Sphincter Police in Science and Health

This is a reply on a listserve to someone questioning the appropriateness of a practitioner using a new technique with "patients" or clients.

Message text written by **** (a student)
... novel techniques should only be used with clients >if it is in the midst of clinical research (clearly explicated to clients involved) in order to >reduce any of the potential direct or indirect harmful effects elucidated above.<

First, I want to make it clear that I believe empirical scientific research is valuable and important.

But it is not the whole, or even close to the most important part of science.

Curiosity, exploration, questions, ideas-- these are the main ingredients of science. Empiricism is the set of measuring cups. And some of the best cooks eyeball and go with "a pinch of this a handful of that. "

It is un-realistic to suggest that novel techniques be used in the midst of clinical research. I say un-realistic because that's not the way clinical or other psych technique innovations usually happen. They develop in practitioners' offices-- people working every day with clients. Eventually, grad students and professors-- academics and researchers get involved and check these out. Some of these researchers actually do a competent (as compared to expedient) job of replicating the actual process, retaining all the key ingredients rather than oversimplifying. This empirical research requires much art and great skill. It is very different than simple single variable experiments.

So often, I have seen calls for empiricism, double blind, randomized matched controls, etc. , which are really thinly veiled negative, cynical attacks on a budding technique. I call these people, who literally get their kicks throwing out scientific put-downs, Sphincter police (see www.sphincterpolice.com)

New ideas need some space to blossom and grow. It takes a group of practitioners sharing experiences, observations, failures, train wrecks, staggering miracles, etc. to get to a point where it an empirical researcher can wade in and start identifying key elements, dimensions and factors in a technique that is more complex than a single variable, like some behavior therapy tends to be. BT is so nice and simple, but back when I was a regular member of AABT, I recall a poll of members which shoed that most would not choose a behavior therapist for their own psychological help.

So.... most of what you said is true Todd, and I agree with you. But not the part I cited above. And I, being already outside the loop of academic science, when I feel the need to rise to the defense of flickering new ideas, will continue to point out that comments like yours are "correct" but are often used as a politically correct means to attack innovation that needs room to breath. You don't stick a needle probe into an invitroo fertilized ovum two days after fertilization. You don't insist on a double blind study while a new technique is just being fleshed out.

Offers to help design empirical studies, questions about how a technique could be empirically dissected and suggestions on where to find research funding would be more productive, rather than chants of "Thou must empiricize or thou art evil."

In reading this response, please focus on my suggestions. I don't mean to attack you personally by any means, since your questions were cordial and appropriate.

Below my sign-off I've include a batch of quotations from my personal database that I feel are relevant

Rob Kall


The only people who never fail are those who never try.
Ilka Chase

It would be an inconvenient rule if nothing could be done until everything can be done.
Churchill, Sir Winston

"The greatest loss of time is delay and expectation, which depends upon the future. We let go the present, which we have in our power, and look forward to that which depends upon chance,-- and so quit a certainty for an uncertainty
Seneca

I do not offer the old smooth prizes, but offer rough new prizes;
These are the days that must happen to you:
Whitman, Walt, Song of The Open Road

Security is a kind of death.
Tennessee Williams

One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
ANDRÉ GIDE

One can never consent to creep when one feels an impulse to soar.
HELEN KELLER

Every man has the right to risk his own life in order to save it.
JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU

Don't play for safety—it's the most dangerous thing in the world.
HUGH WALPOLE

Be daring, be different, be impractical; be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
CECIL BEATON

There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
JOHN F. KENNEDY

Even God lends a hand to honest boldness.
MENANDER

"Come to the edge," he said. They said, "We are afraid." "Come to the edge," he said. They came. He pushed them . . . And they flew.
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE