On neuromyths

The linked site focusses largely on school-based education, but it sets out to produce a balanced account of the rather faddish, fashionable, and often downright misleading or wrong contribution of neuroscience to learning and teaching. Based at the School of Education at Bristol University, it draws on sound research and scholarship both to address myths and to promote neuroscience-based approaches to teaching.

In particular, the site links to an excellent balanced chapter on "neuromyths" (pdf available here) from a recent book by the co-ordinator of the site (Howard-Jones P (2009) Introducing Neuroeducational Research London; Routledge). It's not as entertaining as Ben Goldacre's Bad Science but more comprehensive and informative, covering

• Multiple intelligences, 
• Learning styles, 
• Enriched environments
• Brain gym
• Water
• Omega-3
• Sugary snacks and drinks

--and even a sympathetic discussion about why there are (so many) neuromyths in education — and how to spot one?  Unfortunately, as simply a pdf of the chapter, the bibliography is not included—you'll have to get the actual book for that!

The site was recommended by Tony Fisher—many thanks.

On dissonance by any other name

The linked blog post is in turn based on this article (Nyhan and Reifler, 2010), which discusses why attempts to change people's political misperceptions and misunderstandings often don't work, and can in some cases backfire. The blog post relates the same processes to the teaching of science.

There is a certain sense of reinventing the wheel, here, and I'm interested that there is no reference to a vast and venerable literature on cognitive dissonance (here is a page of mine on that) which goes back to the 1950's. On the other hand, it is worthy of note that if you follow up the first external link from my page you come to a .pdf file of a textbook chapter on cognitive dissonance, with a note to say that it is on the web because it is no longer included in the latest versions of the textbook, so the whole thing may be a matter of fashion.

Incidentally, the epigraph to the substantive article is attributed to Mark Twain, as such things often are; I think the correct ascription is to Henry Wheeler Shaw writing as Josh Billings:

The trouble with people is not that they don't know but that they know so much that ain't so.

(Josh Billings' Encyclopedia of Wit and Wisdom, 1874)

Nyhan B & Reifler J (2010). "When Corrections Fail: The Persistence of Political Misperceptions" Political Behavior, 32 (2), 303-330 DOI: 10.1007/s11109-010-9112-2

On "benign" myths

In the car this morning, I caught part of "Woman's Hour" on Radio 4. (Heading link goes there, available for seven days, relevant bit about 30 minutes in.)

It was a discussion about drinking in pregnancy, and it was very refreshing. One of the contributors talked about how some of the strident advocates of prohibiting alcohol consumption in pregnancy, saw the topic of possible foetal damage principally as a way of "telling a good story" which would command attention in a wider campaign against the evils of drink. Another, asked about the labelling of alcohol in the US with warning about drinking during pregnancy, agreed that the initiative was principally traceable to the desire of drinks companies to cover themselves against litigation, regardless of the truth of the claims. Further asked if the labels had made any difference to the incidence of foetal alcohol syndrome, she was very clear--none at all.

This discussion exposed more clearly than anything I have heard or seen in mainstream media for years, the supposedly benign drift from factual reporting of risk to supposedly benign but infantilising myth-making, which not only undermines the capacity of grown-up people to make their own judgements of risk, but also undermines their confidence in anything they are told by the Ministry of Truth.

Not that it is new; Plato started it. Different context, same principle:

How then may we devise one of those needful falsehoods of which we lately spoke—just one royal lie which may deceive the rulers, if that be possible, and at any rate the rest of the city?....

...Such is the tale; is there any possibility of making our citizens believe in it?

Not in the present generation, he replied; there is no way of accomplishing this; but their sons may be made to believe in the tale, and their sons' sons, and posterity after them.

(Plato, the Republic, book III)