Re: To Ainge, doctor's system is a real brainstorm

[Kestutis.Kveraga@xxxxxxxxxxxxx (Kestutis Kveraga)]

--- You wrote:
I work for a major corporation and I had to take a diversity class at work. 
As part of the training, we had to take a "personality" test which typed 
people into four classes of people related to leadership by answering 
questions and working with a group. 

There is nothing that is going to guarantee someone is going to be a great 
basketball player. But I believe there are ways are measuring leadership, 
work ethic, team building, etc that I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss....
--- end of quote ---

Absolutely. The fields of social and organizational psychology study those
issues scientifically. Clearly, people have personality traits that can be
measured more or less reliably by various methods. I'm not dismissing that,
although, from what people who work in the field tell me, it's far more
complicated than just measuring some traits. How a person will react in a
particular situation depends on a lot factors. Personality traits account for
only a small part of the variance. The data are also notoriously noisy and the
effects of any manipulations tend to be small. To claim that a person is one
and only one of 16 rigid "types" is beyond laughable. 

But this Niednagel guy isn't doing even the bare minimum, which is measuring
personality traits.  Even a cursory look at his website reveals what a scam
artist this guy is. The signs are everywhere:  

- the ludicrous claims about "the hard science of brain typing" to convince the
gimlet-eyed ex-jocks who don't buy all that psychological bullsh*t that this is
something hard and concrete, like their paycheck. Nonetheless, his "hard
science" is a mere elaboration of very soft psychological theories of Jung, who
was quite a wack job himself .  Furthermore, the "hardness" of his "science" is
apparently achieved merely by . . .having him watch a  person (or maybe even
read about a person in a paper) for a small fee, starting  at $300 for
individuals and going well into six figures for dumb ex-jocks running sports
franchises. His purported accuracy is not coincidentally related to his
preference for "evaluating" famous athletes and other celebrities, whose
traits, habits, and career achievements are already well documented. He also
modestly claims to have never been wrong. 

 - the alleged numerous studies he's done which, despite Niednagel's claim of
being "into the third decade" of this "research", have never been published
anywhere and never will be. You also never find out anything about those
studies,  which is hardly surprising since they were never performed. I doubt
Niednagel could design a fourth-grade science experiment, let alone a
scientific study of high-level cognition; 

 - the pretense of holding back some valuable information ("which we hold in
confidence at this time"), while being a nice enough guy to release some of it
-  but not before thoughtfully dumbing it down for his  marks  ("we now believe
the time is better for sharing some of this information with the publicowhich
is generally disinterested in technical terms.").  They just forgot to add
"CALL NOW WHILE IT LASTS!!!! OPERATORS ARE STANDING BY! ONLY 5 E-Z PAYMENTS OF
$59.95!!!" 
However, you never actually find out what any of that information is, because
he doesn't know it himself. (But he will, once he meets his mark, pockets a fat
check made out to BTI, and senses what the poor loser would like to hear). 

 - the pathetic attempt to sound scientific, while not knowing the meaning of
basic scientific terms or even common English words. I get the sense Niednagel
didn't do so hot on the English part of the GED, or any other part for that
matter;  

 - the "all chiefs and no Indians" staff at his august scientific institution -
The Brain Type Institute. It seems to comprise Niednagel himself (director) and
another Niednagel (assistant director), which is either his brother or his son 
(no, it's not nepotism, the kid just had the right "brain type" for the job). I
also find it curious that the esteemed Institute has no physical address, 
their phone number is in Missouri (they must have very lax scam laws there),
but their fax number is in Maryland (it's a very long walk to the fax machine);

It' also very telling that his "hard science" products are plastered all over
websites peddling various artifacts for the New Age crowd  - a movement well
known for its scientific "rigor".  If Ainge ever brings this guy in, the
Wallace-Pitino era will seem  in comparison like the Celtics' glory years under
Red. 

In any case, this encounter has led me to several realizations:
1) A lot of guys running sports teams are really, REALLY dumb, or at best
extremely gullible;
2) the same for sports journalists. 
3) some people will believe anything. 
4) If I were a lying scoundrel like Niednagel, I could make a ton of money
bamboozling dumb ex-jocks because, unlike Niednagel,  I actually a) study how
the brain works, especially the sensorimotor aspects of it; b) have published 
work in peer-reviewed journals; and c) know something about brain anatomy,
designing and carrying out studies, techniques like fMRI, PET, and single-cell
recording, as well as data analysis and statistics.  But since I am not by
nature a con man and have no desire to end up in prison, I'm destined to remain
poor :) 
Kestas