Crackpot Award for the Gimstedts

I am happy to announce yet another Crackpot Award. Douze points pour la Suede. For Lars and Hildigerdur Gimstedt on Psykosyntes. A special mention goes to Lars Gimstedt. He cannot even claim naivety for the stupid claims they make because he has a degree in physics! Shame on you! You didn't do any background research.

Let me de-construct what they write:

Stuttering is a learnt behavior

The speech blocking is caused by a reaction into a conditioned state in certain conditions or situations. This conditioned state is a result of learning, although sub-consciously. The state is characterized by nervousness, "mind reading" (of the presumed attitude of others), muscular tensions and spasms.

Explain me why some start stuttering and others don't. Explain why stuttering has a strong genetic component. Explain why brain imaging consistently finds differences in brain structure and functioning.

Stuttering is a psychological problem

As there in almost all cases are other states, induced by certain types of situations, where the stutterer is able to talk fluently, speech blocking is not a physiological problem, but a psychological...

Wrong. It doesn't mean that if I am not stuttering sometimes that it is not caused by a physiological underlying issue. So are you saying that because a drug addict does not consume every day, that it is purely a psychological issue. Are you saying that semi-deaf people who hear better on some day, that it is purely psychological?

To summarize, they have no clue about stuttering but offer treatment for stuttering. Extracting money from people who might be desperate to cure their stuttering. I especially despise the way how their website puts the emotional screws on people who stutter.

Please email the good news to them: mail@psykosyntesforum.se!

Crackpot Award for StutteringInnovations

The Stuttering Brain awards the team of StutteringInnovations , especially the founder Michael Mills, for the outrageous and completely unproven claim that:

Stuttering is now defined as a 'panic attack' over speech that starts in early childhood. Stuttering does not respond well to fluency training because the person already knows how to be fluent.

Here are a few questions for our brainy crackpots:

• Who defined stuttering like this? And based on which arguments?
  
• How does genetics fit in here?
  
• What about brain imaging work showing differences in young kids and adults?
• So singing and choral reading does not trigger a panic attack?
  

Should I soul search?

A reader set me a challenge:

Because people read your blog...so your words have power. what do you think the author of the published paper would feel? Did you just call the research a piece of junk/useless research? If you were in the same position and spent valuable time. And someone calls your research dead-end research? And how does this post help with anything. Why not be more positive...instead of being negative (and the problem is still there and nothing is solved). My suggestion: try to be more positive and talk is cheap. Be a problem solver and offer realistic suggestions, instead of complain, complain, complain :)

Here is my response:

What do you think the author of the published paper would feel?

I cannot care what the author feels. This sounds hard but science and intellectual debate is not about caring about other people. It is about caring about arguments. I write what I have in mind. I only attack someone's arguments or works but not the person itself. He or she might be the nicest person on Earth, might have put in one year of work, or might have been ill-advised by the supervisor; if I don't agree, I don't agree and will say so clearly. I will also not resort to mystical allusion like "I did not fully understand your arguments. Would you mind explaining them again to me. I am confused because I thought that X" but "I do not agree because of X."

I know the author a bit, and I do respect him for what he told me privately, but I simply disagree with some of his statements or directions of research. He is free to disagree with me in the Comment section or a guest post.

Did you just call the research a piece of junk/useless research?
Not as forceful as you just have. I wrote it is dead-end research.

If you were in the same position and spent valuable time. And someone calls your research dead-end research? 
Again, it is utterly irrelevant how much time someone spent on something. I know what guy who spent 3 years on a complex computer simulation only to be proven wrong by a top expert in 5 minutes. It is though but it is science. My first reaction would be not be as you imagine. I would ask: What have I done wrong? Is it a dead-end? I would look at his or her arguments carefully, and see whether I really did a mistake. And then I would reply with counterarguments or agree that it is wrong or dead-end. Then I try to get back to that person and give counterarguments. Then either we agree to disagree, because I cannot really refute his arguments nor refute mine. Or I see that he or she is just making bogus arguments because of lack of understanding, intellectual overreach or an emotional and political motivation. Then I might go into political mode or ignore. But

Again I do not fight or see the person making the argument but I fight or see the arguments themselves! Here is how I visualize: I am commander of one army (my statement) and I have soldiers (the arguments) defending it. And someone else launching an attack. So I focus on his soldiers. Either one of us wins and the other gracefully surrenders his army (his statement), or we agree to disagree as no-one won.

My research is not part of me, so if you attack it or my ideas, I am still feeling OK! As a good scientist, you need to find this intellectual detachment from your emotions. In fact, I love being told that I am wrong because then I have learned something new!

