More Nonsense in "Science"

I promise never to write about nonsense again but this piece is on the current cover of The Science Section of the N.Y. Times. And I cannot believe what I am reading; as if all late science in our field has been ignored and some video game has replaced it. And this is literal; they are discussing a video app that was promoted by a shrink from Columbia University, given an approval by a shrink from Harvard, and of course, finds its way into Science because serious honchos approve of it. It makes me sick.

OK so what is “it?” “It “ is a new app that proposes to take away anxiety and eliminates therapy with a human, altogether; rationalized that most people cannot afford it. “It” is something developed by C. Macleod of the University of W. Australia who believes that those who are anxious are exhibiting an extreme form of shyness. These people, he claims, fixate on hostile faces in the environment. And then in some kind of rationale which I truly cannot understand they do away with anxiety by focusing on neutral faces shown on the screen. Basically you are conditioning the brain to avoid the “bad apples.” To try to get rid of the bad choices the brain is making. That naughty brain. I hesitate to ask where the science is in all this? You need to keep on doing it and then they get good results.

I don’t know where to begin; such faulty logic. Anxiety is just a bad habit that needs to be changed. No idea what it is or where it comes from. And then to take one narrow behavior and change it in order to rid the person of anxiety is small minded in the extreme. What they do is condition the brain to avoid reality and look somewhere else. First of all, the brain is not naughty; it is trying to survive and develops strategies to do just that. The brain should look like that; it is flush with pain and terror. This is not different from what my mother did when I was a kid and started to cry. She started distracting me: “look at this. See how the doll cries,” blah blah. And I did stop crying. Is that cure? Have these people despaired of getting to causes? To generating sources?.... and so devise ephemeral devices?

I could go on, but Benedict Carey, whom I have sent articles, never acknowledged, manages to give this a big space. Why with this nonsense? But it doesn’t change anything; doesn’t require any radical adjustment, and does not require any science, except pseudo-science where they show that after many trials of looking away there is less anxiety. This is ”confirmed” in their studies; so much for statistical truths. Beware! It is as if anxiety is just a psychologic ploy with no physiologic concomitants. No body and no inner suffering. Obviously, these people in their head have never suffered prolonged anxiety; otherwise they could never come to these conclusions. Oh but wait! I forgot! They are marketing the apps.

They have a name for it; and anytime that this happens I get suspicious, as though that will make it scientific; give it a certain cachet or patina that makes shrinks everywhere acclaim it is wonderful. But of course we are asking the choir, those intellectual/s who left their feelings behind in graduate school. Intellectual ploys are all the rage for them because feelings can be avoided altogether. Oh yes, it is called Cognitive Bias Modification; or changing how you see things. If you say it in fancy patois it seems so serious and scientific. If you say it in everyday language it loses something in the translation. Whatever. It all makes me sick because it makes our field a laughing stock, bereft of any science except what they concoct that looks like science but is just the manipulation of statistics. Here the “right” people are promoting it so it becomes unassailable. How do you get to be the “right” people? Flee to your head.