What does it take to overcome Neurological Orthodoxy?

This is Miss Maize the hamster, not a rat!

The world of a neuroskeptic!

Almost every day I read the latest offerings from the blog dean’s stroke musings and each day I am surprised at the volume of relevant information for conductors that is unearthed there. Every now and then Dean scatters some of his own post-stroke experiences amongst it and occasionally there are links that he suggests readers ask their therapists and doctors about that are a little bit tongue-in-cheek!

I suspect that this is one of those tongue in cheek instances – “Drunk Rats Could Overturn Neurological Orthodoxy – Ask your neurologist how this knowledge will help your recovery.”

http://oc1dean.blogspot.de/2013/01/drunk-rats-could-overturn-neurological.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed:+DeansStrokeMusings+%28deans%27+stroke+musings%29

Check out the original source of the article as there is quite a lot of interesting stuff to read there too –

http://neuroskeptic.blogspot.de/2013/01/drunk-rats-could-overturn-neurological.html

Blobology

"Cool hues on a head ", by Susie Mallett 2002

Just a snippet for neuro-sceptics on brain-scams and neuro-nonsence

I was freezing having cycled here, there and everywhere between jobs in a fine, grey drizzle.

In the end I jumped on a tram in an attempt to get warm. The tram-ride was not long enough to warm me but it did mean that I got to my next appointment with over an hour to spare. Plenty of time for a slice of Grandma’s cherry, crumble-cake and a huge milky coffee in the village café.

Warm and cosy again I got out the English newspaper that I had stuffed in my pannier just-in-case. Having read the Nature Watch on the tram, all about buddlia and butterflies, or rather a lack of butterflies, in Scotland, I got stuck into another Guardian Weekly favourite: the section on “Books”.

This week there are several reviews that tempt me to buy. There are also a few more that are interesting enough in themselves, but I do not feel that I need to own the book. They impart enough information to learn something interesting, actually more than enough, so I do not feel the need to have the book on my own shelves.

One such review was by Wray Herbert from the Washington Post. He reviewed a book by Cordelia Fine, a cognitive psychologist interested in gender and neurosexism. It was not this subject that caught my attention but this paragraph:

“Fine isn’t opposed to neuroscience or brain imaging but she is ardently opposed to making authoritative interpretations of ambiguous data.”

There is an awful lot of such interpreting going on these days; maybe more of us, including me, should be more ardent in opposing it.

Fine uses her detailed explanation of the technique of brain scanning using fMRI imagines to illustrate her position of ardent opposition! Pointing out that they are not videos of the human brain in action and are many steps away from being the hi-tech gatherers of brain-activity data that some people believe them to be!

She describes the pictures of head shapes with colours superimposed on them. She goes on to explain that the colourless images measure the magnetic quality of the haemoglobin (translated as the oxygen in blood that is being consumed in different parts of the body) and not much more. If the scientists see something on the image that is not as they expected it to be they “slap some colour on the regions of the map: hot vibrant colours if it is more than expected; cool hues if less.”

Blobology

Blobology is the name that Fine has given to the production of such colourful “works of art” as produced by fMRI scanners and to the subsequent interpretations of them as if they have something to do with human behaviour and can in some way justify certain behavioural patterns.

Wray Herbert the reviewer says that the mission of this book is to demolish sloppy science, “brain scams” and “neuro-nonsence”. He tells us how critical and intolerant Fine is of the intellectual leaps that are taken from analysing “iffy brain data” to making statements about specific behaviours and using the interpretations as justification for them.

Fine does not only criticise the use and interpretation of fMRI brain scanning but also other so-called research that has a huge “scientific” influence on arguments about human behaviour.

She illustrates her arguments further by tracing the roots of neurosexism back to the mid-nineteenth century. Then the political motives for pseudo-science were to restrict higher education and the right to vote to the male of the species! Apparently in 1915 six differences in the brains and CNS of men and women were catalogued and it was claimed by neurologist Charles Dana that they proved that women lacked the intellect for governance and politics.

