The Skeptic Turned Whistle Blower

Introduction

Reading his CV on the Neurologica blog site, Dr. Steven Novella looks, to me, like a man who likes plain speaking:

("I like it, Sir. I like a man who likes to speak plainly," as Kasper Gutman might have said.)

Dr. Novella [M.D.] is an academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine. He is the president and co-founder of the New England Skeptical Society. He is the host and producer of the popular weekly science podcast, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. He is also a fellow of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI).

And if this entry from his blog is anything to go by, he is well able to be entertaining, regardless of whether the views he is expressing are well- or misinformed.

* The Short Version *

Critic(s):
(academic role at the time of publication)
Dr. Steven Novella: academic clinical neurologist at Yale University School of Medicine.

Critical Material:
Neurolinguistic Programming and other Nonsense, Steven Novella. Published on the author's Neurologica blog, on March 28, 2007.

Nature of criticism:
"NLP it has failed every test of both its underlying theories and empirical tests of its efficacy."

Original/derivative:
Highly derivative where "NLP" is concerned.
Some of Novella's ideas on the mental health professions in general are delightfully acerbic and long overdue.

Flaw(s):

The two key flaws in this blog entry, as far as the criticism of the field of NLP (FoNLP) is concerned, are as follows

Dr Novella wrote as though he is well-acquainted with the FoNLP, though various elements of his blog entry seem to indicate that he knew little, if anything, about the subject when he wrote the blog entry.
Likewise he wrote as though he were well-acquainted with the research on "NLP". But again, if this blog is anything to go by, he most certainly was not, at the time when he wrote the blog entry.

Conclusions:
As one might perhaps expect from someone so steeped in "skepticism", Dr Novella claims that what he thinks of as NLP is "bunk" - but fails to provide any evidence to support his point of view. Moreover, contrary to what I believe is genuine scientific practice, Novella shows little or no sign of having checked the reliability of the sources he used, and has thus created, as far as his comments on "NLP" are concerned, a quagmire of misinformation.

* End of Short Version *

* 'Director's Cut' *

Gun - Foot, Foot - Gun, BANG!

The opening paragraph of the blog entry does not promise well. The whole entry is only a touch over two (A4) pages long (when printed out in Times New Roman 12pt) - and therefore is obviously not intended as a comprehensive analysis. So it seems a pity that the author took a whole paragraph to suggest a link between a kids' cartoon programme and what he thinks of as "NLP". Superficially it succeeds by recognizing that modelling is at the heart of NLP - in fact NLP itself is a specific modelling technique and nothing else. It ultimately fails, however, because it misrepresents the NLP modelling procedure.
Since the blog returns to this subject later on, I'll reserve further discussion until then.

It is in the second paragraph, however, that the claims really begin to leave the tracks. The paragraph starts with these two statements:

The Wikipedia entry on NLP is fairly factually thorough, and I won't waste time here reproducing it, so for background I suggest reading the entry.
(Novella, 2007)

and

Also, this recent blog post by Donald Clark is a good summary of the scientific reviews of NLP - all damning.
(Novella, 2007)

To someone who knows nothing about the subject, these might look like quite mundane observations regarding the FoNLP. But there is, in fact, a crucial problem regarding these two sources that Novella seems to know nothing about. To be precise, their information about allegedly "scientific" studies of allegedly genuine NLP-related techniques and concepts have very little to do with genuine, "classic code NLP", and are therefore next to useless for the purposes envisaged by Dr. Novella.

The Wikipedia Deception

Although we don't know exactly when Dr Novella last accessed the Wikipedia page on NLP in 2007, prior to making this recommendation, it really doesn't make much difference. Because despite the Wikipedia rules about what can appear on the site, the NLP-related page has been awash with lies, misinformation and useless citations for almost as long as the page has been in existence. To put it bluntly, content of the page have been largely controlled by one or more "sockpuppet masters", who have done their best to keep the page filled with highly selective "evidence" designed to support their attacks on what they imagine "NLP" to be. All comments and evidence which contradict the misinformation is usually cleared from the page within a day or two of being posted.

I believe it was in 2007 or 2008 that just one such "sockpuppet master" was finally identified, operating on the NLP-related pages. It was revealed that he was running some 14 (fourteen) such sockpuppets.
(A "sockpuppet" is an alias, a false identity, used - in most cases - to allow someone to cause maximum disruption online without revealing their real identity.)

