So I posted in NTD website under my other handle 'Subaru' (I have astronomical themed handles) and actually read though all of the articles and comments posted. I had also just finished a second reading of Sagan's 'Candle in the dark" and the book was fresh in my mind as I read though the website.
The book "The Demon Haunted World: Science as a candle in the dark" has a chapter titled “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection’. In it Carl Sagan outlines a list of tools to test arguments and detect fallacies. This has become better known as the Baloney Detection Kit
Let’s apply The Baloney Detection Kit to Kevin Behan and his ideas.
-
Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the “facts”
There is no independent confirmation of any of Behan’s “facts”. Many, like the second brain are utterly ridiculous and demonstrably false.
-
Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
NO. In fact, Behan essentially shuts down any possibility or avenues of investigation by stating that biology is not a science.
-
Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities";).
Behan is the prophet, the guru, the master and lead expert. His views are the only ones that matter. He proclaims the “facts” in to existence, he does not discover them. How does he know he is telling the truth? Because he is “convinced”
-
Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it's yours.
Behan is enamoured with his brain child and refuses to see it died at birth. In his defense of NDT has deemed evolution is wrong, and that Psychology and Biology are not sciences.
-
Quantify, wherever possible.
Behan has never been able to quantify anything relating to his energy, batteries, beams, or networks.
-
If there is a chain of argument every link in the chain must work.
An example: “In my model Temperament is a circle so that energy reflects back on itself and thereby becomes information.” Every link is broken there is no path from circle to reflect to “becomes information”
-
"Occam's razor" - if there are two hypothesis that explain the data equally well choose the simpler.
Behan’s ideas are convoluted, irrational, and schizophrenic and that doesn’t even take into account that they often violate all we know about how nature behaves. It all amounts to a vastly complex system without any predictive features.
-
Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?
NDT cannot be falsified. It is a religion. As Behan writes “it transcends matter”, and because according to Behan the methodologies used across research labs and universities isn’t science
Additional issues are
-
Conduct control experiments - especially "double blind" experiments where the person taking measurements is not aware of the test and control subjects.
NO. In order to see NDT in action (e.g. energy), one first has to believe in NDT.
-
Check for confounding factors - separate the variables.
NO. NDT lumps everything from a dog scooting on the carpet to the physics of a black hole under ‘energy’ and ‘nature’, and by doing so explains nothing.
Common fallacies of logic and rhetoric
-
Ad hominem - attacking the arguer and not the argument.
In Behan’s word the reason we don’t see his truth is because unlike him we have not “escaped formal indoctrination in so-called critical thinking wherein oxymorons and euphemisms pass for logical precepts.” He also notes we are afraid of the truth and we feel "powerless."
-
Ask whether the hypothesis can, at least in principle, be falsified (shown to be false by some unambiguous test). In other words, it is testable? Can others duplicate the experiment and get the same result?
The issue is simple. Dissect a second brain. Detect the energy. Find the Battery.
-
Appeal to ignorance
This is another fallacy associated with NDT advocates. For example because we can't disprove that a wolf defeats a moose though its emotion, he must be right.
-
Special pleading (typically referring to god's will).
Religious undertones are found throughout Behan’s essays. As he writes “I am very comfortable with the notion of a Divine Intelligence”
-
Begging the question – assumes to be true something that one is trying to prove
This is a favorite and can be found in nearly every article written by Behan.
-
Observational selection (counting the hits and forgetting the misses).
“All dogs love to ride in cars”, ignoring all the dogs that ‘hate’ and fear car rides.
-
Statistics of small numbers (such as drawing conclusions from inadequate sample sizes).
In “Energy theory vs. Personality theory” Behan talks to a few people and concludes a “archetypal, instinctual response”
-
Non sequitur - "it does not follow" - the logic falls down.
“But before the dog can be receptive to its handler’s voice, it must first be able to feel its handler and this allows it to be attracted to handler inputs.” He makes proclamations and presents them as logical arguments.
-
Post hoc, ergo propter hoc - "it happened after so it was caused by" - confusion of cause and effect.
One of the worst (or best) is his notion of why dogs do X.
-
Meaningless question ("what happens when an irresistible force meets an immovable object?).
Like why are dog’s the most sexual animals if energy theory is wrong? (He also expects us to take it at face value without ever presenting data of how he came up with this ranking)
-
Confusion of correlation and causation.
In “Glorious Accident”, Behan confuses the correlations brain structures and emotional relationships and concludes that emotions CAUSE these structures to develop.
-
Straw man - caricaturing (or stereotyping) a position to make it easier to attack.
From Canine Thought Expeiment. Behan often uses straw man arguments. Bekoff writes “we're not inserting something human into animals, but we're identifying commonalities and then using human language to communicate what we observe.” Behan misrepresents is as “This then leads to the concession that animals are people too and from here we will not be able to draw all important distinctions between animals and people”
-
Suppressed evidence or half-truths.
“energy theories that get simpler …. E=MC2 is a spectacularly concise statement” A good example of a half truth. Other physics equations are more complex and since it does not fit into his view he ignores it. String theory is one example that doesn’t fit into Behan’s simplistic view of physics.
-
Hedging and Weasel words
Sagan quotes Tallyrand “An important art of politicians is to find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the public” The same applies to snake oil and quacks.
My conclusion: NDT philosophy is 100% baloney