Of course none of this was true. Cordelia Fine is asking us to question if what is happening now is any different to what the Victorian scientists were claiming. Although their crude techniques have been replaced by modern scanners it does not mean the interpretations are any truer.

Fine warns us that once wrapping a tape measure around a head was considered modern, scientific and high-tech. The "scientific" blobs of colour on an fMRI head-like image could end up in the same intellectual scrap heap as the Victorian's tape measure.

It is hard as non-scientists to be as critical as we need to be, but we must be careful and not accept as gospel all that we hear and read.

There are lots of conferences coming up. Let us not forget these warnings from Cordelia Fine. We must not let the blobologists fill our heads with "scams", "nonsense" and "iffy brain-data" produced by "sloppy science", telling us that behaviour is about colourful blobs of warm and cool hues.

Notes

Cordelia Fine -

http://www.cordeliafine.com/

Guardian Weekly 24.09.10, Books-

www.guardianweekly.co.uk

Wray Herbert, Washington Post -

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/09/10/AR2010091002678.html

Is something fishy going on?

A seven and a half pound cod and my Dad, winter 2000

Yesterday I had all sorts of things planned for after work, including several blogs. It was nine o’clock and almost dark by the time that I got my bike locked up and covered, and myself up the stairs for a cup of tea.

Due to tiredness I abandoned everything except for a telphone chat with my Dad and the letter to the university with my questions on “Research, or spam?” -

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/06/research-or-spam.html

How glad I was that I did both. Dad and I enjoyed talking with each other very much, and we were both very chatty, despite being tired. He had had a long day too, out with his younger brother on the Norfolk Broads. The email on, spam or not spam, resulted in a reply almost immediately. I was in bed by the time that this came in but it was ready and waiting for me in my in-box this morning.

A strange thing is that my reply email this morning was immediately returned by the Mail Delivery Subsystem which told me that this email address had already been marked as spam!!!!

Spreading spam

I now know that Gill Maguire has also received this same original email request. She mentions on her blog that the form that the email takes gives her too cause for concern, even though she is used to requests for information from all over the world.

In my letter to the Associate Dean (Research) of the university in question, I pointed out that it was the “tone, phrasing, lack of supportive information and potential to cause anxieties to recipients” that had caused me concern. These had given me doubts as to whether the email request that I received was genuine.

The Associate Dean replied that the form that this email took does indeed give cause for concern, and that she was thankful that I had brought it to the university’s attention. It was confirmed to me that the university does have a rigorous policy for ensuring that research ethics are attended to, and that this includes the manner in which participation (in this case my own particular help) in a research project is sought.

So is it spam after all?

Interestingly, the Associate Dean is of the opinion that it is highly unlikely that this approach to me, and now also to Gill asking, for our “help”, is genuine. I have asked her to inform me if it turns out that it is indeed the genuine article.

Thank you to Andrew Sutton, Freddy, László Szögeczki and Emma McDowell for their comments on my previous posting. Gill Maguire has her own posting on the matter at:

http://www.gillian-maguire.info/2010/06/enquiries-long-short-and-clear.html

I am still wondering where the author of these emails found our email addresses, if not on our blogs. I also wonder why, if as Andrew Sutton still suspects they are genuine, the author has not come forward and told us so.

At the moment we are all still guessing, including the Associate Dean (Research).

Re: spam or research

World Cup fever in Nürnberg, June 14th, 2010

Emma McDowell has asked me to publish this comment on my latest blog "Research, or spam?", I could not get it to go up there either so I am posting it here on the blog instead. I hope that this is OK with you, Emma.

Thank you to Emma, and also to Andrew, Laszló and Freddie for all your comments.

"We only had some “furniture” at home when George was young that could help him to maintain, or practice, proper positions. An ordinary little wooden chair without arms, a coffee table put in front of it, when he was reading, eating or watching TV. Rings and small wooden bars to hold in his hands as much as possible. The same “furniture” (table and chair), was later used for brother Andrew, a normal toddler, for the same purposes.

