest to sporty folk. Second, most business books seem to be aimed at a Primary School reading age. They tend to be short, to the point and accessible. Different people seem to have different tastes in these books. My favourites include The One Minute Manager, Influence, and FIsh!

Use social media. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, MySpace, Google+, and their kin have become enormously popular in recent years, with hundreds of millions of people around the world signing up. Whether or not a 'FB friend' is a real friend or not is an interesting question for late-night discussion (on FB!). But it is difficult to argue that social media offer sports coaches a remarkable access to information and insights from professional colleagues from every corner of the globe.


Learn to drink proper, Italian espresso. This is nothing to do with coaching. It is just one of those things every civilised person needs to learn!

So, what do you think? What would you add to the list? What practices have you found particularly helpful?

Please share your insights.

Your opinions are worthless!

"Science tells you that your opinion is worthless when confronted with the evidence. That's a difficult thing to learn." (Prof. Brian Cox)

I came across this excellent quotation in a recent New Statesman interview with physicists Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw.  It captures what is, for me, one of the essential features of the scientific mindset: humility.

And it stands in stark comparison with the default mindset of advocates of the otherwise varied collection of pseudo-scientific beliefs, like alternative medicine.

The world is complex and difficult to understand.  The idiosyncrasies of my personal beliefs are unlikely to grasp the truth of some matter.  But, by working within a community of committed colleagues, many of whom I have never and will never meet, and by using methods of testing that have been honed over many years, we might have a chance.

This attitude of humility is rare in our culture of relativism.  The view that everything is subjective, and that everyone's opinions are equally valid infuses many debates.  And while this stance might be valid in questions of value (Eastenders or Coronation Street? Clooney or Pitt?), it is absurd to think they apply to questions of knowledge.

Some things are true (or probably true) and others are not (or probably not).  Science is the most effective way we know of distinguishing between them. And it is not the opinions of individual scientists that determines what counts, but their theories' abilities to survive ruthless and repeated tests.  Scientific theories are those that have survived attempts to kill them.  They might die in the future, of course, but for now they are the best that we know.

An irony is that science is often portrayed as arrogant by its critics.  I have no shadow of a doubt that there are arrogant scientists; they are, on the whole, human.  But science is the epitome of self-effacing modesty.  It really does not matter what I think, or feel, or believe, or 'know' - science says - if this idea does not pass the test, it is out (or, at least, subject to serious reconsideration).

Compare this to the attitude of pseudoscience.  Alternative medicine, conspiracy theories, creationism, spiritualism, and countless other forms of intellectual diarrhoea with which are bombarded are different manifestations of a shared stance: my opinion is the ultimate arbiter.

The fundamental difference between scientifically minded and non-scientifically minded people is that the former think that personal opinions are irrelevant in the pursuit of truth; the latter think they are everything.

If a scientist defended his or her theory with the words 'I don't care what the evidence says, I disagree' he or she would be viewed as an idiot with an unhealthy value of their own importance.  But we hear sentiments like this from advocates of pseudoscience all of the time.  The world is full of people who think that tea, or sugar tablets, or laughter, or aura-tweaking, will cure life-threatening illnesses.  And the lack of evidence in support of their claims is irrelevant, because they know.

In alt-med world, anyone's precious opinions about, say, cancer treatment are as respectable as those of a Professor of Oncology.  Their arrogance is breath-taking as much as it is life-threatening.

So, I offer for your consideration and reflection the splendid quotation by Drs Cox and Forshaw.  Like science itself, it is a candle in the darkness.

Sporting Mythology - a request for help

One of the more interesting projects with which I was involved in recent years was a BBC radio programme called Black Men Can't Swim.  The general premise was an investigation by the actor and comedian Matt Blaize into why so few black people swim in the UK.  More specifically, the programme tracked Matt's attempts to learn to swim himself.


Matt, like many black people, had grown up with a strong conviction that learning to swim was more difficult for him than for his white peers.  And this conviction was given support by an obvious lack of black swimming role models, and by the fact that he had failed to learn himself.


My role, along with sport scientist Matt Bridge from the University of Birmingham, was to talk about the evidence.  We both concluded that whatever physical differences might exist between blacks and whites, they were far less than commonly supposed.  And, most importantly, none of these differences warranted the conclusion that black men can't swim.


There are, of course, a cluster of 'X can't Y' myths about sports performance.  'White men can't jump' is such a cliche in basketball that they even made a film based on the subject.  Women can't throw?  Asians can't play football?


Each of these ideas serve two purposes: they justify the exclusion of some groups from some sports; and they act as a barrier to potential players (and who knows, champions?) from entering and enjoying the sport.  And they are all basically questionable.


I'll return to these ideas in a later post.  For now, I'll just point out that they are just one type of myth that is associated with sport.  Others include:


historical myths - such as the idea that the game of Rugby started at Rugby School when a pupil picked up the ball and ran.


training myths - 'no pain, no gain'.


political and economic myths - the claim that hosting the Olympic Games makes financial sense.


