Voodoo Science Spawns Zombie
Publications
by Harris L. Friedman
University of Florida & Goddard College
Science provides a way of understanding, and changing, the world, but it is
just one among a variety of ways (Glover & Friedman, 2015). Not only is
science embedded within a variety of cultural assumptions, its disciplines
that study, and work with the concept of, culture also have their cultural
assumptions (Friedman & Glover, in-press), including those involved with
organizational development and change (ODC). One of the key
assumptions of most science is that its findings can be replicated as,
without that, generalizations (i.e., invariant “laws”) across space and time
would be impossible. In addition, without replicability, science could not
be self-correcting and instead would be stagnant, rather than an open and
dynamic process. Currently, however, there is a widespread replicability
crisis within science (Ioannidis, 2005), including within the discipline of
psychology (Pashler & Wannemakers, 2012). In a recent high-profile study
(Open Science Collaboration, 2015; covered widely in the media, e.g., Yong, 2015), over 250 researchers
attempted to replicate a large sample of papers published in three of the top psychology journals in
2008, resulting in less than 40% being replicated—and these were taken from among the best journals,
suggesting a much lower number would be found for all published studies.
Considering much of ODC practice predicates its legitimacy on science, including psychology as one of its
disciplinary contributors, that much of this science is now seen as questionable is scary. Apropos to this
newsletter coming around the holiday of Halloween, which originated in the Christian world but is
increasingly celebrated in a secular way worldwide, I am writing about how one aspect of this crisis
relates to so-called “voodoo science”1 (Charlton, 2008; Park, 2000) and its resulting “zombie articles”
1
This term is not meant to denigrate Vodun/Vodou as a world religion, and the potentially pejorative use of this term caused
the title of a prominent paper (Vul, Harris, Winkielman, & Pashler, 2009), originally titled “Voodoo Correlations in Social
Neuroscience,” which was changed by editorial request to “Puzzlingly high correlations in fMRI studies of emotion, personality,
and social cognition” after its publication (see http://www.edvul.com/voodoocorr.php). Nevertheless, in the Halloween holiday
“spirit,” and considering its widespread use to characterize some types of bad science, this term is employed with advance
apologies to any who might take offense.
(Neher, 2011), focusing on a widely influential finding extensively used in ODC application, but that was
found to be wrong.
Voodoo science is a term used to describe a range of scientific problems, sometimes also called cargocult science, junk science, and pseudoscience. Such flawed science stems from many causes, ranging
from innocent self-deception (often due to scientists being oblivious to their cultural biases, a common
trap) to intentional fraud. Presumably scientific findings are cumulative, such that flawed research is
shown wrong through failure to replicate, and all findings are provisional--as even good science is
expected to be replaced by better science through progress. In addition, even when flawed work based
on voodoo science has been “debunked” (i.e., shown invalid), it may spawn zombie offspring in the form
of publications that continue to cite and use the debunked findings (i.e., like zombies, they continue to
walk the earth, even though dead). Sometimes, of course, it is difficult to discern voodoo from valid
science, as many considered Einstein’s “spooky” (i.e., non-causal connections across space-time) to be
dubious; however, recently this was strongly supported by solid data (Fuwa, Takeda, Zwierz, Wiseman,
& Furusawa, 2015).
Spooky and other phenomena from physics have often been used to explain complex phenomena
related to ODC, such as in Wheatley’s (1992) popular book, and this speculation continues in the
academic literature (e.g., Kilburg & Donohue, 2011). Sometimes such metaphoric translation from one
disciple (physics) to another (ODC) can be useful, but often it is misleading. This is especially so if it
merely becomes an attempt to explain something difficult to understand in ODC by invoking something
else difficult to understand from another area--and calling that confound of misunderstandings an
explanation, especially when it does not fit well. In this regard, I recently was involved in debunking a
popular finding in psychology using the famous Lorenz equations from physics, and that finding was
widely applied to ODC. That finding can be seen as based on voodoo science and, although now
debunked, continues to spawn zombie publications.
