Grantcoulson's Blog

    The corruption of the useless and the harmful is much more expensive than the corruption of the payoff.

    Under the heading of, “Hysteria Boosts Demand”: Or “Doing Well by Seeming to be Doing Good” when I talk about Incentives Everywhere, I’m not joking, whistling Dixie or Shuckin’ and Jivin’.

    “The man with the nickname “Dr Flu”, Professor Albert Osterhaus, of the Erasmus University in Rotterdam Holland has been named by Dutch media researchers as the person at the center of the worldwide Swine Flu H1N1 Influenza A 2009 pandemic hysteria. Not only is Osterhaus the connecting person in an international network that has been described as the Pharma Mafia, he is THE key advisor to WHO on influenza and is intimately positioned to personally profit from the billions of euros in vaccines allegedly aimed at H1N1.”

    Socialism involves the close regulation of minute, irrelevant details that the dull of spirit find so invigorating.

    An extensive quote from Charles Krauthammer, the rest found here.

        “WASHINGTON — In the 1970s and early ’80s, having seized control of the U.N. apparatus (by power of numbers), Third World countries decided to cash in. OPEC was pulling off the greatest wealth transfer from rich to poor in history. Why not them? So in grand U.N. declarations and conferences, they began calling for a "New International Economic Order." The NIEO’s essential demand was simple: to transfer fantastic chunks of wealth from the industrialized West to the Third World.

On what grounds? In the name of equality — wealth redistribution via global socialism — with a dose of post-colonial reparations thrown in.

The idea of essentially taxing hard-working citizens of the democracies in order to fill the treasuries of Third World kleptocracies went nowhere, thanks mainly to Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher (and the debt crisis of the early ’80s). They put a stake through the enterprise.

But such dreams never die. The raid on the Western treasuries is on again, but today with a new rationale to fit current ideological fashion. With socialism dead, the gigantic heist is now proposed as a sacred service of the newest religion: environmentalism.

One of the major goals of the Copenhagen climate summit is another NIEO shakedown: the transfer of hundreds of billions from the industrial West to the Third World to save the planet by, for example, planting green industries in the tristes tropiques.

Politically it’s an idea of genius, engaging at once every left-wing erogenous zone: rich man’s guilt, post-colonial guilt, environmental guilt. But the idea of shaking down the industrial democracies in the name of the environment thrives not just in the refined internationalist precincts of Copenhagen. It thrives on the national scale too.

On the day Copenhagen opened, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency claimed jurisdiction over the regulation of carbon emissions by declaring them an "endangerment" to human health.

Since we operate an overwhelmingly carbon-based economy, the EPA will be regulating practically everything. No institution that emits more than 250 tons of CO2 a year will fall outside EPA control. This means over a million building complexes, hospitals, plants, schools, businesses and similar enterprises. (The EPA proposes regulating emissions only above 25,000 tons, but it has no such authority.) Not since the creation of the Internal Revenue Service has a federal agency been given more intrusive power over every aspect of economic life.

This naked assertion of vast executive power in the name of the environment is the perfect fulfillment of the prediction of Czech President (and economist) Vaclav Klaus that environmentalism is becoming the new socialism, i.e., the totemic ideal in the name of which government seizes the commanding heights of the economy and society.

Socialism having failed so spectacularly, the left was adrift until it struck upon a brilliant gambit: metamorphosis from red to green. The cultural elites went straight from the memorial service for socialism to the altar of the environment. The objective is the same: highly centralized power given to the best and the brightest, the new class of experts, managers and technocrats. This time, however, the alleged justification is not abolishing oppression and inequality but saving the planet.”

    from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

3. Catharsis is good. When angry, the theory goes, it is a good thing to “vent” the anger by breaking balloons or Christmas ornaments or punching a pillow. Doing this is ineffective.

4. Early experiences are crucial. There is no evidence for this, except from the movie of the week. A corollary of this is that “Parents are always to blame.”

5. Terrible things can’t be remembered. Terrible things are much less likely to be forgotten than riding on a pig at a petting zoo at age seven.

6. There is a large variety of techniques of psychotherapy and all are equally valid. This is logically impossible.   

7. Causes of distressing behavior are internal. This is laymanship gone awry.

8. No one will change who doesn’t want to change.

9. The label of the behavior explains the behavior

10. Drugs are the most effective way of changing strange behavior

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson   

     Nicolas Cage has been awarded a U.N. prize–interesting parallels–both live beyond their means and think symbolic gestures are really important.

     The larger the government, the smaller the citizen.

    If you didn’t like taxation without representation, how do you like it with representation? “One despot three thousand miles away or 3,000 despots one mile away?”