And how does this post help with anything.
It is like the Emperor's clothes or the lack thereof! I am pointing out the obvious for me. And I am pointing out what many others tell me privately, but do not dare saying out of fear that the PC and consensus Gestapo knocks at their door. It helps to know what other people think of your research. Even if they are wrong, you can wrestle with their arguments, and you learned something. There is nothing worse for a researcher that being ignored after hard work or being smiled at with a superficial Well Done.

Also, I want to show people and especially students and therapists that it is OK to criticise other research findings. We need more debate in stuttering. And therefore I am moving the goal post of what is acceptable.

Why not be more positive...instead of being negative (and the problem is still there and nothing is solved).
Here is a counterexample. If I see cracks in a bridge or building, should I not report the cracks because I have no solution to getting rid of the cracks and I make the manager of the building feel bad about himself? If I see fraud or mismanagement happing, should I not whistle blow because I have no solution and hurt the feelings and jobs of those who work there? Of course, a solution would be great, but often there are no solutions, and the solution proposed is wrong, too!

This attitude is extremely dangerous in scientific research, because our minds get blinded by social considerations out for fear for the PC and consensus Gestapo. It is OK to point out weaknesses and be negative in research. Of course, doing therapy or organising a party is a whole different matter, where you need to work with other people and find common interests and goals.

My suggestion: try to be more positive and talk is cheap. Be a problem solver and offer realistic suggestions, instead of complain, complain, complain :)

You drive me completely insane! :-) You have not understand what science is about. Yes, in therapy or management or politics, it is all about problem solving and consensus building but not in science or intellectual debate, intellectual honesty is very very important. There is only one truth, but in social interaction there is none. You say what you have in your mind so that a debate can arise. You would be surprised but I am very consensus focused when it comes to non one-truth issues! But on science, just over my dead body! :-)

Voodoo Correlation in Social Sciences

Voodoo expert Dave Rowley made me aware of a post on voodoo correlation in social sciences: see here. Neurocritic is a blog that deconstructs the most sensationalistic recent findings in brain imaging, cognitive neuroscience, and psycho pharmacology. Clearly, we need to be careful when analysing imaging data, especially when correlating to other variables. And I am sure some brain imaging studies on stuttering have problems, too.

Janus of SpeechEasy is misleading us

Misleading stutterers is not just about claiming a cure in 9 minutes, in 15 days or only when you are working hard enough. That's the obvious way to mislead. Have a look at the Speech Easy device website produced by Janus Development. They are the masters in perfection. I'll expose two of their tricks: sublime messaging, and biased reports on success. And I spare you with the go-to-clueless-Oprah-to-get-approval trick; it is too obvious.

Read the message on the main page:  Do You Want to Stop Stuttering? You are not alone. While you will not stop stuttering completely (there is no cure for stuttering), we can help you take back control of your speech, and your life. A stroke of marketing genius.  At first sight, beautifully compensate speech. As their coporate mission state: We are passionate in our mission to help people who suffer with speech disorders. They say the right things: no cure, therapy is about taking control, and they acknowledge our pain and fear. Now switch on your Karl Rove, and read the passage again: Do You Want to Stop Stuttering? You are not alone. While you will not stop stuttering completely (there is no cure for stuttering), we can help you take back control of your speech, and your life. That is what the brain reads, because that's what the brain wants to read. And, acknowledgement of our pain and fear turns on the fear and pain of the reader. Read on: You'll no longer fear social functions, avoid ordering food at a drive through, or keep quiet when you really want to speak out. Passionate about people who stutter? Or passionate about lowering the inhibition of stutterers and their families to make informed decisions?

You might disagree with me on sublime messaging, but you cannot disagree with me on the misleading presentation of evidence for efficacy. Let's bit a bit nerdy and go through the Professionals section and Efficacy/Research subsection. There are four topics: Published Abstracts, Bibliographies, Ongoing research, Case Studies, and FDA Information.

Let's start with the Published Abstracts. The website states: The treatment of stuttering and the Speech Easy fluency device are the subjects of the following abstracts of six selected published articles, and then they list the six articles' abstracts. The first five articles are from the East Carolina University group based in Greenville. Note that Janus Development, the seller of the Speech Easy device, is also based in Greenville. This is not a surprise because it is a spin-off from the university as far as I know. Are there conflicts of interests?  Should they not at least make public this relationship? There is only one non-Greenville article from a Canadian group that I have never heard of. But, be aware they have done nothing wrong, they just point us in a direction. Everyone has the right to point someone in a direction, right?

The bibliography is a misnomer as it seems to be the list of publication of the Greenville group. A simple link to Pub Medline gives a much better overview of the field: click here. I find 40 different published articles, notably from Professor Howell at University College London. The idea of the device is not new, and other groups have done efficacy studies. Why only the Greenville group's research? Again, nothing is legally wrong, right?