Thus there are, in practice, some four key problems as far as the Wikipedia content is concerned:

Despite the rule that Wikipedia entries should be free of prejudice, sock puppet activity has ensured that the content of pages on Neuro-Linguistic Programming remain heavily biased, thereby denying readers the range of information needed to make up their own minds on the subject;
Although most of the quotations used on the page are near enough correct, there has been no attempt whatever to ascertain whether the people who made the statements actually knew what they were talking about. In fact this investigation of academic critics of "NLP" started from my erroneous assumption that so many "experts" all sharing the same opinion - based on the list of references on the Wikipedia page - couldn't all be mistaken. It turns out that most of them were literally sharing the same opinion - Sharpley's - and I was wrong. They really are all "mistaken", as the various elements of FAQ #28 on this site demonstrate.
At least one sockpuppet has taken to posting downright lies. For example:
- It is claimed that that in the Druckman and Swets report (1988), the US Army rejected "NLP" because it was "New Age". Yet an online search of the text fails to find any mention at all of the term "New Age" anywhere in the book.
- It is claimed that the late Professor Margaret Singer (1996) has said that "NLP" has been scientifically invalidated, yet there is no such claim anywhere in the book, let alone in the section on NLP.
The negatively-oriented author(s) of the Wikipedia page have frequently tended to misrepresent their "evidence". On the current page (which has been cleaned up considerably compared with the 2007 versions), for example, we find the claim that:
A research committee^[33] working for the United States National Research Council led by Daniel Druckman came to two conclusions ...

Which is a strange description if the person who wrote it is claiming to have read the book Enhancing Human Performance (the full report of the NRC studies, pointed to by citation ^[33]).
Because Appendix C to the report makes it clear that the Subcommittee on Influence, which was the only group that investigated "NLP" [sic]:
- Consisted of just five people (as compared to the fifteen people on the full committee) ...
- ... which did include Daniel Druckman ...
- ... but not the report's co-editor, John Swets ...
- ... and was 'Chaired' by Professor Jerome Singer ...
This may seem relatively trivial. But if a person gets such basic information wrong, how reliable is their version of the more important facts likely to be?

In fact a study of the entire Wikipedia page leaves one with the very strong impression that the person presenting the negative information has never read very much, if any, of the material they are quoting and that these parts of the page are nothing more than a simple 'cut and paste job' designed to give as unfavourable an impression of the evidence as possible.

If Dr Novella imagined that the Wikipedia page was a reliable resource that might be seen as a rather naive attitude which appears to support the claim that the author's knowledge of the FoNLP was too limited to allow him to develop a well-informed opinion.

Does Quantity Matter More than Quality?

Where Sharpley initially reviewed only 15 studies for his 1984 review, in his 1988 article Dr Heap was able to find some 63 abstracts of research that allegedly addressed claims made about authentic NLP-related concepts and techniques.

Reviewing the literature in 1988, Michael Heap also concluded that objective and fair investigations had shown no support for NLP claims about 'preferred representational systems'.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuro-linguistic_programming, section on Scientific Criticism. Accessed 30/03/2010)

Superficially this may seem as innocent as the driven snow, but once again there are one or two "buts":

Dr Heap actually presented his findings at a conference in 1987 ...
... and certainly did NOT constitute "a review of the literature" - i.e Dr Heap did not read all of the reports on all of the research ...
... His "review" was in fact based on only the abstracts of the various reports, many of which were less than twelve lines long. In fact one of them (Thomason, Arbuckle and Cady (1980) consists of just one sentence:

This study did not support the eye movement hypothesis.

How on earth does one evaluate a study from so little information?

The Clark Connection Collection

Novella's support for "Donald Clark's" blog entry, with his claim that it is "a good summary of the scientific reviews of NLP - all damning", likewise casts doubt on the depth and accuracy of his own understanding of the situation.

In fact Clark's blog, whilst listing and briefly describing several articles and books which deal with whatever each author thinks of as "NLP", turns out to offer very little that is "scientific", and it is by no means "all damning" as regards the genuine field of NLP.
The blog includes:

Dr C. Sharpley's two reviews (1984 and 1987)
Druckman and Swets (1988)
Efran, J & Lukens M.D. (1990) - that should actually be: Jay S. Efran, Michael D. Lukens, and Robert J. Lukens
Donald Eisner (no date or page numbers are given)
Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jeffrey M. Lohr (2004)
Von Bergen, C W, Barlow Soper, Gary T Rosenthal, Lamar V Wilkinson (1997)
Grant J. Devilly (2005)

Note: The studies whose authors are presented in bold font are already, or will be, covered on FAQ 28.

