Wikipedia, Knowledge and NLP

My teacher Joseph once asked me if I know what an apple is....

I was looking the other day at the Wikipedia entry for NLP – Neurolinguistic Programming. Wikipedia is an interesting phenomenon. It’s said to be more accurate than Encyclopaedia Britannica. It’s an unpaid social enterprise – “big society”? It’s an astonishing and valuable achievement. I use it a lot. To me, sometimes, it can be a bit like the media, a wonderful source of information, until you read an article on something you actually know a fair bit about, and then you realise the limitations.

Particularly interesting can be to read the discussion page behind an article, where the editors discuss what they should put on the page. This, like the articles, is open to the public. “Editors” just means anyone who decides to participate; you don’t have to be anyone to be an editor.

Wikipedia operates under some rules, which include “NPOV” – articles should take a neutral point of view, and “OR”, no original research. That is "all material must be attributable to a reliable published source, even if not actually attributed." You can’t include any information, or analysis or synthesis of information, of your own; it has to be from published sources.

So Wikipedia does not exactly contain knowledge. It doesn’t tell you what’s true, it tells you what’s been said elsewhere. It’s science-based, so where appropriate, that means in scientific publications. If you know something, you can’t put that in Wikipedia. This is the pons asinorum of Wikipedia, a point that those who “don’t get it” can never grasp. They’ll post something like “such and such a food is bad for you” and wail “but it’s true” as other editors remove the offending sentence.

Of course, that varies depending on the context. If you write that Winchester is in Hampshire, you don’t need to provide a journal reference. If you give a number for its population, you probably should state your source. It depends whether the topic is something science is applicable to.

And so to NLP. It is (in my opinion) a school of psychology and psychotherapy. I’ve been trained in it. I can be neutral, because I don’t earn my living that way, and I am sceptical about quite a lot of NLP. However, I wouldn’t recognise it at all from the Wikipedia article. And, interestingly, looking at the discussion page, this isn’t really the editors’ fault. They are working hard and fairly to present the facts. But they can’t really include an explanation of NLP – that’s against the rules, and quite rightly so. All they can do is extract things from NLP publications – which tend to be self-help books, with very non-Wikipedia-style dumbed-down introductory explanations.

NLP is controversial – it is probably the most widely used (again this my opinion), widely known to the general public (think e.g. Derren Brown, Paul McKenna), school of psychology, but for various valid reasons, is totally unaccepted in the academic psychology world. The Wikipedia editors have been forced down the road of “what academia has to say about it”. The answer to that is, very few studies have been done, and there is no scientific evidence to support it; and therefore the Wiki article is pretty uniformly negative in tone. It imparts the (true and correct) information that NLP is widely popular but scientifically unvalidated.

The thing is ... more or less no form of therapy rests on facts that are scientifically validated. Freud for example tells us we have an id, an ego, and a superego. No scientific studies exist to demonstrate this. Evaluations of Freudian therapy rest not on the evaluation of the stated theories, but rather on testing the effectiveness of the therapists. (Where it does pretty badly). Transactional Analysis, another popular form of psychotherapy, says we each have three ego states called parent adult and child. Again, it’s a way of thinking about it, but absolutely not scientifically validated. However, NLP was incautious enough to make some claims about representational systems and eye movements, which are fairly incidental to the therapy, but possibly testable in a lab, and the scientific evaluation has tended to be about testing these theories rather than measuring the effectiveness of NLP.

Gestalt therapy rests on no particular theoretical basis, but gets a fairly positive write-up in Wikipedia. In this regard, Wiki does what it’s supposed to: it reflects current perception. NLP is indeed regarded with suspicion in academia, whereas Gestalt and Transactional Analysis are well received there, even though they are no more scientifically based than NLP. If you read the editors discussion page on Wikipedia for NLP, you find that the editors are not discussing how to explain what NLP is, nor whether the evidence suggests that it’s valid. They’re discussing which journal papers referenced which, where they were published, what order they came in – it’s all about what can be cited.

In practice, the effectiveness of any form of psychotherapy is only 10% about the school, and 90% about the therapist. (I made those numbers up). I’ve seen some amazing NLP therapists and plenty of useless ones. I expect the same is true of TA and Gestalt.