Let's move on to the Archilles' heel, Ongoing Research. Again, it is factually correct, but highly highly misleading. The website mentions two efficacy studies: one by Molt, and the other related to Parkinson. First, we can agree that the Parkinson study is useless in the context it is presented, especially because other relevant outcome studies are completely ignored! So let's look at the Molt study. The Molt study started in November 2004 (according to press release). It is funded by Janus and there is still no published article four years later.  I attended a lecture where he presented preliminary results, at the Dublin IFA conference. His talk and approach to research did not strike me as particularly rigorous, especially the way he represented his data graphically was very atypical to a trained scientist. He is more a speech therapist than scientist and intended well, and clearly warned that the results are preliminary. There were only 12 patients. What happened afterwards? I vaguely remember that someone told me that he was ill. Does Molt agree with the way they are characterizing his research. The key question is: Why do they not mention the other studies that have started after Molt's study and that are published?  The answer is easy: the result is less than promising. Forget the Molt study. They should publish those two recent studies.

Effects of the SpeechEasy on objective and perceived aspects of stuttering: a six-month, Phase I clinical trial in naturalistic environments. Pollard R, Ellis JB, Finan D, Ramig PR. J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2008 Aug 11.

The effect of SpeechEasy on stuttering frequency, speech rate, and speech naturalness. Armson J, Kiefte M. J Fluency Disord. 2008;33(2):120-34. Epub 2008 May 7.

They are creating the illusion that the device is well supported by evidence, and that the actively seek the evidence. It is obvious that they don't. They are effectively hiding those two articles from the reader by not quoting them, and thereby mislead people. But again, it is legal. Every single statement is factually correct.

Let's talk about the last two topics briefly. Case Studies: They are reports from therapists. Most refer to short-term effects: we tried it and that's what happens. I wonder how many therapists wrote positive fluency  reports about me, and here I am...   FDA Information: As far as I understand, the FDA says that the device is not causing death or something like that and so you can sell it. Nothing about efficacy, but it sounds good.

To summarize, Janus is clearly misleading customers by not referring to ALL published outcome studies. 

If you are interested in the latest review, check this article and discussion by Ellis and Pollard, the researchers with cool sunglasses.

We only look under the lamppost

I have become more and more aware of a fallacy committed by researcher in stuttering; a fallacy that is hard to avoid unfortunately but not very strongly stated anywhere. Many are not really aware just how prevalent and strong it is.
It is the looking-under-the-lamppost fallacy. Here is the story: A policeman sees a person searching the ground in the light cone under the lamppost at night. The policeman approaches, and notices that the man is a bit drunk and is looking for his key. Trying to be helpful, he asks: So where exactly have you lost them? The drunk points with a finger to a location a bit further away from the lamppost. Surprised, the policeman says: So why are you not looking there? Well, it is too dark to see anything. I have to look for my keys somewhere, don't I? I don't want to give in, and there is a small chance that I actually lost in around the lamppost!
In the last years, the view that we should study children rather than adults to understand the causes of stuttering has become increasingly popular and rightly so. I wrote a post about it. I also heard it repeated again at the Antwerp conference by Nan Rantner and Ed Conture. And indeed brain imaging work has moved in this direction, with work by Chang and by Watkins. Children's brains are still fresh, and unspoilt from decades of stuttering.
However, current stuttering research is not exactly doing what it preaches. In fact, the absolutely most important time window in children is completely, and I mean completely, ignored. It's the time before onset of stuttering and at onset. The dormant phase where the deficiency is present but unnoticed. I just know of one study that looked at infants. 99.999% of the research starts a few weeks and months after onset. Many researchers do work on children precisely, because they want to avoid the complexity of adult stuttering. However, they are not consequent enough, and stop at onset. Onset of stuttering is an arbitrary moment for the search of causes of stuttering. Think of a rock emerging from a receding tide. Is the moment of emergence relevant for the existence of the rock? No!
I am sure some of you are not happy with my comments. After all, how can researchers study kids before onset because the kids don't stutter yet? And who am I to criticise the researcher when I have no solution ready. First of all, my criticism is valid irrespective of whether I have a solution: if you are over-weight, and I point it out without offering a solution. Is my observation incorrect? Second, I have never seen the fallacy stated clearly and explicitly. In fact, every study on kids on onset should have a health warning: "We did this study knowing full well that the time before onset is as or even more important that the weeks and months after onset to discover the causes".
And, there are possible avenues. Of course, 20 children at onset means that you need at least 20 times 20, 400, children before onset to get the stuttering children. So any reasonable study would include 1000 children. That's difficult to do. What might be possible is to only monitor all children from stuttering families!

