| Written by Jean Donaldson |
| Thursday, 11 September 2008 09:20 |
|
It’s been pointed out to me and I’ve pointed it out to myself that the subtitle of The Culture Clash has the word “revolutionary” in it. The book actually makes a case for training using operant conditioning, a technology that’s been around for sixty years. Marketing gurus have known for a long time that “new and improved” sells stuff. If I were to be generous I’d say that OC was given short shrift at the time of its publication, which gives wiggle room to “revolutionary.” If I were to think more critically, there’s been nothing radically new in behavior change technology since the early decades of the previous century. Sure, there’ve been refinements in application, especially in the developmentally disabled field (who went through a “should we use aversives?” phase, complete with all the arguments on both sides that we currently see in the field of dog training – PS: Team Non-Aversives won), but the idea that behavior is to a juicy degree a function of its consequences is the bread and butter of every day dog training.
But we love new and improved. It sells books and puts butts into the chairs of conferences and seminars. Because there isn’t actually anything real that’s new in training and behavior modification, people end up making up stuff. It’s a fertile medium, compared to, say, geology, where equal time isn’t given to the Flat Earth Society at geology conferences or in journals, in the name of free speech or kindness. In dog training, on the other hand, anybody can say pretty much anything and, if it’s then competently critiqued, the anything-promulgator can cry foul in one of three ways:
- Appealing to free speech, open-mindedness or “the more ideas the merrier” – the earth can be flat, round, oval, French fry shaped or tacoid: we need to respect all points of view and teach them at professional conferences.
- Appealing to experience or credentials: the earth is flat because I’ve walked around it several times, or the earth is flat because I went to Harvard.
- Appealing to loving kindness. Goes something like this:
New Idea Promulgator: This seminar/book/other revenue-generating item is about expanding your dog’s energy reading zone using aluminum foil and chip clips. I call it ERZE – Energy-Reading Zone Expansion. It is an exciting, new way to…
Weary Professional Trainer: I’m having a hard time finding placebo-controlled double-blind evidence your thing works, or even much of a plausible mechanism, so I think you’re making this up. Can I get my money back?
New Idea Promulgator: Oh wow, you know I worked very hard on this theory and I feel hurt by your attack. What personal vendetta causes you to say that? You know, what we need is more benign gentle loving kindness in this field.
In his latest book, The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker makes a fabulous point about science. Its greatest strength, he says, is that an idea put forward has to be testable and generate publicly vet-able evidence. It is a realm of society where some of the usual rules governing interaction simply don’t get invoked. In our interactions outside of science, we can employ tools like status or appeals to compassion to deflect criticism. Or free speech, which is critical to a free society. And you can say anything in science too, by the way. It’s just that if you say something that’s palpable nonsense and/or don’t back it up with evidence, you’ll be laughed out of the room. Except in dog training.
I take particular exception to the Po-Mo notion that all truths are equally valid. There’s some serious hypocrisy going on. For instance supporters of this view want real surgeons trained in real scientific medicine when their appendix ruptures. They fail to leap off buildings based on convictions about alternative versions of gravity. They don’t get into cars designed by Po-Mo automotive engineers. No, they want cars with actual engines and electrical systems. Richard Dawkins once said, referring to Po-Mo’s getting on airplanes designed by real aeronotics engineers, “Show me a cultural relativist at 30 000 feet and I’ll show you a hypocrite.” When the chips are down, the all-ways-of-knowing-truth-are-equally-valid crowd vote with their feet for scientific truths. But in fuzzy realms, where you just might get away with it because nobody has called you much on it, and where your life isn’t at stake from peritonitis or death at high velocity, and, notably, where there’s a career to be had broadcasting your half-baked theories to the credulous, critical thinking goes out the window. How convenient.
|
| Last Updated on Friday, 19 December 2008 06:55 |
