AFR article "Busted: Neuro-Babble"

[Greg Alexander]

There's an article in the April edition of "Boss" sold with the
Australian Financial Review last Friday.

The AFR has placed part (about half) of the article online at:
http://www.afrboss.com.au/magarticle.asp?doc_id=24537&rgid=2&listed_months=0

If anyone has read the article or would care to respond, please do.
(I'll respond myself in a separate reply!)

[Greg Alexander]

There are some interesting things in this article, and it brings to
mind the common misconceptions and the problems with showing the
effectiveness of NLP. However, the article is uninformed and biased -
the author seems to have made his judgement and is now trying to prove
it.

He makes some good points - for instance I agree that NLP is a bit hard
to pin down. It's clear if you speak to 1 trainer, but speak to 5
trainers from different organisations, and you start to get a murkier
picture.

He mixes the good points with bias though -

Take this sentence: NLP "might have been just another wacky Califronian
alternative therapy if it weren't for the management training industry,
which grabbed hold of it and turned it into a major management fad.".

All that's really being said here is that the management training
industry saw something in NLP and decided it was worth using. The
judgement is shown through the presupposition it is a wacky therapy,
and then it's a fad.

Other biases include presuppositions like "One of the sillier ideas in
the schema of techniques"... (presuppose many silly ideas), and
metaphors such as "vast 'hordes' of industry trainers became qualified
in NLP".

A few other interesting points....

Firstly he says that "Grinder and Bandler hold a rather unusual status
within the NLP community. No reference to NLP is complete without some
homage to the founders". Ignoring the homage metaphor - I do think that
until there is a standards body for NLP there's little to prove your
quality on - and that leaves the endorsements of the co-creators (by
the logic that since they created it, they should know what's good).
However, if people measure themselves against the creators, then how
can they aim to exceed it? (just like people not believing the 4 minute
mile could be beat - nobody did, until 1 person did it and others
followed.)

Secondly he says "the research (at least of the peer-reviewed journal
variety) is monotonously consistent". I think we need some
peer-reviewed research, but as far as I know the current journal
variety research is peer-reviewed by academics in different fields to
NLP. Perhaps this is one area where something could be done which would
bring together an NLP community and improve standards, I don't know.
There is certainly a lack of high quality research out there - and as
far as I know there are few follow ups to the low quality research.

Still, all through the article the author attacks NLP. He talks about
evidence/research that shows NLP doesn't work, and says that favourable
studies have been discredited. And yet he references a 2002 study "The
effect of neurolinguistic programming on organisational and individual
performance" - this study was of an NLP course lasting only 3 days, and
it found that people still had increased scores in 3 out of 4
measurements related to performance after 6 months! (though no
significant change in self efficacy, they displayed increases in
adaptive selling and self esteem, and they report an increase in
organisational commitment too). Citing a favourable research article
while saying there is no evidence would seem to be particularly
ignorant.

I have a link to the abstract only - http://tinyurl.com/67k3r

Lastly, as you may know the Graduate Certificate in NLP that the author
comments on can only be Inspiritive's NLP training, which is a New Code
training. The author obviously doesn't differentiate between New Code
and any other form, perhaps he doesn't recognise that NLP has branched
out considerably. It's a pity he didn't take the time to ask himself
"if there is just one NLP training organisation that is government
accredited, perhaps they are doing something different that's worth
looking into". Might have been good for New Code.

Greg

[rjlhughes]

It's just such a pity that a magazine as reputable as BOSS from the
Australian Financial Review has published such a misinformed and
mocking article.

If it had said that some NLP training was superficial and possibly
dangerous I would have agreed.

But to point the finger at Inspiritive is wrong. They're the leaders in
legitimising NLP, and highly ethical people.

I can only hope that BOSS magazine allows Chris and Jules a right of
reply.

Bob