Solutions to Logical Fallacy IV-VI

Here are the last three fallacies.

IV: Statistical Fallacy

A researcher says: "We have tested 100 kids who stutter on 20 variables and found 2 that were significant (p<5%). Therefore, I conclude that onset of stuttering is correlated to these two variables."

Explanation:
The researcher has committed the mistake of over-fitting the statistical model, because the more variables you look at the more likely one correlates by chance! And if he uses p<5% as a threshold, one in 20 variables will [Correction: is likely to] show a correlation by chance. Moreover, he has only looked at p-value, but effect size is absolutely crucial. The p-value only says whether two distributions are from the same underlying distribution, and any outlier or systematic error can easily lead to low p-values. Therefore, he needs to look at the size of the difference as well.

V: Treatment-Sucess-Factor-is-Cause Fallacy

A person who stutter says: "After I have come to terms with my childhood trauma and undertook psychological treatment, my stuttering vastly reduced. Therefore, stuttering must be caused by a traumatic experience in childhood."

It is true that his psychological treatment has helped him greatly. However, the cause might still be of non-psychological nature that triggered psychological issues that affected his stuttering severity. If you have a car accident and are in shock, psychological therapy might help you to overcome it, but that does not mean it has causes the accident.

VI: Timing fallacy

A researcher says: "We have recently launched a large-scale study to study kids around the onset of stuttering, because we want to find out what causes stuttering."

The researcher assumes that the causes of stuttering lies close to the onset of stuttering, but that could well not be the case. For example, genetics clearly played a role in many cases of stuttering, and the genes were there from the beginning onwards. Or a neurological incident in the womb or later like a virus infection or a head injury could be the cause, but is not close to the onset of stuttering.

Solutions to Logical Fallacy I-III

Here are the solutions to the first three sentences that contained a logical fallacy. I showed the six sentences on a poster at the Antwerp conference, and during the poster session people had to guess what the fallacies were. And they won Belgium chocolate! (actually I gave everyone a piece, either for brilliance or effort! :-) The three who gave the clearest correct answers were Dave Rowley, Robin Lickley, and Luc de Nil. The majority knew that they were wrong, but they were unable to clearly formulate why the reasoning was not correct.


I: Correlation-Causality Fallacy

A parent said: "My kid started stuttering after our car accident. Therefore, his stuttering was caused by the accident."

Explanation:
It is true that both events, onset of stuttering and car accident, happened close to each other, but a correlation (relationship between them) must not imply that the accident caused stuttering. There are alternative interpretations. For example, both events happened by chance around the same time, and only a study of 1000 car accidents can exclude the chance factor. If all kids that are in a car accident start stuttering, the chance interpretation needs to be rejected. But, of course, there are millions of kids who had a car accident and did not develop stuttering, and the vast majority of kids who do stutter did not have had a car accident. It helps to look at all cases, and not just focus on one single one.

Concept:
If A and B are correlated, the interpretation "A causes B" is only one of four possible interpretations. The alternative interpretations are:
1) the correlation between A and B happen by chance. (The car accident happened randomly, and by pure coincidence the kid started stuttering around the same time.)
2) B causes A. (The onset causes the car accident, e.g. the kid was acting strangely before the onset of stuttering and the concerned mother crashed the car out of nervousness!)
3) C causes A and B. (The parents' house was burgled, the kid started stuttering and the parent crashed the car!)

II: Correlation-Causality Fallacy

A therapist said: "We have compiled reliable statistics on 1000 kids over the last 20 years, and we notice that many kids start stuttering around the time of the birth of a younger sibling. Therefore, the emotional effects must cause stuttering at least in some kids."

Explanation:
It is true that many kids start stuttering around the time of the birth of a younger sibling. This is a subtle fallacy related to the third alternative interpretation. Imagine the onset of stuttering is at the age of 20, how many would have younger siblings born at that time? None! What is the most likely age that anyone has a younger sibling born? Around the age of 3, because parents have their children in one go and spaced by two or three years. I use empirical data from a large-scale fertility study and found that 25% of kids between the age of 2.5 and 3.5 witness the birth of a younger sibling. Therefore, both onset of stuttering and the birth of younger sibling are individually linked at age 3, and therefore age 3 links both event.

III: Trigger-Cause Fallacy

A therapist said: "We have compiled reliable statistics on 1000 kids over the last 20 years, and we notice that a traumatic event is often close to onset of stuttering. Therefore, traumatic events can cause stuttering."