Modelling Modelling

We now come to the start of the author's own misinformation about "NLP". All of which is presented with no references whatever - unless the lists on Wikipedia and Donald Clark's blog are supposed to fulfill that function.

Briefly, NLP was developed in the 1970's and is based upon the notion that success can be achieved by simply modelling the language, behavior, and thought patterns of successful people.
(Novella, 2007)

This is an interesting comment, given that the author says he had a four-year-old son at the time when the blog entry was written, and must therefore, presumably, have spent quite a lot of time, during the previous few years, watching his son do precisely what he has just described. Except for the "modelling ... thought patterns". The FoNLP isn't about mind reading.

When first proposed there was nothing overtly pseudo scientific about NLP. It was a bit simplistic and naļve, but may have had some merit.
(Novella, 2007)

Since NLP itself is the particular modelling process that the author seems to despise (see next quotation), and since the whole field of authentic NLP has built up around that modelling process, one wonders what it is Dr Novella imagines came before that?

But it turns out that the assumptions of NLP, namely that our cognition, behavior and emotions can be "programmed" by mimicking the more superficial aspects of those [people] with desirable attributes (for example posture and mannerism) are wrong.
(Novella, 2007)

This highly simplistic description is so far off beam we might reasonably ask Dr Novella how he knows what he claims to know? And his answer tells us a lot more about the lack of accurate information that underlies this blog entry:

The last thirty years of research have simply shown that NLP is bunk.
(Novella, 2007)

Could it be that Novella is referring back to the lists of references on Wikipedia and Donald Clark's blog? Could he, perhaps, be thinking of:

The reviews conducted by Sharpley and Heap - all invalid due to no one involved having an up-to-date understanding of the NLP-related ideas and techniques allegedly being investigated?
Or the articles by Professor Von Bergen et al, Professor Grant Devilly, and Druckman and Swets' report for the NRC, etc., etc. - all doomed at the point of creation by being based on Sharpley's seriously flawed articles?
Or the comments often attributed to Professors Lilienfeld, Lynn and Lohr - but actually written by Assistant Professor Nona Wilson - in which a Life magazine article of 1985, about Anthony Robbins, is presented as though it were an authoritative representation of the FoNLP?

And the same fatal flaw also looms over the next claim, just a few lines later.

New Light on Statistics:
58.62% of a Loaf = a Whole Loaf!

Echoing a claim that has been repeated over and over again by "NLP" critics, despite the fact that it's incorrect, Novella writes:

In the case of NLP it has failed every test of both its underlying theories and empirical tests of its efficacy. So, in short, NLP does not make sense and it doesn't work.
(Novella, 2007. Italics added for emphasis.)

Where on earth does this come from? In the first place Sharpley, in his 1984 review, acknowledged that the results of only 17% out of the 29 findings were "nonsupportive ... of NLP [sic] on this issue of the PRS and its use" (Sharpley, 1984. Page 246). According to my calculator that's only 58.62% of the total number of results.

It is true that this result is itself is pretty useless because most if not all of the research reviewed by Sharpley was significantly flawed. Nevertheless, since Novella apparently regards Sharpley's work favourably, if he is going to be consistent (a key feature of genuine science) then he is stuck with Sharpley's results. Which say that Novella's statement quoted above is itself, to borrow an expression: "bunk".

The claim is all the more ironic since it completely overlooks/ignores the fact that amid the misinformation and confusion, Sharpley's initial review settles a number of issues in favour of authentic FoNLP claims:

