The careers of the scientist/practitioners in the field have undoubtedly had in common the experience of gradually rising expectations about what is possible to achieve in terms of improved self-regulatory capacity and mental functioning with the aid of neurofeedback. One might have expected some plateauing after a while, a firming up of one’s expectations, but the surprises keep coming and they are consistently on the upside. In our own experience, one of the biggest surprises has been the growing effectiveness of neurofeedback with PTSD, along with the related conditions of developmental trauma and the autism spectrum. All of these conditions had seemed so utterly intractable in the past.
In this newsletter, the focus on PTSD exists not only for its own sake, but also to serve as the best vehicle for the tackling of larger themes. What sets PTSD apart from our clinical work in general is the concentrated effort that has gone into this area by virtue of the great need among our returning veterans. We have attempted to meet this need through a non-profit entity, Homecoming for Veterans (hc4v.org), which has attracted even international participation among clinicians. As a result of these collective efforts, a large database of clinical results has been gathered that is now available for “data-mining.”
Thus reads the title of an editorial in Science Magazine by Cornell physicist Kurt Gottfried and former head of the NIH Harold Varmus in the March 20 issue. On behalf of the larger scientific community that is breathing a collective sigh of relief, the authors want to acknowledge the new regime in Washington. Said President Obama: “promoting science isn’t just about providing resources—it is also about protecting free and open inquiry…free from manipulation or coercion, and listening to what [scientists] tell us, even when it is inconvenient—especially when it is inconvenient.”
It goes without saying that mainstream thinking about neurofeedback to date has been mistaken. The original attempts at replication of Kamiya’s work on alpha training for anxiety were misguided in their methodology and in their conclusions. The rejection of Sterman’s and Lubar’s collective body of work was a blunder of the first magnitude. The continued dismissal of the claims of neurofeedback in the face of mounting evidence is indefensible. On the other hand, nothing here really surprises. A paradigm shift of such magnitude will be resisted by the mainstream on all fours. Everything has gone true to the historical pattern with respect to scientific revolutions.
The recent death of Joel Weisman, MD, presents another occasion to reflect upon the process of scientific research at its very early stages, where the usual rules by which knowledge is enshrined are not yet in place. Weisman was a general practitioner in our home town of Sherman Oaks in 1980 when he noticed three patients with a common set of symptoms—fevers, rashes, weight loss, and swollen lymph nodes. An immune deficiency was indicated, so Weisman referred his patients to immunologist Martin Gottlieb at UCLA, who at that moment was treating a patient with the same set of symptoms. All were gay men. Said Gottlieb of Weisman: “In his practice he was alert to unusual symptoms in his patients. He had a sense that something out of the ordinary was happening.” This was, of course, the beginning of the discovery of AIDS. Weisman was never a scientist, but he could serve the process of scientific advance simply through good observation of those who in his own seasoned clinical judgment were outliers. He was in a much better position to do that than most closeted researchers doing formal studies. These fortuitous discoveries are an essential part of the scientific process. But because such anecdotal observations do not by themselves rise to the level of scientifically valid evidence, they are often disparaged, particularly when the data do not fit the prevailing paradigm. As a result, mature scientific disciplines eventually acquire some of the characteristics of a mature religion. They protect themselves against heresy just as religions do. This is no knock on religion. That’s where heresy can be well-defined with respect to established tenets of belief, and that’s where it belongs. The scientific process is supposed to be more open. Heresy should have no place there.
Neurofeedback, Global Warming, and the Financial Collapse
Wednesday, January 6th, 2010The answer lies in the nature of the evidence for both propositions. What makes the case in favor of global warming so persuasive is that it is supported by so many independent lines of evidence, all of which collectively support a model that in turn is also well-supported, namely the key influence of atmospheric CO2 concentrations on global temperatures. Much of this evidence came to exist in the course of research that was unrelated to the issue of global warming. Add to the known influence of CO2 that of many other gaseous effluents, which can be tens to thousands of times worse in terms of their greenhouse effect, and we have ourselves a rather dangerous stew.
For evidence, one needs to look at those changes that average over short-term fluctuations, and one needs to look at regions where the effects are expected to be largest and to show up first: the arctic. Already we know that arctic summer sea ice is running at less than half of what it was half a century ago. Ominous signs of the decay of ice sheets are also seen in the Antarctic. Supporting evidence is then furnished by such findings as arctic flowers blooming earlier, butterflies moving their territories northward in England, and birds advancing the calendar on their nesting behavior. Altered composition of phytoplankton in arctic waters indicates that chemical changes have reached the level of biological significance.
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