Explanation:
It might well be true that the occurence of a traumatic link is statistically closer to onset of stuttering than it should be. However, this does not imply a causal link. We need to be more careful with the word cause. In fact, an alternative and most likely interpretation is that a traumatic event is a trigger (the last drop) that makes stuttering appear. The kid might well have started stuttering anyway even without a traumatic event, but the traumatic event led to a shock and accelerated the appearance. In fact, it might even delay appearance but we would never be able to witness such a delay because trauma and onset is more spaced in time. Think of your old car, it will break down earlier if you do a long journey now and in 2 weeks later if you postpone the journey by two weeks. Surely, you would not assign a cause to the journey!

Can you spot the fallacy?

I am preparing my poster for the Antwerp conference next week. It is going to be about fallacies when assigning causes to onset of stuttering. Here are the examples. Can you spot the fallacy? Please post your answers. I will publish the solutions after the conference next week! The winner will be awarded the Mr/Mrs Fallacy title and can write a guest post! :-)

FALLACY I

A parent said: "My kid started stuttering a few days after our car accident. Therefore, his stuttering was caused by the accident."


FALLACY II

A therapist said: "We have compiled reliable statistics on 1000 kids over the last 20 years, and we notice that many kids start stuttering around the time of the birth of a younger sibling. Therefore, The emotional effects must cause stuttering at least in some kids."


FALLACY III

A therapist said: "We have compiled reliable statistics on 1000 kids over the last 20 years, and we notice that a traumatic event is often close to onset of stuttering. Therefore, traumatic events can cause stuttering."


FALLACY IV

A researcher says: "We have tested 100 kids who stutter on 20 variables and found 2 that were significant (p<5%). Therefore, I conclude that onset of stuttering is correlated to these two variables."


FALLACY V

A person who stutter says: "After I have come to terms with my childhood trauma and undertook psychological treatment, my stuttering vastly reduced. Therefore, stuttering must be caused by a traumatic experience in childhood."


FALLACY VI

A researcher says: "We have recently launched a large-scale study to study kids around the onset of stuttering, because we want to find out what causes stuttering."

Crackpot Award for Sigmund Freud

I am awarding a Crackpot Award to Sigmund Freud for his outrageous pseudo-science. His theories about stuttering are not only completely unsupported by any evidence, no he has also consistently misrepresented his case studies. And so have many followers of his. They are a good example of what happens when an ambitious, cocaine-taking, intelligent but pseudo-scientific mind starts day-dreaming without constraint from reality-checking experiments. His criminal negligence regarding the accuracy of his theories has done more than anyone else to confuse the weak minds of the 20th century. His influence still lingers heavily today in stuttering theories about the influence of the subconsciousness and traumatic experiences in childhood.

He has done more harm to people who stutter than any one else, certainly more than any previous crackpots. If anyone thinks of Freud as a great mind who has led to great breakthroughs, think again. Here is what wikipedia says:

Although Freud's theories were influential, they came under widespread criticism during his lifetime and afterward. A paper by Lydiard H. Horton, read in 1915 at a joint meeting of the American Psychological Association and the New York Academy of Sciences, called Freud's dream theory "dangerously inaccurate" and noted that "rank confabulations...appear to hold water, psychoanalytically" [21]. Peter D. Kramer, a psychiatrist and faculty member of Brown Medical School, said "I'm afraid [Freud] doesn't hold up very well at all. It almost feels like a personal betrayal to say that. But every particular is wrong: the universality of the Oedipus complex, penis envy, infantile sexuality." A 2006 article in Newsweek magazine called him "history's most debunked doctor."[22]

Freud's theories are often criticized for not being real science.[23] This objection was raised by Karl Popper, who claimed that all proper scientific theories must be potentially falsifiable. Popper argued that no experiment or observation could ever falsify Freud's theories of psychology (e.g. someone who denies having an Oedipal complex is interpreted as repressing it), and thus they could not be considered scientific.[24] Author Richard Webster characterized Freud's work as a "complex pseudo-science"[25].

H. J. Eysenck claims that Freud 'set psychiatry back one hundred years', consistently mis-diagnosed his patients, fraudulently misrepresented case histories and that "what is true in Freud is not new and what is new in Freud is not true".[26]

Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen claims that "The truth is that Freud knew from the very start that Fleischl, Anna O. and his 18 patients were not cured, and yet he did not hesitate to build grand theories on these non-existent foundations...he disguised fragments of his self-analysis as ‘objective’ cases, that he concealed his sources, that he conveniently antedated some of his analyses, that he sometimes attributed to his patients ‘free associations’ that he himself made up, that he inflated his therapeutic successes, that he slandered his opponents."[2]

Freud: unbelievable nonsense

I am shocked by what I read here:

At the beginning of the twentieth century, adult psychiatrists became interested in stutterers after Sigmund Freud wrote that the etiology of stuttering was "for the most part" psychological. Later, he stated that "stammering could be caused by displacement upward of conflicts over excremental functions"' Freud felt the adult stutterer's speech mechanism was enmeshed in a conflict between the wish to defecate symbolically on his parents and authority figures by using hostile words and a concurrent fear of retaliation that caused the stutterer to hold the fecal-oriented words inside.