Sharpley insisted that NLPers claimed that a person's preferred representational system (PRS) could be found by watching eye-movements, or by listening to verbal predicates or by self-reports (Sharpley, 1984. Page 239). He ended up conceding that neither the eye-movements nor self-reports gave useful results, but responding to someone's use of verbalized sensory predicates did (Sharpley, 1984. Page 246).
This supports Bandler and Grinder's real assertion that the only way to recognise a person's PRS was to listen to the person's use of verbalized sensory predicates.
Many of the researchers worked on the assumption that someone's PRS was stable over time (e.g. Birholtz (1981). See Sharpley, 1984. Page 239). This was based on out-of-date information, and Sharpley's conclusions acknowledged that PRSs, if they existed at all, were not stable, using a pre-determined PRS did not produce useful resolts (Sharpley, 1984. Page 245).
This was entirely congruent with the crucial change in the definition of PRSs which had been made somewhere between 1976 and 1978 which is set out quite clearly in Bandler and Grinder (1978/1979. Page 36, for example).
Sharpley acknowledged that Hammer (1983) had demonstrated the superiority of "tracking and marching" over pre-determining a person's PRS and then sticking with it (Sharpley, 1984. Page 245). Yet neither Hammer not Sharpley seemed to realize that this finding supports claims made for the authentic NLP-related technique in early 1978 at the latest. That's before all but two or three of the research projects were carried out. And five years before Sharpley submitted his forst article for publication.
Sharpley also correctly called into question the allegation that predicate matching only applied to right-handed people (Sharpley, 1984. Page 247). This was another spurious claim, never made by the co-creators of tNLP, which was shown, in Sharpley's 1987 review (page 104), to have been based on an unsubstantiated allegation by three researchers - Gumm, Walker and Day - even though, as Sharpley himself acknowledged (in 1987), it contradicted statements on the subject in Bandler and Grinder's published work.
Sharpley claims that "NLP" assumes that each person has only one PRS (contrary to Bandler and Grinder's statement (1976. Endnote 2, page 26) that some people may sometimes make use of more than one PRS. Bandler and Grinder subsequently recognized that we all make quite frequent changes in our use of sensory predicates. A claim that Sharpley validates when he writes, based on the research evidence, that "the prediction of there being one PRS may not be accurate" (1984, page 245).
In short, it was generally assumed, by Sharpley and most of the researchers, that the PRS concept as defined in 1976 was still in effect. It wasn't. And their results both supported Bandler and Grinder's decision to "tweak" the model, sometime between 1976 and 1978, and demonstrated the validity of that tweaking.
More detailed discussions of Sharpley's two articles can be found in Sharpley Part 1, and Sharpley Part 2.

To Work Harder - or To Work Smarter?
That is the Question.

On a similar note, it would be interesting to know what Novella meant when he wrote: "NLP does not make sense and doesn't work."

What, is it, in NLP or the FoNLP, that he thinks "does not make sense"?
To whom does this undefined material "not make sense"?
What is it that Novella thinks "doesn't work"?

Again there is no indication of any source material which clarifies/supports these conclusions. And if Novella is depending on Wikipedia and Clark's bog then he is pursuing a myth. A very popular myth, in certain circles, but a myth none the less.

It turns out that improving one's cognitive ability and emotional stability is hard work - there's no quick short cut.
(Novella, 2007)

I wonder if this statement has been borrowed, in spirit if not word-for-word, from the Druckman and Swets report? But whether it has or it hasn't, it doesn't contribute much to the discussion, in this context.
In the first place the FoNLP isn't about therapy, as these phrases imply. It is about communication techniques, which can be used in a therapeutic context - and in business/organization management, in education, in parenting, etc., etc., etc.

And in the second place, how do we know these things can only be achieved through a lengthy process of hard work? I'm reminded of the business epigram: "Work smart, not hard". It may be a bit slick, but it makes a lot of sense.
The NRC committee certainly could not tell whether NLP and the related techniques would be unable to make things flow more quickly/effectively because they never conducted any practical tests.

The brain is not infinitely reprogrammable...

This is a red herring. No such claim has been made by any authoritative figure in the FoNLP.

- it can learn and change,...

And ...?

... but there is an underlying structure and function that is pretty resistant to change, and this resistance increases as we age.

And then again, there's neuroplasticity But it's also true that with age comes an increasing degree of inflexibility. There is, however, little point in going down that road, because neither of the co-creators have made the kind of extreme claims that seem to be implied in this quote. By the same token, moreover, Novella will know that he is talking in generalities and that whatever the average may be, there are always some people who go way beyond the norm. This doesn't, of itself, prove that we can all do better than we are doing already. But it does at least open that scenario up as a possibility.
It is unfortunate that the blog entry seems to be about promoting the mindset so expertly portrayed in Who Moved My Cheese - don't challenge the system, just be glad you've achieved mediocrity.

Change is possible, but it's hard work. You can't just download a new personality.
(Novella, 2007)

Who's talking about "downloading a new personality"? Again this is rather pointless distortion of what Bandler and Grinder were really talking about. Though having said that, Dr Novella might want to check out Professor Elizabeth Loftus' views on Bandler and Grinders "change personal history" technique. (see reference section below).

Followed By Fireworks

And apart from a couple more sideswipes, that's more or less the end of Novella's comments about "NLP" (whatever he thinks that is).

HOWEVER

You got an "ology"!

The second page of Dr Novella's blog (reminder: based on a printout on A4 paper, using Times Roman 12pt font), is rather more interesting than the first, in my opinion.