Andrew also loved all the learning toys, including the low, but strong wooden shelves (attached to the wall, made up by Dad) where all George’s toys used to be, in order to encourage him to stand up to reach them, by holding on to the shelves. All the neighbouring children loved these shelves.

When George could already walk independently, we carried in to the house an ordinary ladder. We put it on the floor of the long living room. Dad nailed ropes to the windowsill that were at the right height for George to walk. George held on to the ropes (not bars) and walked back to us, across the lounge, stepping over the rungs of the ladder. The “conductor” (= Mum or Dad) would have sat on the little chair at the end of the horizontally lying ladder, opposite the window, encouraging George to walk back to him/her, stepping over the ladder. If he fell, he got up. Much later again, when “Peto-fever” broke out in the UK, and George was a teenager, yes, we actually had a full-size plinth made, and visiting conductors had George do proper lying exercises (a programme) on it. (The plinth is now a bed, with headboard and mattress.)

As a rule, conductive exercises were done in a group, either at the Peto Institute, or here at home in suburbian Belfast, in the Church Hall, for the few feverish years when we organized conductive summer schools.

Of course, the plinths, chairs, rods, steps, etc. were all very important for the work there, and – learning from what we saw – Robert also made some low square boxes that George could practice (usually outside, in the garden) his stepping up and down from them. This is how he learned to step off a curb outside in the street. (He practised that in the street, too, with me, for which I was often “told off” by passers-by, for torturing the poor handicapped boy, me, heartless, cruel mother.) He also used a stout wooden bar (a flagpole, actually) to lift up over his head with his outstretched arms.

All in all, yes, the specific helping aids for C.E. learning were (and, I am sure, still are) very good, and I do regard them as part of the teaching/learning process. If someone has a special interest in them (as part of the whole, complex system) well, let them research it. Naturally, only with the understanding that these are learning aids."

Notes

Research, or spam? -

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/06/research-or-spam.html

Research, or spam?

The Empire State Building, by Susie Mallett, 5th June 2010,

(somethining else that I made when I could have been writing!)

From the Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, 1996

Research

1a. the systematic investigation into and study of materials, sources, etc., in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions.

b. an endeavour to discover new or collate old facts, etc., by the scientific study of a subject or by a course of critical investigation.

Research and development – work directed toward the innovation, introduction, and improvement of products and processes.

It must be about a year now since I used a friend’s most-probably-jinxed computer to access my emails. Before that occasion I was not really aware of the purpose of the Spam inbox. Now it is nearly always inundated. There are usually a dozenaday to delete. I always check to see whether a new contact has been thrown in there by mistake before I press the gone-forever button. It is part of my daily routine!

I was going through this process yesterday when accidentally I clicked on one mail that was not addressed to me personally and was from an address that I did not recognise. That is usually a sure bet for being thrown away immediately, without even a glance. This one had slipped through the net, I wonder why.

As it was open I read it and I was left wondering whether it really was junk mail. Or was it a joke or a genuine article? I am still none the wiser. I have not discovered whether anyone else I know in the conductive world has received the same mail so I am still tending towards believing that yes, it is spam, or maybe even another potential virus in my computer.

Here is the mail in question:

Hello,

my name is …….. and I am a Masters’ student at ……. University of………, UK.

Working on a school project I am doing research on conductive education and my focus is CE furniture;

your help would be greatly appreciated. If you are interested in helping me, please let me know.

Thank you,

...........

A joke, or what?

In my immediate spontaneous email that I sent to some people I know, asking whether they too had received it, I wrote: ”Is this a joke? Doing a Master’s on CE furniture, whatever is the world coming too!”

As yet no one has responded positively that they have also received this mail.

The mail is supposedly from a master’s student at a British university asking for my assistance. It seemed to me such an odd way for an educated person to approach someone for help that I still thought this must be spam.