    "A wise and frugal government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." Thomas Jefferson.

from the book:  Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

Overextension of  Explanation Including a Cautionary Personal Tale

    Autism, ulcers, asthma, criminal behavior and extreme bizarre behavior have all been attributed to environmental factors, a code phrase meaning bad mothering, once blamed for almost every mental health problem. The classic case is the “refrigerator mother” made popular by Bettelheim. Bettelheim misrepresented almost everything he did, and the “refrigerator mother” was no different. Thousands of mothers have tortured themselves with this nonsense by blaming themselves for autism, which is probably caused by genetic abnormality.

    My wife was, and thankfully, now is, a very energetic person. Along with menopause came a series of physical symptoms such as rapidly appearing and disappearing rash, extreme fatigue, edginess, sudden anger, depression, fatigue and severe pain in one leg and both arms. After two and one half years of unsuccessful medical “tests” along with frequent suggestions of malingering, gluten sensitivity was confirmed and corrected. The depression disappeared. Much advice was given about stress, psychosomatic illness and the necessity of “treatment” for depression via an antidepressant. Luckily, we resisted this nonsense and the problem was solved. There was a chemical peculiarity, and probably an imbalance in the brain, but it was real and corrected by diet.

READING FROM THE BOOK OF WRONG

    Where to begin. The myths in this field are probably not more numerous than the myths in education, criminal rehabilitation or drug treatment, but they are passing peculiar.

1. If the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem must be a nail needing to be driven. A medical or physiological explanation is the best explanation. This kind of reasoning goes like this: Strange behavior  must be caused by physiological factors. This assumption ignores the fact that, in the majority of cases, a “mental illness” is not accompanied by a verifiable pathological marker such as a tumor or other physical abnormality.  The assumption that depression is caused by an “chemical imbalance” is widespread without evidence. Were the “chemical imbalance” theory true, this would put psychiatric conditions in the same league as infection. A drug can be given to restore the body to the natural condition of health. Peter Breggin hypothesizes that psychiatric drugs cause chemical imbalance. Reading books by Breggin about psychiatric drugs and their “scientific basis” is like visiting a sausage factory. Once you have the inside facts, you will probably not want to consume the product.

    If you pay close attention, you will notice the occasional reference in the media to a new “breakthrough” in finding the “key” to mental illness in the chemistry of the body. When such a key is found in the future, someone should put it in a safe place because a new “key” keeps being discovered, the old one, apparently being lost or no longer unlocking the mystery.  No evidence will ever show that those so afflicted have a chemical deficit of the drug they are given. There is no evidence, for example, that those whose headaches are alleviated by Aspirin, have an Aspirin deficit. Again, those who use these kinds of explanations believe they are speaking scientifically rather than metaphorically. Another assumption without evidence is that depression is best treated with a combination of psychotherapy and medication. A widely-held assumption is not a fact in the same way that an assertion is not a fact. Most of the effect of antidepressant medication is caused by the placebo effect–The belief of the patients that good results follow medication. Much of the explanation of the effects of psychotropic drugs on depression based on physiological factors explains very little because there is little to explain.

    A problem with research on psychotropic drugs is that the control group is usually given a placebo, a substance without any effects. The best control is to give the untreated group a drug with noticeable, but non-psychotropic effects such as a combination of dry mouth, dizziness, sleepiness, constipation, etc. and then take the data on effectiveness. My guess is that this method would decrease the supposed effectiveness of the drug under investigation because the subjects of the “control” medication would perceive they were getting an active “medicine” and respond accordingly.

    Another deceitful usage in psychiatric drug testing is this: Sometimes, all subjects are started out on placebos and those who show a positive effect are eliminated  thereby biasing the data of those who are left away from the placebo effect. This procedure is, of course, ridiculous and any data based on it, worthless.

    Another difficulty is that undesirable effects of a drug are called “side effects” as if they are trivial in nature. The list of unwanted effects of some psychiatric drug is quite long and, for some drugs, quite serious including withdrawal symptoms which can be  severe. Psychiatry lacks a suitable metric, except “clinical experience”, the worst of all possible metrics,  to either gauge the effects of the drug or those pesky “side effects”. The metric most often used in psychiatry, as in other social sciences, is a thoughtful stroking of the chin followed by a fact-free opinion.  Frequently, the side effects are regarded as another manifestation of the “mental illness” which brought attention to the person, and more drugs are prescribed.

    One commentator has observed, “The psychiatric profession and the drug manufacturing companies are conjugal twins joined at the wallet.” Marketing of psychiatric drugs is much more scientific than their testing.