Imagine being told that there is a specific number, expressed precisely as 2.9013 but extending endlessly
(i.e., an “irrational number”), that is a universal constant defining an invariant bifurcation (or what is
popularly called a “tipping point;” e.g., Gladwell, 2000) that makes a major difference in all human
affairs, including those involving ODC. This alleged tipping point, obtained by dividing the number of
positive by the number of negative emotions, was computed to be 2.9013, and it supposedly
distinguished flourishing from languishing in all individuals and social systems across time and space.
Individuals whose positive to negative ratio of self-reported emotions are below 2.9013 would be
clinically depressed, whereas those above would be mentally well, according to this claim. Likewise,
couples whose ratio of positive to negative communication are below 2.9013 would be heading to
divorce court, while those above would remain happily married. Similarly, work teams whose ratio of
positive to negative communication are below this number would be unproductive, while those above
would be productive.
Put this way, such a claim seems pretty far-fetched, but this claim was published in the peer-reviewed
flagship journal of the largest psychology organization in the world, the American Psychologist
(Fredrickson & Losada, 2005). It also resulted in a best-selling book (Fredrickson, 2009) that received
the highest praise from a litany of well-known luminaries in psychology, many of whom are also
leaders in the ODC area.
The claim was based primarily on the physics of chaos theory and its accompanying mathematics,
complex systems dynamics, so it had considerable source validity vested in the legitimacy of science,
and became widely influential throughout the world. This number has been called the “Losada line,”
after the prominent international organizational consultant who first arrived at what was called the
“critical positivity ratio,” and Fredrickson and Losada’s (2005) paper has resulted in nearly a thousand
scholarly citations, and nearly a million Google hits. Many of these citations appeared in the formal ODC
science literature, while many of the Google hits advertise ODC consultants marketing their efforts to
raise their clients’ critical positivity ratios above the Losada line--and numerous organizations from all
sectors (e.g., government, healthcare, school, etc.) have embraced this with enthusiasm and open
wallets.
Unfortunately, this claim is bogus. A first-semester graduate student in a positive psychology master’s
program approached me. He shared that he could not believe that this ratio was credible, even though
it was being taught to him as gospel, and he wanted help in debunking it, as he knew nothing about
publishing within the culture of psychology. Although he was just beginning as a psychology graduate
student, he held a bachelor’s degree in computer science from prestigious Cambridge University, and
had been a high-functioning Information Technology expert before deciding to become a “coach”
through seeking a master’s degree in psychology at the age of 51.
Like many, I had seen Fredrickson and Losada’s (2005) prominent article on the critical positivity ratio
and, although I was skeptical of it, I did not know enough physics and mathematics to challenge what I
assumed had been vetted by those more knowledgeable than me--and I had my own work to explore
rather than to pursue others’ problems. However, challenged by this student, we invited a world class
mathematician and physicist, who also was known as a prominent debunker, and showed that the
mathematics in Fredrickson and Losada’s influential paper was wrong. We were then able to publish
our critique in the same journal in which the claim had been published (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman,
2013), which led to Fredrickson and Losada (2014) withdrawing their mathematics (note: this was
approximately two-thirds of their 2005 paper and its only original contribution, so why the whole paper
was not retracted seems political). However, Fredrickson (2014) continued to claim there was empirical
evidence for a tipping point somewhere around the ratio of 3, even if it was not the precise number
(2.9013) previously claimed. In a response, I and my co-authors showed that there was no empirical
evidence whatsoever for any tipping point (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman, 2014a), and this was never
challenged, let alone refuted. We titled our two papers (2013 and 2014a) with the moniker “wishful
thinking,” and also discussed the implications of this in a summary paper (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman,
2014b), describing the incident as an example of “romantic scientism,” another name for voodoo
science. This was widely covered by the press (e.g., Anthony, 2014), and it would be reasonable to
expect this debunked claim would have simply gone away as part of the history of discarded notions.