So what is NLP? That’s for another day. This piece is about Wikipedia, science, and knowledge. It doesn't count if someone says it; it only counts if it's in a publication. Do you know what an apple is?

Healthy eating again

Interesting story in the papers the last few days about how sales of beetroot have risen since it was reported to lower blood pressure.

There was a similar one a while ago about blueberries -- how popular they have become since they were shown to be a good source of phytochemicals.

I think it shows that people do take in information, and do care about healthy eating.
Contrary to the popularised media vision of people who have no idea, or don't care, and just eat "junk food" whatever that is. Whenever the public get any clear and credible message, they'll go for it. I'm sure the "dark chocolate good for you" one has sunk in too -- the supermarket shelves seem to devote much more space than they ever used to to chocolate with 70% cocoa or more.

Regulating obesity

Yesterday’s Guardian (13th July) had an opinion piece by George Monbiot about deregulation. Not surprisingly, in the G, he’s against it, and describes doing anything without having government regulation as playing football without a referee. And he argues that the rich (corporations) will “foul” the poor (consumers). Red card. A nice “world cup” reference, but I’m not sure I agree with the analogy, nor about the balance of power between corporations and their customers.

It was a bit of an “and another thing” article: things thrown in on top of each other. I feel unqualified to comment on farming, property development or banking rules, all of which got a mention. He says the coalition is opposed to speed cameras, and if that’s true, then I’d strongly agree with him that it’s a bad thing; but I’m not sure what it has to do with regulation of the private sector. But the part that caught my attention was his paragraphs on food and obesity, a topic on which I am passionate.

He accuses the Health Secretary of seeking “to shift responsibility for improving diets and preventing obesity from the state to society”. I’m not sure I knew it ever belonged to the state. And says that “he [the health secretary] blamed the problem on low self-esteem and deplored what he called ‘a witch-hunt against saturated fats, salt and sugars’”.

Note: there is no scientific evidence whatsoever, not even any faint possibility or likelihood, that obesity is caused by saturated fat or salt, and the evidence against sugar is thin. Pretty much any expert you consult will agree that the causes of obesity are (a) not enough exercise and (b) the amount of food eaten – not the composition of that food. Carbohydrates are a problem, but sugar is not especially worse than other carbs. I am surprised, but very pleased, to hear that the health secretary’s views on obesity are so close to my own.

“From now on, he announced, communities will be left to find their own solutions. The companies which make their money from selling junk food and alcohol will be put in charge of ensuring that people consume less of them. I hope you have spotted the problem.” Yes, I think I have – first you say the health secretary is making individuals responsible for their health, and then suddenly you switch to saying he’s putting companies in charge of it. Make your mind up.

Monbiot goes on to quote a study that appears to weaken his own position. It says that “weight gain is the inevitable – and largely involuntary – consequence of exposure to a modern lifestyle”. Which means, a sedentary one with food always available. How is he going to fix that by regulation?

But the really interesting point is “The same study points out that obesity rates are much higher among the poor than the rich”. Food costs money. An obese person could in theory save money by eating smaller portions of their accustomed foods, and lose weight. There is no such thing as “weight-loss food” – so it is not more expensive to eat a weight loss diet. (However, there is something close to a healthy weight-loss diet: a vegetarian diet – which is actually a lot cheaper). And the unemployed are more likely to have the time available to walk for an hour or two every day. So why are they more likely to be obese?

Tell me if you think I’m crazy, but in my opinion, the obvious explanation as to why the poor are more likely to be overweight is that their lives are unhappy. Food is one of the few pleasures and pastimes available. Does anyone think that’s an absurd suggestion? Strangely, having criticised the health secretary for saying that obesity is related to low self esteem, Monbiot is approvingly quoting the above study that seems to me to support the same idea.

That’s right. It’s not someone’s fault. People are obese because our lifestyle no longer involves much exercise, eating has become a cheap pastime, and because we’re unhappy. No villain. But Monbiot can’t have that; he needs a villain. That’s how you sell papers. He wants to say that it’s all because we’re being offered food that’s “fattening”, by “corporations”, and this should be regulated. He has to believe that we’re being made to eat the way we do by bad guys. Not by our genes and our emotions. Science (including the report he quotes) says the opposite.