Breggin, P. (2001). The Antidepressant Fact Book: What Your Doctor Won’t Tell You About Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa, And Luvox. MA: Da Capo Press.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

     “What could have happened is often more important than what actually happened.”, Peggy Hill on King of the Hill.

      Since governments must keep borrowing to finance spending, borrowing for Global Warming spending will be doubly useless. Spending for inefficient public transit is bad enough, but spending on vapors is really silly. Many years ago, I read in Ripley’s Believe It or Not, about a city which floated a bond issue to pay for a boardwalk. The bonds were still being paid off years after the boardwalk had rotted away.

    The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, with timing that is no doubt accidental,  has ruled that Carbon Dioxide is a harmful gas. They probably meant Carbon Monoxide, but “close enough for government work”. This means we commit an offense against the health of the world by breathing. To those of us who predicted that “breathing will eventually be taxed”, we didn’t know that it would be harmful. If you love Your Fellow Man, don’t breathe out.

    The last decade will probably the “warmest on record”. We say “probably” because the data have been “lost”. This gets curioser and curioser. The Department of Truth is having trouble getting the stories straight.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

    Also in Canada, a well-known criminal (Karla Homolka) "recovered" a memory of a traumatic event in which she and her husband drugged and assaulted a teenage acquaintance, one of many assaults captured on videotape. In an amazing coincidence, this memory was recovered (from the world of clinical fantasy) after a videotape of the assault was recovered (in reality). Interesting how the videotape recovery aided the memory recovery. An eminent jurist, in reviewing her plea bargain, made before the videotape was found, said she should not be punished for her complicity in the late-remembered crime because "psychiatric evidence" showed that repressed memories could play such tricks without criminal intent. It’s so easy to delude laymen (judges) with "clinical sophistication" based on "years of rich experience" and laymen’s belief in narrative testimony without supporting data except clinical anecdotes.

    In an ironic twist, two months after this judgment, the Canadian Psychiatric Association delivered a position paper cautioning its members about the credibility of recovered memories and reminding them that "suggestion" in such cases has been shown to create such memories. These cautions have undoubtedly been due to the discipline provided by the courts and not as a result of research which would have shown the "repressed memories" phenomenon for the nonsense it was from the beginning. Several lawsuits, instituted by the families of "repressed memory victims" were successful in getting monetary settlements from therapists who convinced women they were the victims of childhood sexual assault. The court cases were able to show that these claims were untrue and based only on a widespread belief and the unreliable, I will say it again,  "experience" of the therapist. Unfortunately, this wretched exercise in data-free foolishness has alienated thousands  families from one another unnecessarily and convicted many innocent people. One of the responses of the psychiatric position paper, by the way, was to suggest that psychiatric practice be based on "evidence-based medicine." Quelle surprise. Why does anyone have to say this? If psychological and psychiatric practice was based on evidence-grounded procedures, it would look much different than it does now.

    While I was preparing a talk on the relationship between female criminality and childhood sexual abuse, I reviewed one hundred and ninety-three papers on the subject of therapy for this problem. It became clear that the imaginary victims, suffering from imaginary symptoms were "treated" with programs which were producing hypothetical results. The results, being hypothetical, were always favorable.

    Sexual abuse occurs, is a shameful thing, and knowledge about it will lead to programs which may reduce its frequency, with prevention, theoretically,  the most humane method. However, creating imaginary situations only damages efforts dealing with real events and problems. Had the concept of repressed and recovered memories been filtered through the DIW criteria, the problem would never have arisen.

            Grief Counselling and Trauma

Debriefing

    Apparently there is A Correct Way to experience grief and trauma ensured by guidance from a grief counselor. There is no evidence that there is a Correct Way or that grief counseling works. There is evidence that British children played hopscotch in rubble-strewn streets during the years England was bombed in World War Two. People tend to get over grief in their own way and it is rarely The Correct Way. The vast majority of people get over grief and trauma by going back to their lives. Those who experience trouble, have pre-existing tendencies of not doing well in times of no grief. During and after the First World War, a substantial portion of those British soldiers who applied for pensions due to shell shock had never heard an angry shot, let alone been on the wrong end of one. Many will claim Post Traumatic Stress Disorder(PTSD) if it is financially advantageous. PTSD was first formulated by two psychiatrists who were opposed to the Vietnam War and wanted to show it had horrible effects on its participants. Grief and trauma counseling had murky beginnings, and no evidence for effectiveness, before spreading widely.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

     There is no end to the capacity of the elite (Anointed as Thomas Sowell calls them) to forgive themselves. That may be too charitable because they might not be capable of recognizing errors.  The law in English-speaking countries is that incompetence is not actionable. Imagine if it were.