The early psychiatric theories about stuttering (1900-1945) generally supported Freud's anal displacement theory, and led to the recommendation that stutterers undergo psychotherapy or psychoanalysis. However, child psychiatry and child psychoanalysis did not take shape as a medical specialty until the 1940s.

Modifications to Freud's theory were seen after 1945, as in the work of the psychiatrists Kolansky and Glauber and this author, who discussed the parents' role in the etiology of stuttering. In 1960, Kolansky wrote about his treatment and cure of a 3-year-old girl who began stuttering when her mother gave birth to twins and her grandmother concurrently vigorously bowel-trained her.' In 1965, he became one of the first child psychiatrists to emphasize that the treatment of a child's stuttering should include the parents' active participation .7 His treatment of the 3-year-old involved having the mother and child together in his office playroom. This author described the treatment of two stuttering early grade school girls and the concurrent' therapy with the girls' mothers.

I cannot believe why so many people glorified and still glorify Freud, when in fact the vast majority of his theories are just complete and utter non-sense. Especially his methods to "prove" his theories. Just imagine how much misery he and his blind followers have brought to the millions of sufferers from various disorders with their completely ridiculous theories and associated treatment approaches. And think about all those down-to-earth and honest doctors that told their patients that they just don't know what is going on, and were of course completely ignored. Who wants to go to a doctor or therapist who does not know what stuttering is about?

Primary and corrective-feedback phase of stuttering

From time to time, I have these flashes of enlightenments which either quickly vaporise or stay and I see clearer. Actually, it becomes so clear that I am wondering whether not everyone knows that anyway because it is so simple, and that I was just too stupid to have realised.

Stuttering goes through two completely different phases, the moment of onset being the phase transition. In the first phase (the primary phase), the subconscious brain, the person that lives with the brain, and its environment knows nothing about the abnormal nature of the brain. It is functioning happily. Still, the abnormality is there and detectable, and caused by either genes or a neurological incident. The phase transition happens at onset of stuttering. The moment of onset per se is nothing special at all, as its causes go back years, back to the genes or the neurological incident. It is like the emergence of a rock when the tide goes out again. The moment of the rock emerging looks special but it is not the rock that is not emerging, but the water that is receding and for the water it is nothing special at all! Still, something dramatically has changed that triggers a feedback loop leading to the corrective-feedback phase. Suddenly, the subconscious brain, the person of the brain, and the environment realise the abnormality, because it leads to atypical and functionally disruptive behaviour: dysfluent speech plus secondary effects. Immediately, corrective behaviour sets in by the brain, by the person who stutters, and by its environment. The future development of the disorder now depends on two things: the severity of the underlying abnormality, and the correcting ability of the brain (brain plasticity), the person who stutters, and its environment. And, the goal is clear, too: to change the atypical behaviour to within normal and functional behaviour. Note that the emphasis is on correcting behaviour, whether the brain is still abnormal is irrelevant as long as it produces normal behaviour. Of all the children who start stuttering, a majority of eighty percent manages this task well, the others like myself go on to become adult stutterers.

Crackpot Award for EFT people

My next crackpot award goes to the EFT people. Check out this webpage. Unlike the standard crackpots, she is not claiming to understand what causes stuttering rather she seem to say that EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique) helps stutterers deal with the emotional side.

Nevertheless she deserves an Award, because her report of improvement is obviously completely naive (and shockingly unprofessional for someone who studied speech pathology) as stuttering can easily be reduced using ANY method (my favourite one is walking on all four) and she neglected the placebo. I am CONVINCED the improvement is placebo.

(Thanks to a reader for pointing this out to me.)

Crackpot award for Jerry Halvorson

I received emails from Jerry from http://jerryhalvorson.com/, and as you can see below he is propagating statements about stuttering that is not supported by hard evidence and has no intention to change his mind. As I have done in the past, I am rigorously exposing such people. (I am not saying he is a bad person intentionally, but he clearly has a responsibility of checking facts before "educating" people who stutter.) I give him my crackpot award: see here.

