Ever ‘eard of a Bloke Named Sharpley?

Hi there

The "Old Disrespectable" returns, briefly, with news of a new resource.

Some of you may remember that some time ago I embarked on a study of various academic criticisms of the field of NLP. And I'm still at it.

One of the people I've had in mind right from the start of the project is a Dr Christopher Sharpley of Monash University, Victoria, Australia.
Sharpley wrote two articles (1984, 1987) in which he reviewed experiments which investigated just one concept and one technique and (according to some critics of NLP) proved that NLP "doesn't make sense and doesn't work".

Now you might not think that a couple of articles written over 20 years ago can be very important in 2009. So may I point out that the comment I've just quoted comes from the blog of a neurologist at Yale University in 2006. And I've just come across an article by a Dr Gareth Roderique-Davies of the University of Glamorgan which is little more than an abbreviated version of Sharpley's 1984 article, which was published in that university's "Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education" just a few weeks ago, in July 2009.

Now I know many NLPers don't give a stuff about NLP research, but for anyone who would like to get an idea of what this is all about, there is now a detailed study of Sharpley's 1984 article, including a rather interesting explanation from Sharpley about why he wrote the review article in the first place, here:

Sharpley #1

Hope this is of interest.

I'm off now to write a sub-FAQ on Sharpley's second article.

;¬)

Be well

Andy B.
Honest Abe's NLP Emporium
Honest Abe's NLP Emporium