    I often tell parents that there is no big box of capable in schools which is being withheld by caprice. I point out that no competence exists, except in isolated and transitory pockets, and that consequently,  cannot be withheld. Consequently, no amount of coercion will pry loose better teaching.

    Government agencies, like government subsidized industries, can afford to ignore its customers.

    The Elites have gathered at Copenhagen, or Hopenhagen (this is not a joke), as some of them are calling it, producing more carbon than Switzerland does in a year. The people who believe they are right are even more sure if there’s a nice catered lunch.

         I had a neighbor who insisted that all doors be locked at all times because of the danger from squirrels. The uncontrollable arboreal rodents would apparently wreak havoc. Never having been attacked by a squirrel, I was dubious, but hysteria prevailed by its own force. No squirrels in the past, no squirrels in the present, but the immense danger of berserk  squirrels in the future.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

    There is an error in logic called, in Latin "post hoc, ergo propter hoc" which means, "after, therefore, because of" bringing attention to the point that simply because one event occurs after another event, it is not necessarily caused by it. For example, occasionally, a drought-ending rain occurs after a rain dance. The dance does not cause the rain. The  unhappy adult–therefore childhood sex-abuse theory makes a worse error. It goes a hypothetical step further to state, "if A exists, then B must have occurred" without any evidence, of course. An unhappy adult, especially a female, must have been sexually abused. The therapist proceeds to uncover "evidence" of these events.

    There are other examples with consequences as melancholy. In the McMartin case in California, several members of a family which operated a day care center were indicted for systematic, Satanic sexual abuse and several hundred charges were filed. A young male member of the family was held for many years without bail after the females were released. Evidence included that most unreliable of all criminal information, statements of a jailhouse informant of the usual sterling character. It was revealed that there was no physical evidence for the unusual claims of the children. If one of the claims were true, there were many daytime ritualistic sacrifices of large animals  in public places. Another child held that a giraffe was beaten to death with a baseball bat. It was further revealed that the "memories" were created by a "child sexual abuse expert" using doll play techniques which were, you guessed it, supported by "rich clinical experience". No convictions were rendered, although there are some who still believe in the guilt of the guiltless family. The unfortunate son was released after several years with no conviction.  The accusers were guilty of bandwagonism, extreme gullibility and belief in experts who didn’t know anything. The American Psychiatric Association should put that in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, perhaps under the category of "hyperhysterical clinical experiential laymanship". See how easy it is to create a label? None of those who engaged in this hysterical prosecution ever lost a single job and probably continued to be advanced in their civil service career path. When effectiveness is not important, the capacity for forgiving errors is infinite and\or, more likely,  the necessity of recognizing errors is zero. The main perpetrator of this foolishness is still in business giving advice to others on how to raise children and testified before a federal government committee that there were nationwide, organized child abuse organizations. One of the prosecutors resigned in disgust, but another was promoted.

    Because such talk-show silliness is border-free, Canada had a case which was almost an exact image of that in California. The children’s claims became more bizarre with the passage of time to the extent that many things they described were impossible. As usual, physical evidence was not found because it was not looked for,  and the case depended on the testimony of the "victims". In the Canadian case, some convictions occurred, although most were overturned on appeal.

    In another Canadian case, the Supreme Court of Canada ruled that, absurd as the court testimony of the children was, including drinking babies’ blood and dismembering human bodies, prosecutors could not be sued because their actions were not “malicious”. Maliciousness in public officials is actionable while stupidity, even at the level of believing in human sacrifice and cannibalism,  is excusable. It’s the law.

    One survey in the U.S. reported that there were more than 12,000 accusations of sexual abuse based on "recovered memories", none of which was supported by physical evidence. In one Canadian case, it was shown in court that the accused had been absent when the alleged abuse occurred and the accuser, who presented herself as an unfortunate inmate of a training school where she had to go because of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, had never been incarcerated. The parents accused in these cases were guilty of nothing more than raising children who were easily influenced by those in the social services who place no value on facts because facts have no economic consequences.   

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

      Paul (my predictions are always wrong) Krugman has blessed cap and trade as a method which “works”. This is a perfect example of the elites discussing the implementation of policies based on false assumptions. An elitist doesn’t care what you do as long as he’s in control. A lot of dissertations lurk in the beliefs of some in their ability to direct the affairs of others in spite of repeated failure to do so better than the people themselves.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

    This is another example of what happens when people of limited ability, except for getting hysterical, are trusted with great responsibility. This responsibility is not the responsibility of reality, but  vapour responsibility without consequence. I will say it again and again because it’s unbelievable, but not one of the perpetrators of these atrocities of the public sector has ever been punished.