Hi Tom,
Noticed your blog…thought you might benefit from reading my new book on stuttering, Regression Therapy For Stuttering. Check out my website for details jerryhalvorson.com
Jerry

Hi Jerry,
>>> The wrong word, spoken at the right time to a vulnerable child can be devastating. People who develop speech avoidance are victims of accumulated traumas that are shuttled into hiding.
1) How do you explain that genetics research has shown that genes contribute about 70% to the occurence of stuttering. For example, twins which share the same genes (monozygotic twins) are 3-4 times more likely to stutter both than dizygotic twins?
2) How do you explain that the vast majority of kids who experience trauma do not become stutterers?
Tom

Hi Tom,
Great questions…ones asked often…Short answer=all depends upon STUTTERING DEFINITION
Jerry Halvorson

Hi Jerry,
sorry but that answer is not good enough for me. So what is your definition of stuttering?
You also claim that the Monster Study has caused children to stutter. This is factually not correct as the claimants of the compensation trial were rewarded damages not for existing stuttering but for psychological trauma and others.
Best wishes,
Tom

Hi Tom,
My book, Regression Therapy For Stuttering, will answer your questions.
Jerry

Hi Jerry,
With all respect, but that is a very cheap answer and you are avoiding the answer which of course you cannot have because what you say is not supported by evidence. You should be more careful what you write, because there are many real people out there who suffer from their stuttering and it is my duty to present them with hard evidence. Stuttering is not caused by traumatic events in childhood. That is the opinion of all leading therapists and scientists.
Tom

-no more emails-

Lack of motivation a convenient excuse?

When I talk to therapists and ask why many (most?) patients are not succeeding in therapy over the long-term. I often here things like "you are not motivated enough" or "the moment is just not right" or "there are no cures" or "we just don't know enough about stuttering" or "you need to practise more". Could I not turn this around and blame relapse on the therapist because s/he was not able to motivate the patient hard enough or made practising unnecessary difficult due to bad advice?? Have you ever heard a therapist at a conference talking about their mistakes? I haven't to this day. I only heard talks about success, enriching personal development experiences for the patient, and so on. And they also revel in showing just how sensitive, caring, bonding, holistic, intelligent, hard working, smiling, and most importantly professional (what ever that term may mean?) therapist they are; attributes that, to put it mildly, people who stutter are not that interested in, all they want are results for them!

Here is my analysis. Yes, it is true that motivation plays an important role in long-term success. You do need extraordinary motivation. For example, I was absolutely motivated at each of my therapies, though not obsessively. Even a good therapist might not be able to motivate some patients. However, this argument even though it is correct to some degree is also a very dangerous argument, because mediocre therapists can use it as an excuse for their own failure. They can hide behind it. This is also true for non-professional therapists like the crackpot award winners that I nominated. A healthy advice would be: if you are a patient and you fail, look at yourself to find points of improvements; if you are therapist and your patient failed, look at yourself to find points of improvements!

And here is a challenge to all therapists: I will buy that therapist a drink who gives a talk with the topic "The mistakes I made and why they were mistakes"! I would even offer a meal, but a meal with me might be too much punishment for the winner! :-)

Crackpot award for Bodehamer

I have decided to continue my crackpot awards: see here, and here. But I am now going to include anyone who proclaims theories on stuttering that are completely ignoring well-established neuroscience facts on stuttering from the last 10 years. I mainly think here about structural and functional brain differences in young and adult people who stutter, and about genetics. Bob Bodehamer is a "good" example:

The cause: There could be several causes for blocking including genetic predispositions and/or developmental problems. However, our concern is not primarily about the first cause of blocking. Our concern is with what has continued the behavior. We believe that it is the meanings placed around those early experiences of struggling to speak that have become well learned which continues the behavior. This explains how most children grow out of stuttering while some don't - it is about the meanings that the child placed around the behavior.

This statement is just plain non-sense in the light of the most recent research. He permits that these first blocks could be triggered by genetics, and these blocks are enough to learn bad habits which results in long-term stuttering. So what happens to the genes afterwards? Are they self-destructing and not play a role anymore? Also, brain scans clearly show that the brain structure of adults and young people who stutter is different than fluent speakers. There is a physical manifestation. People who stutter do not have misplaced meaning, they have misplaced brain structures. In fact, what is happening is that the physical cause STAYS THERE even for children who recover, and provokes learned behaviours for those who don't.

He should stop playing the theoretician. Science is not theology, his day job as a Southern Baptist pastor. The empirical reality informs the theory, and not the other way around. I just hope he at least does not think that the Earth was created 7000 years ago. If he wants to contribute constructively, he should acknowledge that stuttering has a clear physical component. And no-one is disputing that the effects are also learned behaviour. And here is where he can use his NLP to minimize the effects, but I doubt it is any more effective than other treatments.