And then there are myths about talent development, fitness, the mental side of sport, champions, coaches, and the benefits of sport.


Sport seems to attract myths with remarkable ease.  Some of these myths are outright nonsense.  Some are merely dubious.  And some, if I am honest, are really just matters of opinion.


This is where the 'request for help' of the title comes in.  I am planning a writing project based on the myths of sport, and I am very keen to receive ideas.  As I mention above, the myths can be to do with the history of sport, its performance or its outcomes.  If you know a commonly held but suspicious belief about sport (or a specific sport), I'd love to hear from you.


Please write your ideas in the comment box of this blog, or write to me at info@richardbailey.com

Sport Science - good, bad and bogus

The sport sciences have garnered a huge body of evidence regarding the measurement and improvement of performance. Television programmes reporting on the preparation of elite players for events like the 2012 Olympic Games show them in laboratories, where scientists in lab coats connect them to tubes and cables and the ubiquitous machines that go 'ping'.

The scientific foundations of modern training and measurement are simply taken for granted by those involved in sport. Personally, I am not so sure.

Dave Collins (formerly Performance Director at UK Athletics and now Professor at the University of Central Lancashire) and I have recently written a paper for the International Journal of Sport Policy and Politics called 'Scienciness' and the allure of second-hand strategy in talent identification and development. We argue that senior sports coaches and administrators are too quickly impressed by apparently 'sciency' looking strategies and practices which, on closer inspection, are really not very good science at all.

Of course, not all sport science is dodgy; the great majority is perfectly respectable. A problem, though, is that the people who actually use the research are rarely able to distinguish between good and bad science.

Without an understanding of science, most of us turn to good-old-fashioned common sense, which is probably a good bet most of the time, but occasionally is paradoxical and surprising and quite the opposite of common sense. And there are countless examples of bogus ideas in sport that seem common sensical; consider talent identification: the importance of spotting talent young; the need to identifying children with the correct body shape for specific sports; the necessity of focusing on one sport early. All of these ideas are widely believed to be true, because they seem like common sense. Yet they are all, more or less, nonsense.


One of the most fascinating examples of the battle between science and non-science is reported in Michael Lewis' Moneyball, which has just been released as a film starring .. [drum roll] .. Brad Pitt. The book / film focuses on Major League Baseball, possibly the most evidence-laden sport in the world, and its reliance on a combination of the wisdom of aged insiders and common sense-based, sciency statistics. According to Lewis, the statistics used by even the most elite teams to evaluate player success and, vitally, to identify the most talented recruits, were simply not relevant for the modern game.



Moneyball also tells of the remarkable success of the Oakland A's, a relatively poor team that somehow managed to compete successfully against much wealthier and established teams. Their secret? They used informed statistics to identify the real key predictors of playing success. So, while their opponents continued to assess players' potential and performance using common sense measures like batting averages, the A's turned to on-base percentages and slugging percentages. These scores were not only more valid predictors of playing success, but they also allowed the team to buy much more economically.

The events told in Moneyball took place some years ago, and the other Major League teams were forced to change, albeit reluctantly. It may be the new film will stimulate interest in the issue of good, bad and bogus sport science, and - who knows - perhaps it will contribute to the sport science education of coaches and administrators.

[A recent issue of the Financial Times has a fascinating discussion between Michael Lewis and Billy Beane, the man behind the A's statistical revolution]

The Rise and Rise of Educational Bullshit

The great philosopher Lisa Simpson once said: “After all, education is the pursuit of truth”. To which her school Principal Seymour Skinner immediately responded “No it isn't. Don't listen to her. She's out of her mind”.

I have always assumed that Lisa was right. Of course, I don’t think that all educational practices are aimed at the pursuit of truth. But I have always felt that they ought to be somehow connected, in some away or another, with truth. Or in equipping students with the skills necessary to find truth-like things out for themselves. More than that, I have always taken it for granted that one of the most valuable lessons teachers can pass on to their students is the ability to be better able to spot lies, deception and nonsense when they confront them.

Heaven knows, they will be confronted with enough of such things. I don’t think it is especially controversial to claim that we are bombarded with bullshit, and that the intensity and frequency of the assault are increasing.

A few years ago Harry Frankfurt (an actual philosopher, this time) achieved the remarkable feat of producing an academic Christmas bestseller. ‘On Bullshit’ clearly appealed to those wishing to make a pointed statement to their more opinionated loved ones. (And while on the subject, can I ask my family to stop sending me copies? After the first thirty copies, the joke wore a bit thin.)

‘On Bullshit’ is a serious and scholarly attempt to understand a contemporary phenomenon (it first appeared as an article in an academic journal, before its broader appeal was spotted). It begins like this:

“One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share. But we tend to take the situation for granted. ... In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory."

Frankfurt's argument is that bullshit is characterised by speech the truth of which the speaker considers unimportant. In other words, bullshit is not lying, because lying only makes sense with reference to the truth – the liar deliberately and consciously says things that he or she knows are not true.