There was No “Dear Miss Mallett”, or “Dear Susie Mallett”, or introductions of any kind, just a “Hello”. The correspondent did write a name at the end and I presume that it was a name in the email address.

Over the years I have received many requests from university students asking for help with papers that they are writing, and for information about conductive education,. Mostly they come from Germany but also from abroad. The students always introduce themselves, then they tell me that they have either been given my name by their tutors, or discovered it on the Internet or through a centre that provides conductive education. They have always made sure that ther email has a title, to ensure that it does not get thrown out with the spam. It appears to be important to them that they get through to me. In this case I do not get this feeling.

I am more than willing to help these students if I can and much information has been exchanged over the years during telephone calls and email correspondence.

If this mail from yesterday is not genuine and not spam, then could it be a joke? Perhaps someone has read about what I think about the “Petö Furniture Principle” and is pulling my leg? There are quite a few examples on my blog of what I think about furniture of different kinds:

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2008/09/something-to-ponder-over.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/02/handy-man-came.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2009/08/it-is-much-too-good-to-use-as-firewood.html

http://www.susie-mallett.org/2010/05/more-about-wooden-furniture.html

Pull the other one

Reconsidering this idea I do not believe that there is anybody who I know who would play this joke without giving me a clue to their identity, so I could have a laugh with them over it.

No, I have dismissed my idea that it is a joke and at the moment I am still tending towards its being spam.

But wait a minute, I ask myself: “What if this is true? What if someone genuinely wants my help in doing some research in CE furniture?”. There is also a niggle in the back of my mind that I have read somewhere else about someone’s doing research into CE furniture.

What if this really is what is happening to CE in UK and perhaps elsewhere in the world? What if this is what “research in CE” really is investigating, the wooden furniture. Is this what is going on in the places where the academics are, those people who could be doing the research that some conductivists are crying out for?

Perhaps I had better hold on for a bit longer to the idea that this could be for real. Not a joke, not spam, not something for the junk-mail bin but something that is actually potentially more dangerous than the viruses that my spam in-box tries its hardest to protect my machine against.

Surely someone doing any kind of research into any aspect of CE will have got to grips with the subject first. My first question is: How can anyone who knows anything about CE go on to research an aspect that is actually a myth? There is no “CE furniture”, you use what you have available to live a conductive life, you can use what you have available to give a conductive education.

Furniture in itself can be neither “conductive” nor “educational”, it is just bits and pieces used for a purpose within a conductive lifestyle. It is the lifestyle that is conductive and educational, not the inanimate objects!

Bringing together and making shift

Andrew Sutton recently defined the word conducere on his blog, plumping for this definition “to bring together, collect, assemble, to unite, join, to connect, to cause to contract or close up”. I can not see how any of this can relate to a piece of furniture and make it conductive or educational!

http://www.conductive-world.info/search?q=conducere

In my room today I had two ladders, some steps, some metal walking bars, some non-slip foot-prints that my stroke group made, some four-point sticks, some mini-traffic-cones, a set of skittles, a globe, a carpet, two long and very heavy benches (great for doing lots with, including sliding down), an assortment of stools in all shapes and sizes, (the most practical being the Heidelberg ones, as they have non-slip feet and come in many sizes). I have to admit there were also three adult-size plinths incorporated into this make-shift adventure playground.

This is not “CE furniture”, it is what I had available, that I thought would be useful in achieving what we wanted to learn.

It is all the kind of stuff that you will find in any kindergarten or infant school. What I do with it is “conductive” but I can do what I want with something else too if I wish.

The only extra furniture that I really needed today, in the 32-degree midday sun, was a swimming pool. If the weather stays as warm next week one of the parents, who lives opposite the centre has offered us the use of one!

So what to do with a suspicious email?

If that email is genuine then I sincerely hope that I have not offended anyone with this posting. If it is genuine I am as always willing to assist on any project and pass on information.

I am still tending, however, towards its having landed originally in the correct box and is indeed spam.

I think this is because I just do not want to believe that this is what is going on in the academic/research-world of conductive education.