Remembrance of Things Past Which Never Were–Repressed Memories and Sex Abuse–An Example of the Value (note sarcastic of the word) of Data-Free, Data-Immune, Clinical Judgement:  When Data Are Ignored, Hysteria Will Prevail.

                The main problem with memory

    This is a short discussion. Memory is not something people have, it is something they do. Memory is not a description of an internal state or reading from an internal slate. Since memory is behavior, it is subject to the same influences as other behavior. If a therapist tells you continually that you have a memory, you begin to do that memory. Q.E.D. For example, it has been known for centuries that the form of questions put to eyewitnesses of crimes influences their “recollection”.

    It is a widespread belief in North America that some things are so awful that they can’t be remembered. Talk shows, movies and movies-of-the-week are based on this belief. An example of this class of events is childhood sexual abuse. The only way that these "repressed memories" can be "recovered" is, you guessed it, by "deep, long-term and intense psychotherapy" which may include hypnosis. The believers drew up a list of characteristics that the "survivors" should exhibit. By arguing from the characteristics of an adult, the "experts" in this field would probe and, eventually, uncover the repressed memories. In spite of what they believed, they were creating memories which is easy, especially in children. None of this was supported by research but depended on "rich clinical experience". For some reason, probably related to extreme feminism which held that men are dismal beasts without redeeming qualities, this set of hypothetical events was widely accepted by many workers in the social services field. It was pursued, as one investigator notes with the deadly mixture of “zealotry and incompetence” which is usual when a social movement is translated into psychotherapy and\or psychological “theory” and no one has to fear being ineffective or irresponsible.

    The clinical practitioners of this nonsense maintained the following: If an adult had certain symptoms, then sexual abuse must have occurred. If the person denied it, this meant she was in “denial” or, the abuse was so terrible that it could never be remembered. Thence, saying something did not happen is taken for evidence that it did. In other words, the theory was unassailable because all evidence had to point to it and no evidence could point away.

    Here’s an example: I was interviewing an inmate who was incarcerated for driving  while intoxicated and causing an accident which killed her best friend. Before going to jail, she had met a therapist who had convinced her, because she was depressed, that she was a victim of childhood sexual abuse. There was no other evidence than her depression that sexual abuse had occurred. It had not, of course. Who would not be depressed under the circumstances? She was suspicious of her father and her mother who, as an "enabler", did nothing while the mythical abuse was occurring. The family should sue the therapist as many successfully have.

    Children were apprehended in a "series of dawn raids" in Scotland based on these theoretical notions. The children were all returned and the offending social agency paid a substantial amount of money to each family.

    In a small town in Eastern Ontario, a large number of adults were arrested and convicted in a series of unrelated sexual crimes against young children in one of the most bizarre incidents I have ever seen in a field filled with bizarre. According to these indictments, many “cells” of child abusers were operating independently in a small town. Obviously, hysteria was the reason for the charges, unless these events were coincidental, which is vanishingly improbable. The large number of indictments and convictions was undoubtedly due to the hysterical zeal of a few people who were in a position to put their illusions into action.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson   

     Historical Anomaly–Why was the American War of 1861-1865 called the Civil War? A civil war occurs when two contenders contend for national power. The war is more properly called The War for Southern Independence.

     The Bloomberg Top 10 list of top economic forecasters contains two from academia and eight from private industry.  Academics get paid whether they’re right or wrong. I’m surprised that two made it. The top forecaster is self-employed.

      Perhaps the Climate Change Industry, as public education, has become Too Big to Fail no matter how much it fails.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

    The Psychiatric Solution to Unusual Behavior

     The psychiatric approach to "strange" behavior is medical and, being medical, has to be structural. There are "things" about the person which need to changed. Behavior is made analogous to a fever and therefore, a symptom of an underlying problem. Since structure is important in medicine, behavior is structuralized by being categorized in something which is called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). This periodically revised manual describes clusters of "unusual" behavior. Worse yet, the labels become the causes.  Psychiatry has easily given itself the power to label, but cannot, by voting,  give itself the power to be effective. One of the most important things that the history of science teaches is that authoritative pronouncements from officially sanctioned bodies have no effect on facts.