Fraud or crackpot?

There are only two possibilities for Natural Therapy for Stuttering. Either it is a fraud scheme, or the person associated to the website did stutter, improved fluency, and honestly believes that the advocated approach is the way forward. Even for the latter, there is no evidence whatsoever for such treatment and I have to label them crackpots! So I urge them to at least dispel the suspicion of fraud, or I will start a campaign to take down their site.

As you are coming to the end of this website, I would like to leave you with a few advices that have helped me tremendously to deal with this disorder. Over the years, I have attended many support groups for stutterers, and I even helped to run some of them.

I challenge you to name these support groups and contacts. We want to check whether you are real or not! I also challenge you to name the person that wrote the "About me" section. I challenge you to say what role Mark Clay and Galina Tchekan play.

You have not tried the program. You do not know how effective it is. Yet, you are passing judgments. Moreover, you had a nerve to ask people to report the website even though you had not tried the program yourself.

It is your responsibility to prove the efficacy of your program. I challenge you to, at the very least, name 10 people that are not stuttering anymore due to your "treatment".

Fraudster Wanted?

I admire the human brain's ability to come up with yet another idiotic stuttering cure. Or is the person just a fraud who tries to make money out of desperate people who stutter? Check out for yourself the website Natural therapy for stuttering.

Unfortunately, the website owner does not leave his or her name, so I cannot give him or her Crackpot Award No 3 (after No 1 and No 2). But I have the very strong suspicion that the person is not a true crackpot, because true crackpots love to put their picture on the website and say who they are!!! And I tried to find out the name, but s/he has registered the domain name via a domain name company and therefore the whois information is not available. Interesting. Also, the email address for the contact is a bit suspicious and completely anonymous: PROGRAMSALES@AOL.COM. I therefore strongly suspect that the person wants to defraud people who stutter.

Let's track down the person! Do you stutter and you are a fluent computer hacker, can you please try to track down the person? Thanks! I'll out him or her on my blog. But please no violence! :-) What is your view? Should we send emails to the domain name company and make them aware of the dubious activities? Should we try to find the name and reveal it?

The logical fallacy of NLP

Neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) is quite fashionable and controversial nowadays. It is a personal development framework based on supposedly the latest knowledge of neuroscience. It is interesting because there are many new stuff coming out of neuroscience which might help someone to change and improve their life. However, there is so much pseudo-scientific concepts floating around and so many crackpot arguments and discussions. It is a bit of a shame, because I strongly believe that understanding our brain better gives us more efficient tools to change behaviour and attitudes.

NLP is applied to many different areas. And of course, people are now using it in stuttering. Probably the most well-known advocate is Bodenhamer. There are several things that get a bit on my nerves:
1) He and others are mis-using NLP. It is fine to propose methods and frameworks to change behaviour and attitude. But they are pushing it by claiming that stuttering is cognitive rather than physiological: see website.
2) They have no proof for their theory in fact genetics and brain imaging strongly disproved their case.
3) There is no study that shows that their approach is effective.
4) They seem to believe that if you really really want you can achieve anything by re-wiring your brain. But there are clear physical limits in your ability to do so.
5) Why are they so dogmatic? It would be very easy to combine both views i.e. that is physiological and secondary effects and social handicap are strongly modulated by cognitive thought processes which can be changed with NLP or other methods.

Crackpot No. 2

The Stuttering Brain proudly presents the second winner of the prestigious "The Stuttering Brain's Crackpot Award": Stephen Hill aka Tony Blair II. (Click here for the first winner.)

The Stuttering Brain proudly declares in his eulogy:

"Stephen Hill is a creative genius of marketing per excellence. He managed to get into many UK newspapers by explaining how thinking about Tony Blair buying a burger helped him overcome his stutter. He claims "I would love to be able to report 95-100% success, however I believe it is more like 85%. To achieve fluency takes a lot of hard work and practice, unfortunately not all of my clients seem willing to put this effort in.", and with one stroke isolates himself from any criticism: if you dont succeed, you only have to blame yourself. The Stuttering Brain is convinced that Stephen Hill is misleading potential clients by claiming 85% success rate. His methods are also remarkable: "I achieved fluency by concentrating on how fluent people spoke. Therefore my method is speaking, thinking, and breathing how fluent people do." So the way to speak like normal people is to speak like normal people. WOW!

Please note, that Stephen Hill is not the son of the UK comedian, Benny Hill, whose most famous feats involved being chased by semi-naked young girls. He is not a comedian, but gets paid for advice by people desperate to get rid of their stuttering."

P.S. The award aims to name and shame people for outrageous claims about PDS, especially those that try to make money out of promises for a cure.