http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2207125873&topic=4792#topic_top

http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2006/11/nlp-trainings-shameful-fraudulent-cult.html

http://www.nlpconnections.com/fight-club/13910-earn-%A31000-proving-nlp-pseudoscience-new-age-3.html

http://donaldclarkplanb.blogspot.com/2007/03/nlp-no-longer-plausibe.html

http://www.trainingzone.co.uk/item/190645

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHkjVySxagI

The name is a wild claim in itself. The stuff they are promising is total nonsense. I think its disgraceful how NLPers behave. With scientologists, its ok for them to believe. However, those in charge should be subject to ridicule and scrutiny

With NLP, it is decentralized. So those at the “top” are actually the NLP certified practitioners. They are not just believers, they are the priests. They should be scrutinized and ridiculed also. There is no evidence for any of the claims made. Neurolinguistic programming is a scam.

I’m glad to see that Headley acknowledges that “Understanding social psychology also helps sift the gold from the dross. It also helps to look into the history of other dodgy methods such as Dianetics to help you see the kind of scams the pseudoscientists are trying to pull even now.”

Because I took my first degree in social psychology quite a few years ago, but having worked in personnel and training for much of my career I have done my best to keep myself up-to-date on the subject.

From that perspective I can confirm that Headley’s nonsensical claims are indeed dross and show a complete ignorance of the subjects he posts about (Sharpley, Devilly, Dianetics, Scientology, NLP, social psychology, etc., etc.)

For example, Headley cites Dr. Grant Devilly as one of his experts against NLP, yet in an e-mail discussion with me earlier in 2009, Dr. Devilly assured me that he had read up extensively on Scientology, and yet knew of NO SIMILARITIES between Scientology and NLP!

The claim that Stephen Hunt has substantiated the claim is also valueless.

In Hunt’s book the section on Neur-Linguistic Programming is almost a word for word copy of a similar piece by another author (David Barrett). Barrett makes no claim to any link between NLP and Scientology, and since Hunt found it necessary to copy so much of Barrett’s piece we have little reason to suppose that he knows anything about NLP other than what he read in Barrett’s book (see http://www.bradburyac.mistral.co.uk/hunt.html to see a word-by-word comparison of what both men wrote).

Indeed, the whole basis of Headley’s claim is one phrase in Hunt’s book: “An alternative to Scientology is the Neuro Linguistic Programme (NLP) …”

Even in these few words there are at least three errors and one major ambiguity:

Ambiguity: What does Hunt mean by “an alternative”? Flying to America is *an alternative* to rowing across the Atlantic in a dinghy, but I hardly think they were in any meaninful sense two versions of the same thing unless you chunk up to some high level of vagueness as “means of transport” or “ways of getting to America”.

Error 1: If we’re talking about Neuro-Linguistic Programming there is no such thing as “the” Neuro Linguistic Programme

Error 2: Given the same context there is no such thing as the “Neuro Linguistic *Programme*. Neuro-Linguistic Programming is a process, NOT a thing.

Error 3: Nor is there any such thing as “Neuro Linguistic” anything. There is a field of study, related to psycholinguistics, called “neurolinguistics”, and there is “Neuro-Linguistic Programming”, created by Bandler and Grinder. But “Neuro Linguistic Programme”? ‘Fraid not. That’s the kind of error someone is only likely to make if they have no real knowledge of NLP – someone such as Dr. Hunt seems to be.

In short, “Headley”, under a variety of names, has no real knowledge of NLP. He simply trolls around the web posting inaccurate information based on information he has cut and pasted from sources whose contents he seems to have only minimal understanding, if any.

The fact is that almost all of the NLP-critical sockpuppet use the same basic list of references to support their claims. What they don’t say is that:

(a) They have never actually read the material they are quoting. Thus, for example, “Headley” claims that Sharpley reviewed a number of “controlled studies”, though what Sharpley actually said was that “A series of controlled studies … is called for.” (Sharpley, 1984, page 247).

(b) most of the so-called scientific evidence consists of the experiments that Sharpley reviewed. But both Sharpley and most of the experimenters had very little accurate knowledge of NLP. So little, in fact, that they were all investigating a concept that Bandler and Grinder had dropped in the late 1970s in favour of a more flexible version.

In fact, Sharpley’s two articles are practically useless as an evaluation of genuine NLP-related claims and techniques. See http://www.bradburyac.mustral.co.uk/sharpley1.html for a more detailed discussion of the facts.

Marty