     The DSM approach is fatally weakened by five factors. The first is that a physical ailment has unambiguous markers such as temperature, blood composition, cell structure, X-rays, and etc. Markers are absent in psychological disturbances except when a disease or condition has an impact on behavior. In “psychological” disturbances, the symptoms are defined by the “patient” or observation of the “patient” without reference to physical markers although some markers are  hypothetical as in the current “chemical imbalance” theory of mental illness. “Chemical imbalance” is a metaphor, not  established fact.  As usual, there is heated debate about the nature and interaction of these made-up markers existing only as assumptions.

      The second is the vexing many-one problem which means that many diseases share a symptom. This gets more complicated when a set of symptoms is involved and different diseases share different symptoms.

     The third is that the average is far from the normal because behind almost every normal facade is a mixture of crazy and crazier. Most people, psychiatrists included, have a notion about what people are like, or should be like, and large deviations from this ideal state are regarded as abnormal. If a small number of “normal” people were to be followed for a few weeks, one would observe a bizarre collection of odd behavior, far outside of any “normal”.

     The fourth is that most people are satisfied when behavior is categorized. The work is then done and the cause becomes internal, treatable only by internal ministrations, especially drugs, or “medication”, in the usage of those who believe in psychopharmaceuticals and need it to give them a dignified name.

     The fifth is that the categories do not tell how to change the behavior unless the category describes very few people, such as depression caused by non-environmental factors. Even then, many people who could be aided by the approach outlined below are given anti-depressants, sometimes for years, to no good effect. The psychiatric community believes that categorizing behavior is useful for all deviant behavior when, according to the data from outcome studies, it has extremely limited utility and cannot be saved by the belief in the sanctity of medication and the infallibility of physicians. Facts remain stubbornly, and happily,  independent of faith, accepted, new, or otherwise.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant  Coulson

                       Infected by Politics

    The so-called Climategate emails have shown that the Climate Changers are a cult. They denigrate non-believers, try to manipulate facts, spread hysterical propaganda, do what is necessary to maintain the flow of government money, try to force their views on others so they can take their right, and righteous place as the leaders of the non-virtuous proles and keep up the recruitment of true believers. No data from outside the Blessed Circle is allowed in. Those who currently believe themselves to be the Masters of the Universe lecture the Unanointed with the disapproving tone and words of an intellectually limited, chronically scornful, schoolteacher. When you take government money you get infected by politics whose symptoms include rhetoric and lack of results. Men react to situations in predictable ways. History hasn’t changed and it won’t because human tendencies don’t change.

    G.M. is  reshuffling senior management. Perhaps one could use the cliche about rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, but that metaphor implies the ship hasn’t sunk and G.M. has sunk. With friends like our politicians, we don’t need enemies. More billions will be wasted before it’s given up. Enjoy the theater, we’ve all paid the price for the production.

    I will today start dealing with the difficult problem of psychotherapy where, as usual, fact and myth collide in predictable ways.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

     Psychopharmaceuticals have been somewhat successful in dealing with acute “psychoses”, although the “emptying” of mental hospitals had many other, concurrent causes such as a movement to community treatment, the "release" of those who did not need to be there,  and cost cutting. The use of psychopharmaceuticals; however, has been transferred to autistic people, mentally handicapped people, children in school, a large variety of normal or average people, and so on, groups for which they were never intended and for which the drugs do not work.

    “Psychiatry is to medicine what astrology is to astronomy.”  Leonard Roy Frank

    As in religion, the real is hidden, the unimportant seen.

    “Many a small thing has been made large by the right kind of advertising” Mark Twain.
.                                       
    “I accuse cognitive scientists, as I would accuse psychoanalysts, of claiming to explore the depths of human behavior, of inventing explanatory systems that are admired for a profundity more properly called inaccessibility.” B. F. Skinner.

    Psychotherapy has a long history including anointing with oil, confession, exorcism, laying on of hands, rolfing, psychosurgery (including a Nobel prize for one brain cutter back when prefrontal leucotomies (aka prefrontal lobotomies) were  de rigeur ( If you see a history steeped in brutality, you’re right.), primal scream, past lives, multiple personality, therapy lasting for decades, releasing repressed memories,  rebirthing and reparenting therapy, alien abduction therapy, neurolinguistic programming, hypnotherapy, eye movement desensitization and combinations and variations of the foregoing have fallen in and out of favor over the years. Hans Eysenck pointed out in 1952 that much of psychotherapy was ineffective and that most techniques were never tested for productivity, a situation the same as other endeavors in the social sciences then and now. He was faced with righteous indignation, rather than  data, from those who believed they were right, but could not, and\or need not, demonstrate it. Many of the techniques that Eysenck found to be ineffective are still used and still ineffective. Ineffective procedures do not age like fine wine but get rancid, like bad cider. Much of psychotherapy comes close to the relationship between a priest/confessor/minister and a penitent, shrouded from unbelievers by mystic vapors.