Since I did a B.A. degree course in Social Psychology, as distinct from a B.Sc., it has never bothered me that many scientists don't regard psychology as "one of their own". I have never thought of it as a science. Yet whenever I've put this idea forward, even on NLP-related discussion groups, it has almost always been greeted with disbelief. Indeed, I am often reminded of the Beattie character, played by Maureen Lipman in a series of TV adverts for British Telecom, who assured her grandson that an exam pass in sociology was nothing to be ashamed of: "You get an "ology", you're a scientist!"

Moreover it seems that I'm not alone in my scepticism. Dr Novella, uses "NLP's" longevity to shed a little light on the field of mental health in general:

So why, then, has NLP persisted for 30 years despite all the evidence against it?
(Novella, 2007)

If I was asked that question I'd suggest it was possibly because so much of this alleged "evidence" is both flawed and depressingly unoriginal, whilst the live experience is frequently very positive. Novella, on the other hand, has his own "mis problemas son sus problemas" explanation:

I think this reflects an endemic problem within the mental health field. Part of the problem is that the field is very broad, with multiple parallel professions, including psychiatry, clinical psychology, social work, and counseling. Also, within each profession there are multiple theories and traditions, many mutually exclusive. The degree of dedication to science and evidence-based practice is also highly variable. The bottom line is that, although there is a great deal of legitimate science within the mental health field, in practice it is rife with pseudo science and nonsense.
(Novella, 2007)

"And why would that be, Dr Novella?" you might ask.

The "NLP is Therapy" Myth

This results from the fact that new ideas and practices may go from inception to application without taking a detour through the trials of experiment and review. It is not uncommon for a practitioner to get a new idea about how to approach counseling, they then start doing it in their practice, then write a book, teach classes and seminars, if successful they create an institute, and before you know it there is a thriving infrastructure dedicated to this new method within the mental health field. At some point after this process is already under way someone may bother to do some scientific studies, but by then it's too late. There is already too much invested in the technique, and too many practitioners who "know" that it works because they have seen in work with their clients. This is the story of NLP, and many other methods - like repressed memory therapy, eye movement desensitization therapy, and countless others.
(Novella, 2007)

Personally I thought this was very funny when I first read it. Though the alleged history of "NLP" is significantly wide of the mark.

For example, the initial development of the FoNLP could hardly be counted as a "a new idea about how to approach counseling", as Novella claims, given that it was based on models of the practices of existing therapists, along with some ideas borrowed from the existing field of General Semantics.
Still, it is right about the books and seminars - just no institute and no infrastructure, etc.

Anyway, the blog entry continues:

The introduction of new pseudo scientific counseling techniques is driven by market forces, which demands easy answers to complex questions. Everyone would like the quick and magical fix for their complex psychological issues. NLP fits this mold perfectly - just program the brain to model after a successful person, and you will magically become successful.
(Novella, 2007)

Just a moment. Are there any scientifically validated counseling techniques? The late Professor Margaret Singer's comments seem to imply that counseling methods don't need to be validated if they "have met the requirements for the standard of practice in the general psychotherapy field." (Singer, 1996. Page xvi).

Though this in turn falls foul of forensic psychologist and attorney Donald Eisner's claim that all forms of psychotherapy are invalid (see Eisner's book The Death of Psychotherapy, 2000).

And if we're being realistic, what science is there in any non-materialistic discipline, like non-physiologically-based psychology?

Come to that, how would one provide a "quick and magical fix for [people's] complex psychological issues" by simply "magically [making them] successful" - again a thoroughly distorted misrepresentation of what NLP modelling is about.

There are also numerous reasons why any psychotherapy method may seem to work.
(Novella, 2007)

True enough, but what has that got to do with NLP or the field of NLP, neither of which are either a form of counselling or a form of psychotherapy?

There is generic benefit from just sitting and talking with another person. The introduction of a novel method into therapy creates the expectation that something should happen. Both the counselor and the client want the sessions to be successful, so there is a motivation to perceive success. So any counseling method will have both non-specific benefits and a large false perception of benefit - even if the technique itself is worthless and the underlying principles absurd.
(Novella, 2007)

And yet again, what has this got to do with NLP?
Bandler had already modelled and was able to replicate the therapeutic skills of Fritz Perls (creator, with his wife, Laura, of Gestalt Therapy), which he taught to John Grinder.
They weren't looking to create a new form of therapy or counselling - they were developing a way of communicating what they already had as effectively and elegantly* as possible.
(* The term "elegant", in the FoNLP, is roughly equivalent to "efficient", but in a non-mechanistic sense.)

