In her book Mind Change1 (reviewed by John Cunningham in Solidarity 342), Susan Greenfield says âWe may be living in an unprecedented era where an increasing number of people are ... learning a new default mind-set ... one of low grade aggression, short attention span and a reckless obsession with the here and nowâ. The key word in that statement is âmayâ!
The dangers of digital technology have become a major theme of Greenfieldâs but what is less known is that this is way outside her area of expertise.
This matters because Greenfield is a âpublic intellectualâ, one who is listened to. A prominent populariser of science, she was the first woman to give the Royal Institution Christmas lectures in 1994, and actually became Director of the RI in 1998. She received a CBE for services to the public understanding of science and was made a baroness in 2001. These rewards follow a career researching factors in the development of Parkinsonâs and Alzheimerâs diseases.
As a role model for women aspiring to become scientists, she bears a responsibility to lead by example. How has she measured up?
In the last decade or so, she has become known for her theory of âmind changeâ, the supposed detrimental effects on brain development in young people of digital technology. She has expressed the view that social networking sites and video games could lead to dementia and autism in the young. This is a completely unrelated to her research which has focused on diseases of older age.
When the illogicality of linking increased internet use (usually in teenage years) with increased diagnoses of autism (usually around age two) was challenged, she claimed to be merely pointing to the increase in both and not really linking them at all. This reminds me of the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monsterâs linking the decrease in the number of pirates with the increase in global warming. In Mind Change, she has now introduced her own definition of autism to get round the objection.
What evidence does she give for her theories?
In a New Scientist interview2 Greenfield refers to two studies that she claims support her fears about childrenâs brain development. Only one looks at brains (Yuan et al., 2011),3 those of a small number of young adults said to have âinternet addiction.â Differences were found but there is no way of knowing if these were caused by internet use or even whether they are detrimental.
The other (Bavelier et al., 2010)4 points to both positive and negative effects of using digital technology but says nothing about changes in brain structure. Greenfieldâs evidence is, to say the least, rather thin.
A more measured view comes from Choudhury and McKinney (2010)5 who refer to Socratesâ doom-laden prophecies about the new-fangled technology of writing that was becoming popular with the young 2500 years ago. He spoke of the inability of written words to âspeak for themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others.â C&M see modern fears about digital technology as not different from similar fears about other new technologies, such as the printed mass media. The difference now is that the latest âmoral panicâ about adolescents is dressed up in a cloak of neuroscience.
Greenfield has been criticised by other scientists for her unsubstantiated claims. Dr Ben Goldacre (of Bad Science) asked in 2011 âWhy wonât Professor Susan Greenfield publish this theory in a scientific journal?â6
Psychology professor Dorothy Bishop7 pointed out in an open letter to Greenfield the illogicality of linking autism and internet use and challenged her to actually do some research. She said it was unkind to add to the burden of parents already accused of causing autism in their children. The National Autistic Society described Greenfieldâs claims as âspeculativeâ and âunhelpfulâ.
When Greenfield repeated her claims in Mind Change, Bishop felt impelled to write âWhy most scientists donât take Susan Greenfield seriouslyâ.8 In this, she looked at Greenfieldâs â500 peer-reviewed papers in support of the possible problematic effectsâ and found far fewer, many of which were newspaper articles or else irrelevant. Few claimed adverse effects from digital technology. The ones about brain plasticity did not mention digital technology. Bishop also looked at four papers that Greenfield gave as support for her autism hypothesis. These were at best irrelevant and at worst frankly weird (one linked autism prevalence with rainfall â because kids would stay indoors when it was raining and watch cable TV).
In New Scientist, Greenfield says âwe should be planning a 3D environment for our children...instead of putting them in front of a 2D oneâ. Bishop asks whether we should therefore discourage book reading.
Asked why she didnât do research in this area, Greenfield said that if someone gave her some money she would be happy to do it. But Greenfield was given some money, $2 million, by the Templeton Foundation in 2005 to fund the Oxford Centre for Science of the Mind. No details are available on its activity. Greenfield says âItâs not really for Dorothy [Bishop] to comment on how I run my career.â
But scientists have a duty to look to the evidence and to look for it. As the great cosmologist and populariser of science Carl Sagan said, âExtraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.â Sadly, we do not seem to have any evidence at all.
Notes
1. Mind change: How digital technologies are leaving their mark on our brains. Random House, 2014
2. www.newscientist.com/article/mg21128236.400-susan-greenfield-living-onlâŚâ
3. www.plosone.org/article/fetchObject.action?uri=info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2FjâŚ
4. www.cell.com/neuron/abstract/S0896-6273(10)00678-1
5. www.academia.edu/3670620/Digital_media_the_developing_brain_and_the_intâŚ
6. From his book I think youâll find itâs a little more complicated than that. Fourth Estate, 2014
7. http://deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2011/08/open-letter-to-baroness-susan.htâŚ
8. deevybee.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/why-most-scientists-dont-take-susan.html
* Perhaps the peer who reviewed them was Baroness Greenfield!