    Again, from Azrin, "Our ability to talk about, and explain, problems greatly exceeded our ability to show we could cure them. In selecting a problem to study, one hardly need fear that a solution already existed." (p. 142).

    A recent review of 10 textbooks in psychotherapy revealed the usual absence of evaluation of the outcomes for the methods described. Democratic principles are applied where not applicable. No method must take precedence over another so that all methods must be described in the catalog as if all were equally valid. This "tell but do not show" method implies that all techniques are equal and everyone is doing equivalently good work.

Azrin, N.H., (1977) A strategy for applied research: Learning based but outcome oriented. American Psychologist , 32(2), 140-149

Eysenck, H.J. (1952). The Effects of Psychotherapy: An Evaluation. Journal of Consulting Psychology, 16, 319-324.

Skinner, B. F. (1987). Cognitive science and behaviorism. In B. F. Skinner (Ed.), Upon further reflection, (pp. 93-111). Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

This is from the SC listserv. I haven’t tried it myself, but the source, Scott Born, is a good one.

“I’ve taught pencil grip to prolly a hundred kids. It is kind of a peeve of mine. This has never failed me.

My most successful method concentrates on picking up the pencil (I never, never, never, ever use those silly triangle things, because they aren’t on every pencil in the universe, and teaching to an augmentative device should always be avoided if possible). Use a regular #2 pencil. I’ve never seen a study that says that little fingers should use big pencils. I was very close to a recognized expert in child fine motor development who would go on rampages about this! Why do people do that?

Anyway, if they pick the pencil up correctly, they’re golden. That is the main focus. You don’t want them fumbling with two hands to get their grip. Break it down, practice it at pretty good speed, and get it down right away. We pick up pencils without thinking; why should they think?

Are these learners people with error histories, or new learners? I may have more comments.

Are they verbal? Can they follow verbal instructions? I may have more comments.

Either way, the gist is this: Get a regular sheet of paper with a box drawn for the pencil to lay in on one half (about 2" x 7"). I make a dot to the left of it (for a righty) and to the right of it (for a lefty). Standardize it for measurement’s sake (say a period typed in Arial @ 102 point type). Get a clicker.

I use a standard pencil, sharpened with a standard sharpener, so that I don’t have to use an extra-stimulus prompt that will have to be faded (like tape, or a Sharpie mark). The taper is just about the right length from the tip so that you can teach that the fingertips for the triangle grip should be right were the pencil paint ends at the beginning of the taper.

Lay the pencil so that the eraser is away from the student, tip facing them.

Have them pick up the pencil with thumb and pincer JUST BARELY on toward the eraser side of the beginning of the taper (click!). The click signals that they can move forward with the movement cycle. If your learners are slow, just work on that for a while until it is fluent. Have them pick it up ever so slightly from the page until you click, put it down, then hand on table and start again. Most learners won’t need it broken down this far. But that should be run essentially free-operant until it is fluent (let them practice for a timing duration with which they are comfortable, and time yourself and a colleague for a gauge of what the goal should be). This should go quickly. At no time do you want them to write. You want them to learn the discrimination of WHERE they pinch and lift the pencil. They don’t have to lift it over their heads, or throw it like a dart. Just get it off the paper (horizontal to the paper), release, hand flat, start again. This can roll up to 50 or 60 a minute, but I would stress accuracy over speed. And you kinda want to avoid them picking up *with* the middle finger, although that can sometimes still work. I always avoided it.

The next step is flipping the pencil so that the pincer grip is in the same place, but the pencil now rests in the fleshy part (between the thumb and forefinger). The pencil should be FLIPPED by the middle finger, so that it is in place against the fleshy part at the end of the movement. So now practice is pick up with thumb and forefinger (click!), flip into position with the middle finger so that it rests in the fleshy part (click!). Make sure that NONE of this happens with the learner not making the discrimination of where the taper starts. If they start halfway up the pencil, YOU are failing! Teach them WHERE to pick up, and CLICK! If this cycle is looking okay, then the end of the cycle should be putting the pencil point INSIDE the dot (click!). Once this has happened, they can put the pencil down, put the hand flat, and start again. I would draw a box for where the pencil was placed back, too.

So at this point, the learner is picking up the pencil (click!), flipping it with their middle finger so that it tucks into the flesh (click!), and then placing the point in the dot (click!). Rinse, repeat.

If any of the criteria are missed, DO NOT CLICK. Don’t let errors seep in. If the gripping is a problem, look to working on pinching and grabbing as component skills. Another fun thing you can do while they work on this (once they are having pretty good success) is try to pull the pencil up out of their grip as a game, which makes sure that they are gripping.