Just supposing that obesity was caused by fattening food high in fat, or high in sugar, which it isn’t, how would you prevent that by regulation? Ban the sale of confectionery? Laws against cake? Doughnut prohibition? Are we to close down the local fish and chip shop that sells everything deep fried in batter, or the local Indian that sells everything cooked in ghee? Will the supermarket not be allowed to sell crisps, cheese, white bread, sausages? Can anyone paint me a picture of how this regulation would work? It’s insane.

Then he hits us with this: “Eventually (think of BSE, the railways, tobacco advertising) the government will be forced to re-regulate, but not before large numbers of people have been hurt".

Well, I am thinking of BSE. It is indeed tragic that there were no regulations against a practice that nobody, at the time, knew was dangerous. I don’t think the number of people harmed was large, not compared to obesity, but it would be better if it hadn’t happened. So yes, BSE is a good example – of how regulation could not help.

Please email me if you really think obesity could be reduced by anything the state can in regulating large food industry corporations. Anything at all.

The future of the media

An interesting paradox, it seems to me, about the “serious” media. Like newspapers.

I have the feeling they’re going away. Who wants a chunk of dead tree that costs money? And contains content selected for you by someone else? Who wants to pay to read opinions in a paper when you can find better argued opinions on the web? The Indy actually prints “selected tweets” for us! Like we can’t find them ourselves? And TV? Who wants to pay to watch a “broadcast” at a time they can’t choose, of something they can’t interact with? If I was short of cash, my TV license would be the first thing to go. I’m not sure I can remember the last time I watched it – maybe a few weeks ago? Oh, wait, it was the world cup :-(

TV seems to have descended to two things: live broadcast of sport, which some people are willing to pay for, fair enough, and in this case, it makes sense that the customer can’t choose the time. And soap and “reality TV”, the great oxymoron. I can’t imagine that newspapers or “serious” TV have any future in the world of the web.

Yet at the same time, the media seem to have tremendous power. They define “the agenda”. In the Independent this morning: an extract from the private diary of the immigration minister under the previous government, and how he found that the media simply defined “what the question was” and would not report the government’s point of view. (Not just that they disagreed with it, but that they wouldn’t even present what it was). The private thoughts of a very senior minister, in charge of probably the second highest question on the agenda at the election, and his main concern was not how to solve the actual problem, but frustration that the electorate were being fed a filtered and constructed picture by the media.

I do find it extremely offensive that the papers and the “serious” radio and TV (Paxman, Today, PM programme, etc) try to tell me what the issues are I should be concerned about. Here’s me wondering how we cut carbon emissions, how we fund old age when we’re living so much longer, and what the real purpose of education is in our society, and the papers are telling me today I’m supposed to be really up in arms about “non-dom peers”. Eh?

Similar points in the minister’s diary about the expenses scandal: he was not found to have done anything wrong, but had to repay money because of a retrospective rules change (this is his version). The media would not acknowledge that this category existed: you had to be either a saint or a duck-house owning trough-snouter. My own impression was that the media wanted it to be about wickedness, as always. A story saying “actually the system was just set up wrong and badly administered” wasn’t exciting enough for them. They told the story they wanted to tell, and any MP who argued with them, they just labelled as one of the bad guys.

It’s also true, of course, that the Westminster crowd are equally cut off from reality in their bubble. That came out in spades when Gordo labelled someone a bigot for having views that a majority of the electorate agree with. I remember hearing one of the MPs wives saying on the radio that it was outrageous that she could lose her job as her husband’s PA, when she hadn’t personally done anything wrong. Welcome to the world the rest of us live in.

How to reconcile my ideas of the media as on the one hand, having so much power that they effectively steer the result of the election, and on the other hand as being a dying institution, I don’t know.

But I strongly advise you not to take seriously what you read in the papers. It’s a construct, a virtual reality that bears little relationship to anything. Think of it as a cartoon strip.