Returning to the real world, then, what we're being offered here is a purely mythical version of "NLP", which the author seems to believe is either a form of psychotherapy and/or a "counseling method". It seems a little strange, then, to find the author apparently claiming to have an understanding of "the technique" and the "underlying principles" of NLP. Given the heavy emphasis on alleged "pseudo science" in this blog one can't help noticing that it also exhibits a significant lack of anything that looks like a genuinely scientific approach.

So Where's the Science?

Perhaps, and I'm only pondering, Dr Novella thinks, as many of his colleagues seem to think, that a scientist only needs to be scientific when talking science to other scientists?
An interesting concept, if true.

In practise the "NLP hasn't been 'scientifically validated'" claim is yet another false trail. In their 1978/1979 book Frogs into Princes, Bandler and Grinder stated:

'As modelers, we're not interested in whether what we offer you is true or not, whether it's accurate or whether it can be neurologically proven to be accurate, an actual representation of the world. We're only interested in what works.'
(p. 18)

Hardly the words of someone trying to pass off what they are doing as being "scientific". And therefore neither NLP nor the FoNLP are open to a legitimate charge of being "pseudo" science.

In practice there are very, very few of NLP-related techniques which are, in themselves, "therapeutic". And the use of sweeping generalizations does little or nothing to clarify the situation.
Whilst the observations about "the mental health field" may well be true at an abstract level, the author has made two unambiguous claims that his description "is the story of NLP [sic]" and that "NLP [sic] fits this mold perfectly". Yet he has completely failed to establish any basis for his allegations. In fact the nearest we've come to discovering what the author means when he talks about "NLP" is in his comments about modelling, which reveal a very superficial and distorted view of that topic.

From this point on the text wanders off into what comes across as a rather dictatorial daydream where some notional "academic and scientifically grounded group ... grab the reigns [sic] of the therapy professions ... [and] .... New ideas will be tested before they are widely disseminated."
(Novella, 2007)

Hmmm. I think that pretty much speaks for itself. Heigh ho!

Conclusions

Like so many critical reviews of "NLP", this blog entry exhibits a number of 'standard' flaws. (These remarks are based entirely on the contents of the blog entry. I have no additional knowledge of what the author does or doesn't know about NLP or the wider FoNLP.) These flaws include:

Almost non-existant knowledge of genuine NLP (a specific modelling technique) or the genuine FoNLP (NLP + the NLP-related techniques + training in NLP and/or the related techniques/applications). This critique is almost unique, in my experience, in highlighting the importance of modelling, but fails to exhibit a coherent understanding of the subject.
The criticisms depend on the validity of previous criticisms, such as those offered by Sharpley and Heap, without giving any evidence that the writer has ever investigated the validity of those criticisms.
The blog entry makes several pronouncements for which it provides no evidence whatsoever.
The blog entry grossly exaggerates the findings of previous studies, e.g. "In the case of NLP [sic] it has failed every test of both its underlying theories and empirical tests of its efficacy."
In short, the critique itself fails to conform to any of the standards one might expect to find in a genuinely scientific discussion of the subject.

Encapsulating, as it does, so much misinformation, it is hard to see how this blog entry would provide its readers with anything much in the way of accurate information regarding NLP or the FoNLP.

References

Bandler, R., & Grinder, J. (1978/1979). Frogs into Princes. Moab, UT: Real People Press.

Beale, R. (1981). The testing of a model for the representation of consciousness (Doctoral dissertation, Fielding Institute, 1980). Dissertation Abstracts International, 41, 3565B. (University Microfilms No. 8106799)

Hammer, A. (1983). Matching perceptual predicates: Effect on perceived empathy in a counseling analogue. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 30, 172-179.

Loftus, E. E. (1981) Memory and its distortions. In A.G. Kraut (ed.), The G. Stanley Hall Lecture Series (pages 123-154). Washington DC: American Psychological Association.)

Novella, S. (2007), Neurolinguistic Programming and other Nonsense on Neurologic Blog site

Singer, M.T. and Lalich, J. (1996) Crazy Therapies. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Fransisco. Pages 168-176.

Wilson, N. (2004) Commercializing Mental Health Issues: Entertaining, Advertizing and Psychological Advice, in Lilienfeld, S.O., Lynn, S.J. and Lohr J.M., Science and Pseudoscience in Counseling Psychology. pp. 446 and 455.

Andy Bradbury can be contacted at: bradburyac@hotmail.com