The bullshitter does not care if he or she is lying or telling the truth; only whether the statement advances a particular objective. The bullshitter makes claims to persuade, or sell, or convince. Whether they are true or not is irrelevant.

Frankfurt thinks that bullshitting is worse than lying because liars consider the truth to be important precisely because they have to avoid it.

Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s enlightening and terrifying account of the most gifted bullshitter of recent history is helpful because it makes the art more real for us:

“Blair isn’t a liar, not in the sense that most of us are. That is, most of us have on occasion told untruths, usually to get out of trouble of some kind or another .. but we crucially knew what we were doing ..
By contrast, Blair is something different, and far more dangerous: he s not a liar but a man with no grasp at all of the distinction between objective truth and falsehood.”

We take it for granted that politicians will peddle nonsense. Advertisers and newspapers, too. We are now witnessing bullshit pushed on school children. And it is happening with increasing frequency. Sciency sounding brain training. Miracle dietary supplements that can - somehow - boost intelligence, or attention, or motivation, or grades. Commercial reading and writing programmes that must be effective because they are so bloody boring.

It is almost impossible to go into a school these days without finding some sort of spurious nonsense presented as state-of-the-art educational science.

Wouldn’t it be nice if there was no such thing as a slow or stupid child or adult? How lovely would life be is we weren’t better or worse than others at certain key skills like reading, writing, adding up or running around, but were all just different?

Well, it turns out that if you failed at school you probably had a learning style that was different to your teachers’. Or perhaps your intelligences were simply different from those valuable by schools. It’s comforting to think this, I suppose. You can’t read or play sport, and can’t get a decent job. But at least you can take solace in knowing that it is not your fault. It is the system, which wilfully refuses to take on board the latest scientific discoveries. Many of these discoveries are so radical that even scientists don’t accept them.

A group of primary school children are seated on the floor. They are copying their teacher as she massages her collar one with one hand while holding the navel with the other hand. “This helps the brain send messages from its left side to the right side”, she tells them.

It does nothing of the sort, of course. There is no evidence that these actions have the effects claimed. The exercise is part of the ‘Brain Gym’ programme that has been adopted, at considerable cost, by thousands of schools in the UK (and many more in the USA). Despite the fact that it does not relate at all to the current understanding of neuroscience and there have been no scientific studies supporting its claims, Brain Gym is promoted by teacher trainers and local authorities as a miracle cure for countless learning problems and personal maladies.

Brain Gym is only one example of an increasingly common phenomenon that is effecting schools – the adoption of questionable practices, frequently couched in the language of science but not its methods.

Do you want to know how to improve your students’ creativity? Simple: teach them to use the right sides of their brain. Ignore for a moment that they already use the right sides of the brains all of the time, and that if they did not, they’d effectively be brain damaged. Just focus on the warm and lovely feeling that results from learning that genius will soon be in their grasp. Just attend a costly course, buy some pretty assessment charts, and take the children away from old-fashioned things like books and stuff.

If this sounds too much like hard work, forget right-brain exercises. Just take some fish oil tablets, and voila, academic success. So thought a local authority in the north of England, when they gave snake oil, I mean fish oil, to 3,000 pupils taking their GCSE examinations at 16 years old.

This is music to my ears. I’ve always thought that studying was a needlessly time-consuming and tiring way of learning. Putting the almost total lack of evidence to one side for a moment, how great would it be if we could rub or eat ourselves smart? Bring on sleep learning. Bring on subliminal learning. That way, children won’t even need to come to school.

We can put fish oil into their turkey twizzlers; hide brain gym exercises into the other forms of body rubbing with which I believe young people sometimes occupy themselves; and imbed esteem-building messages into their wikkid beats.

All we need to do is to open our minds. And just pray that our brains don’t drop out onto the floor.

Ernest Hemingway, when asked if there were one quality needed, above all others, to be a good writer, replied, "Yes, a built-in, shock-proof, crap detector."

At a time when children are being bombarded with more bullshit than is healthy for them to endure, surely a basic function of schools is to help them learn how to distinguish bullshit from honest, good old-fashioned truth.

Instead many schools are becoming complicit in the bullshit business. They are pushing crazy ideas, when they should be helping children expose them. And in doing so are taking time away from more established, effective practices. And, let’s not forget, they are also taking money. Every time a teacher attends a neuro-pscyho-omega-behavioural training programme, money that would otherwise be spent on books, and pencils and proper professional development is handed over to the peddlers of bullshit and quackery.

How can we expect children to understand science and reason when pseudoscience is part of the curriculum? When their teachers are unable to apply even the most basic principles of the scientific method in their professional practice?

Bizarrely, some of my colleagues working in Universities, intoxicated with the pure-cut bullshit of postmodernism, think that condemning such nonsense is somehow bad form. Why can’t we all get along? Well, we can’t because money, time and resources are limited. And, dare I say it, truth matters. We have a moral obligation to aspire to truthfulness, and to teach our children to value the truth, and to detect its impostors.

Peddlers of bullshit ought not be rewarded: they should be exposed, condemned and driven out of business. No shit.