Helping Students Discern Science from Snake Oil

Helping students discern science from snake oil

A professor's unique course turns media-muddled students into savvy consumers of popular psychology.

By Bridget Murray
Monitor staff

It took a 101 psych class for psychology major Sharon Barfield to realize that psy-chology is about serious science, not ESP, subliminal tapes and talk shows, as she'd once thought.

Wondering how she ever could have been so misled, she took a course on American popular psychology, taught by Stephen B. Fried, PhD, for the past eight years. And she found out.

Offered as an elective at Park College near Kansas City, Mo., the course probes the history of psychology's popularization. It evaluates the major forums for popular psychology, including television news, magazine articles and self-help books, and teaches students to think critically about media portrayals of psychological knowledge and research.

"The course made me realize how much we blindly accept what we hear in the media without realizing that it's not scientific," says Barfield, now a mental health counselor and instructor at Park College. "Much the way phrenology was once accepted, there are people who think ESP is real and that subliminal tapes work."

While the notion of helping students discern science from snake oil is nothing new in academe, Fried's is a different kind of course. It's not uncommon for students in introductory psychology to compare popular press articles about research with original journal articles. But it is unusual for a course to focus exclusively on psychology's image in self-help books, magazines, TV shows and other popular media.

A sizeable number of Fried's colleagues, among them veteran teaching researcher Wilbert McKeachie, PhD, consider his course a good exercise in sharp thinking. Others, many of them mistrustful of popularized research, worry that it's too fluffy and basic for college. Duke University's Gregory Kimble, PhD, known for his work on general psychology, is concerned that students might "take away the popular garbage," and nothing more.

Not so, says Fried, who aims to repel fluff and find substance.

"There are pluses as well as minuses to popular psychology, so just to dismiss the whole thing is ridiculous," says Fried. "It's disingenuous to cry out about popular psychology when part of it's coming from professional psychology. Martin Seligman just wrote a great popular psychology book based on good research."

In fact, as chair of the "Public Appreciation of Science" committee of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents, Seligman says it is "the obligation of responsible science to convey to the public how scientific developments can help them lead better lives."

"But this is a market that is dominated by charlatans and sensationalists," he says. "Our best antidote is to educate our students to tough-mindedness."

The 'great popularizers'

Fried's course traces psychology's history from the dubious theories of the 18th and 19th centuries to the present-day preoccupation with intelligence testing, dysfunctional families and co-dependency. Students also study the rise of the self-help culture by reading books, such as Steven Starker's "Oracle at the Supermarket: The American Preoccupation with Self-Help Books" (Transaction, 1989) and Wendy Simond's "Women and Self-Help Culture: Reading Between the Lines" (Rutgers, 1992).

In addition, students learn to analyze the content of popular magazine articles and weigh the quality of self-help books. Fried advises them to consider the following questions about a work:

How practical and useful is it?

Does it present solid problem-solving strategies based on scientific evidence and professional experience?

How clear is the writing?

What are the author's credentials?

How comprehensive is the bibliography?

Fried also tells students that, while many popular misconceptions of psychology come from journalists and peddlers of self-help, academic and professional psychologists have also made shaky contributions to popular lore.

He notes that even the field's great contributors and popularizers, including William James and John B. Watson, sometimes spread theories that have been discredited. James, for example, supported mysticism and the supernatural, and Watson promoted child-rearing practices so stern that they starved children of affection.

Discerning not dismissive

In papers and essay tests assigned by Fried, students use his criteria to judge the quality of various popular portrayals of psychology. By the end of the course, most can judge quality quite well, Fried says.

"They're less accepting of all they see," he says. "Not that they're just judgmental and throwing everything out. They're more critical. They're able to discern and differentiate."

Fried doesn't want them to dismiss all popular material because he says some of it is research-based and quite valuable. In fact, in recent studies, Fried found a number of high-quality self-help books, particularly ones dealing with aging and parenting. And they were usually written by qualified professionals.

"This was wonderful information for the price of a paperback trade book," says Fried, noting that many mental health professionals recommend self-help books to their clients.

However, some other self-help books, particularly a number about happiness and success, Fried's research team tagged as anecdotal and weak. Fried is especially leery of unscientific Internet sites and radio and TV programs. Worst of all, he says, are TV talk shows. He and his students discuss how they sanction aggressive, antisocial behavior and spread the myth of the therapist with the quick fix.

Also feeding misconceptions of psychology are short snippets about research on fast-paced cable news channels, says Fried.

"All you hear is 'How to make a better marriage,'" he says. "You don't hear any of the nuances of the research. How rigorous the methodology was. How effectively the researchers investigated their findings. How well they communicated them."

Fried hopes his course attunes students to such oversimplifications as they sharpen their critical thinking skills.

For more information about Fried's course, contact him at friedboswell@juno.com.