"Doing a very accurate study on PhotoReading, be it its efficiency, effectiveness, affects on the brain ... is next to impossible."
With all due respect, this claim is absurd.
What you are claiming here is that the effects of Photoreading cannot be quantified. If so, then how can LSC or anyone else make ANY claims about it?
Take several people. Have them read a text the normal way. Test them. Have people photoread and activate the text using photoreading in a proper manner. Test them.
Compare the test results.
Of course there will be anomolies, individual differences, etc. Testing is not perfect. It gives you a rough estimate of where to aim your focus to find the truth. The more tests, the more variety among the tests, the more hard data. The more hard data, the better and better we know about that which is being tested.
From your point of view, Youngprer, NOTHING involving subjective experience in any way can be tested, because they all involve subconscious processes, etc. We know for a fact that this is not the case.
If PhotoReading cannot have a predicatable effect, why teach it? Why learn it? If it can, then this effect, because it is predictable, can be tested and measured.
Testing is imperfect, of course, but it is still useful.
Of course some people are going to learn more than others. Of course there are generalizations that occur through the process of testing that delete important data. Tests can be adapted, more tests can be made, and we can learn more and more about that which we test.
Testers have to take into account the people who did poorly before photoreading and then do very well after learning and practicing it.
A danger of allowing your material to be tested rigorously is that you might have to end up changing your beliefs and descriptions about the technique. Testing may prove your theories wrong and point to new areas where the magic is really happening and help to explain how that magic happens. It can help improve techniques.
The method sometimes works and sometimes doesn't in school (depending on HOW it is done), but if you take a look at the monitor in front of you, the keyboard at your hands, and all the other technology surrounding you ... you can find abundant proof of how the scientific method of rigorous experimentation and *testing* works.
I like PhotoReading. I support it. I like LSC and am grateful for the products they produce. At the same time I support testing and the scientific method. I do not think support of a company means agreeing with everything they say and do.
I am for testing not because I think PhotoReading will be totally debunked, but because I think photoreading, in the end, will be proven effective. Testing provides feedback. And, supposedly, feedback is important in self-development of all kinds.
[This message has been edited by babayada (edited November 14, 2004).]
