Archive for the ‘Professional Issues’ Category
Thursday, August 25th, 2005
The recent newsletter on this subject was intended to highlight the impulse within science to present a complete theory, in the face of the ineluctable reality that completeness can never be proved. We are bound by our hypotheses, and to assert that these allow for no reality beyond the hypotheses is to confuse the map with the territory. It has been rigorously shown in mathematics that a set of axioms that forms a mathematical system will imply propositions that are valid, on the one hand, but not provable from those axioms, on the other. Even more so in science, we will never be able to rule out the existence of phenomena that contradict the naturalistic hypothesis.
I was done with this topic but for the appearance of an article on the same subject in the New York Times of August 23. It is really only in the context of a formal discussion on the topic that most scientists will declare themselves on this issue. So it was that at a recent conference at City College of New York, a student asked, “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”
Nobel-prize winning chemist Herbert Hauptman immediately said “No!” Belief in the supernatural is not only incompatible with good science, but “this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race.” Steven Weinberg expressed a similar sentiment on another occasion: “I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That’s a good thing.” (more…)
Posted in Commentary, Professional Issues | 2 Comments »
Thursday, August 18th, 2005
Aging is not what it used to be. I have the impression that in some significant respects my own health is actually improving over the years, and that has mainly to do with my increasing understanding of self-regulation in the context of a general growth in awareness of alternative health. The same is true most likely for anyone who has committed some time and energy to that enterprise, whether it be through meditation, attention to nutrition, the adoption of an exercise regimen, taking time for biofeedback/neurofeedback, or even just an accommodation of the need for sleep. This may or may not have much to do with the fundamental risk of disease, but it has a lot to do with perceived quality of life.
This is happening among an increasingly aware public in the face of a continuing effort by the pharmacological/medical/university complex that matters of health should be left to the professionals. Life is increasingly being defined as a medical condition, with every important life transition from conception to organ harvesting after death being attended by the medical priesthood. The tribute paid to this enterprise is already at the level of 15% to 18% of our total personal expenditures in this country (depending on what all gets counted), and this fraction is still rising briskly. Medical dependency promotes yet greater dependency, in a progressive spiral that likely ends in the person being maintained on life support in a nursing home, at the same time heart-healthy and brain-dead. Nevertheless, I write as someone who has had his life saved a number of times by “real” medicine (as opposed to lifestyle or boutique medicine), and I have reason to be very grateful. (more…)
Posted in Clinical Symptoms, Migraine Headache, Professional Issues, Protocols | No Comments »
Thursday, August 11th, 2005
When Larry Summers casually interjected his by-now famous comments into a discussion of women in science, he found out that the President of Harvard University cannot just shed his label and make off-the-cuff remarks without it gaining notice. Summers suggested that a shortage of native ability might be one of the reasons that women did not populate the upper reaches of the fields of mathematics and the hard sciences.
The flood of commentary that rippled forth from this discussion exposed an issue that was still festering in our society. It also brought back memories on the milestones of progress out of our own lives. Exemplar #1 was the fact that Sue was the only female physics student in her class at Cornell back in 1962. When Sue then turned out to be consistently the first or second in her class, behind only the son of a Cornell physics professor who had gotten physics along with his mother’s milk, her classmates had a choice of regarding her as competent in physics, or as a girl, but not both. In the classrooms and the laboratory courses, Sue had in their eyes become “one of the boys.” (more…)
Posted in Commentary, Diffusion of Innovation, Paradigm, Professional Issues | No Comments »
Thursday, May 26th, 2005
 There is a stirring of some dinosaur bones on the lists with regard to the control of neurofeedback by the professions, and in particular by psychology. It is inevitable that as neurofeedback becomes accepted that there should be an attempt by various professions to establish their turf. My own view, from my outsider perspective, is that no profession has a natural claim for proprietorship of neurofeedback, and that a turf battle will harm the field, not help it. Saying that will turn out to be as irrelevant as arguing against the adventure in Iraq, but it may be helpful to at least consider alternative futures.
Let’s start with some history. It is remarkable how little psychology has actually had to do with the development of neurofeedback, except for the fact that it utilized the technique of operant conditioning and focused on behavior both animal and human. I recall our first meeting with Barry and Lorraine Sterman in about 1989 at our house in Sherman Oaks. Knowing that we had been consorting with Margaret Ayers for a number of years already, Barry had sent me a note beforehand in which his signature was graced with horns and a tail! (more…)
Posted in ADD / ADHD, Application of Neurofeedback, Professional Issues | 1 Comment »
Thursday, March 31st, 2005
Last year Tom Allen wrote a newsletter for us on the issue of a licensed profession around the emerging field of applied psychophysiology. We have decided to take up this issue at the meeting of the Allied Professionals
Section of the AAPB, and Tom Allen will be there to help lead the discussion.
I am personally agnostic on this issue, and just want to see happen what will be best for the progress of the field. In reviewing historical material for the preparation of our Alpha/Theta web-course I came to realize what deep roots this issue has. Even 100 years ago Hans Berger confronted the same issue. In deciding on his professional course he judged that the emerging field of neurology did not sufficiently take the mind and behavior into account, whereas the emerging field of psychiatry did not concern itself sufficiently with the data of experimental science with respect to the nervous system. Freud had made a similar judgment with regard to neurology, namely that it was simply not ready to tackle the issues that most interested him, but then he, Jung, and Adler left the brain completely out of the discussion. The legacy of this decision has carried forward to this day, causing fellow-traveler Daniel Amen to lament that ~psychiatry is the only branch of medicine that does not look at the organ it treats.~ Neurology, on the other hand, has migrated even more toward dealing with the piece parts of the nervous system and their ills, and thus the journals take them even farther from the domain of behavior and of functional medicine. (more…)
Posted in Neurofeedback, Professional Issues | No Comments »
|
|
Subscribe to Email Newsletter
The EEG Info Newsletter circulates via email at least once a month. A variety of topics related to the Neurofeedback / EEG Biofeedback field are covered in over 200 articles.
|
Science and Religion
Thursday, August 25th, 2005The recent newsletter on this subject was intended to highlight the impulse within science to present a complete theory, in the face of the ineluctable reality that completeness can never be proved. We are bound by our hypotheses, and to assert that these allow for no reality beyond the hypotheses is to confuse the map with the territory. It has been rigorously shown in mathematics that a set of axioms that forms a mathematical system will imply propositions that are valid, on the one hand, but not provable from those axioms, on the other. Even more so in science, we will never be able to rule out the existence of phenomena that contradict the naturalistic hypothesis.
I was done with this topic but for the appearance of an article on the same subject in the New York Times of August 23. It is really only in the context of a formal discussion on the topic that most scientists will declare themselves on this issue. So it was that at a recent conference at City College of New York, a student asked, “Can you be a good scientist and believe in God?”
Nobel-prize winning chemist Herbert Hauptman immediately said “No!” Belief in the supernatural is not only incompatible with good science, but “this kind of belief is damaging to the well-being of the human race.” Steven Weinberg expressed a similar sentiment on another occasion: “I think one of the great historical contributions of science is to weaken the hold of religion. That’s a good thing.” (more…)
Posted in Commentary, Professional Issues | 2 Comments »