Then the dot can get smaller and smaller, if’n you want. You are looking for around 30 per minute depending on the learner’s limitations or gifts.

I’ve taught some profoundly physically and mentally impaired kids perfect pencil gripping with this. I’d not let any writing happen until this was mastered for obvious reasons.

And chart it. There is a reason we chart. Because *I* can’t tell you that my advice works; only a chart can.

If it takes you (or me) a month to teach this, we are doing it wrong. I got this whipped out in a week or less. If you are tight on the criteria, and a good response shaper, you’re going to do great!”

Cheers and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

    The chief executive of GM has resigned. This is like relieving the captain of the Titanic and supposing everything will be all better.

    Headline–Climate scientist at center of e-mail controversy to step down while university investigates charges. That’s not very nice on the eve of the Conference on World Governance–I’m sorry–On the eve of the Conference on Wealth Transfer from Successful Countries to Unsuccessful Countries–I’m sorry–on the eve of the International Conference on Climate Change–I’m sorry–on the eve of the International Conference on Trading the Rights to Name Leprechauns–I’m sorry–I promise this is the last–on the eve of the International Conference on Whose Dumb Idea Was This Anyway and How Will We Get Out of This While Looking Wise so we can commit more Hysteria after people forget how desperately useless we Really Are?

    This is the way these things usually explode, not by calm and logical analysis but by some overreaching Pooh Bear getting his head caught in the honey pot and bringing the nonsense into well-deserved disrepute.

    Some of Ann Coulter’s take on the leaked emails:

     “Global warming cheerleaders in the media were quick to defend the scandalous e-mails, explaining that, among scientists, the words "trick," "hide the decline" and "garbage" do not mean "trick," "hide the decline" and "garbage." These words actually mean "onion soup," "sexual submissive" and "Gary, Ind."

    American politicians are getting excited about other politicians not “creating” jobs. That’s like getting excited about pigs not creating airplanes. Jobs are only created by profits and politicians cannot create wealth, they can only confiscate it or prevent it.

    Here are some data on American cabinet makeup over consecutive presidential regimes. Note that the present group contains those with very little business experience but lots of belief about their ability to control wealth creation.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson

     I conclude consideration of successful rehabilitation programs for excessive drug and alcohol use with consideration of program versus polgram. The real separator, of course, is whether the results are better.

from the book: Shadow Dancing on the Grave of Hope:

How to tell a program from a polgram.

1). The outcomes must be measured and measurable. Hoping for the best and assuming something will happen are not useful techniques. In order to measure outcomes, the purpose of the program must be outlined in great detail. In polgrams, outcomes are so vague they can’t be measured. Karl Popper made the point that if it can’t be disproved, it’s not much good.

2). As many useful components as possible must be in the program. Many things together, each one of which works separately, are better than fewer things. Polgrams depend on current political assumptions about the nature of reality.

3). Each person delivering the program must be trained and monitored to ensure program integrity. In polgrams, it is sufficient to be a believer. You get extra points by speaking fervently like a truly faithful believer.

4). The program must assure that the client’s new skills transfer outside the teaching situation. Polgrams hope and assume transfer will occur.

5). New skills must be learned to the level of fluency which ensures that they are retained. Polgrams pay no attention to this because they assume they are changing "deep personality characteristics" and mere behavior matters naught.

6). The program must provide the level of detail necessary for all users to implement the program effectively and in the same way as other implementers. In polgrams, details give way to sweeping, sound-good concepts which cannot provide details and allow everybody, including the programmers to do what "seems real".

7). Programs are based on successful results. Neither epiphanies nor experience produce useful programs. One of the problems with educational polgrams, for example, is that they are implemented without passing through the DIW filter. In polgrams, a wish is more important than a result and wishes are confused with results.

8). Programs have a built-in method of monitoring those who implement it. Intensive training for program implementers is a necessary but not a sufficient condition. Everything we know about learning suggests that conditions must be set to ensure that the behavior of the programmers is maintained after it is learned. In polgrams, the programmer is chosen for political acuity, acceptability  and continuing ability to keep a low profile except when providing fulsome details of intention.

    As in all areas of  drug and alcohol rehabilitation, and all categories of human programming, we are bombarded with the newest, “can’t miss” techniques, relentless propaganda about AA and Narcotics Anonymous, and the absolute necessity of loads of drama, insight and epiphany. Effective programs are far removed from any of this chaos and emotional nonsense.

Cheerio and ttfn,

Grant Coulson