Alas, zombie papers continue to argue for an optimum tipping point for a positivity ratio, showing how
hard it is to kill the spawn of voodoo science. In areas related to ODC, Lewis (2015) stated “the
statistical analysis on which this assertion is made has been questioned (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman,
2013) and the debate rages as to the status of the finding” (p. 331). Boyatzis, Rochford, and Taylor
(2015) similarly stated “a recent critique of Fredrickson and Losada’s ratio (Brown et al., 2013) has raised
a fresh debate as to the relative strength of these two affective states (see also Fredrickson, 2013)”
(n.p.). As a result of this confused situation, the scientific literature continues to include papers
referencing a tipping point around 3, despite the utter lack of evidence for any such claim. For example,
Terni (2015) stated, “Fredrickson (2009) found that a ratio of positive to negative emotions of 3 to 1 or
more leads to flourishing, a finding that still holds despite recent criticism” (p. 12).
Although Fredrickson and Losada (2013) issued a correction withdrawing the mathematics, and
Fredrickson never defended her claim that empirical evidence supported a tipping point around 3
(Fredrickson, 2013) against our refutation of that claim (Brown, Sokal, & Friedman, 2014a), belief in a
critical positivity ratio that serves as a tipping point at the Losada line (or somewhere near it) persists.
There are some beginnings of wider acceptance of this debunking, however. For example, Shrira,
Bodner, and Palgi (2015) showed that the observed ratio changes depending upon research participants’
ages and measurement approaches, so the ratio is clearly not empirically invariant around 3—as it varies
widely. Nevertheless, this zombie finding has recently been made scarier, as Losada recanted his
previous retraction of the mathematics on his own company’s website (see
http://www.losadalineconsulting.net/#!articles/cirw). Finally, the staying power of this alleged scientific
finding, despite compelling evidence to its contrary, is so congruent with the underlying cultural belief
about applying science to the complexity of humans and social systems (e.g., that we can find universal
laws about complex human concerns and even quantify them to five digits) is scary news for the
Halloween season!
References
Anthony, A. (2014, January 18). The British amateur who debunked the mathematics of
happiness. Guardian/Observer. Retrieved from
http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jan/19/mathematics-of-happiness-debunked-nick-brown
Boyatzis, R., Rochford, K., Taylor. S. (2015). The role of the positive emotional attractor in
vision and shared vision: toward effective leadership, relationships, and engagement. Frontiers in
Psychology, 21(May). http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00670
Brown, N., Sokal, A., & Friedman, H. (2014a). The persistence of wishful thinking. American
Psychologist. 69(6), 629-632.
Brown, N., Sokal, A., & Friedman, H. (2014b). Positive psychology and romantic methodolotry.
American Psychologist, 69(6), 636-637.
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Brief Biography
Harris Friedman, PhD, is a clinical and organizational consulting psychologist.
He recently retired as Research Professor of Psychology at University of Florida,
where he remains on its faculty, and previously retired as Professor Emeritus at
Saybrook University. He now teaches part-time at Goddard College, consults,
conducts independent research, and writes extensively. He has over 200
professional publications, and his most recent books include Transcultural
Competence (2015, American Psychological Association) with Jerry Glover, PhD,
and the following co-edited volumes: The Praeger Handbook of Social Justice
and Psychology, Vols. 1-3 (2014) and The Wiley-Blackwell Handbook of
Transpersonal Psychology (2013). He is Senior Editor of the International
Journal of Transpersonal Studies and Associate Editor of The Humanistic
Psychologist, and is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA).
He recently won the APA Humanistic Psychology Division’s Abraham Maslow Award “given to an
individual for an outstanding and lasting contribution to the exploration of the farther reaches of human
spirit.” He can be contacted at < [email protected]>.