The lifecycle of questionable ideas

No one's ever really gone

1. Develop and characterize a tool/idea (henceforth simply called "idea") intended to help people/society in some way

2. Write a journal article about it

3. It gets picked up by the broader media and popularized

4. People outside of the discipline vastly exaggerate its explanatory power

5. Companies/institutions start incorporating it into various aspects of their business, from hiring policy to evaluation, to employee training, to customer-facing practices

6. This goes on for a while

7. Above applications of this idea result in no observable change, or even a worsening of the situation

8. Original author comes out with a statement that this idea was never meant to be used in such far-reaching ways as it is now being used

9. Virtually no one notices or cares about Step 8

10. New journal articles start to come out that suggest this tool/idea doesn't even work

11. Those who have already spent a lot of time and resources on this idea dismiss these new articles, stuck in the belief that because the INTENTIONS are good, then the only acceptable reason the OUTCOMES could be bad is that "we're doing it wrong" or "not doing it hard enough", so if we could just find a better way to do it, or if our attempts were more generously funded, it would definitely work this time

12. (optional) Create a whole class of workers and job titles dedicated to this effort

13. Cue several decades more of promoting it in various forms, at great cost, with similar results

14. A long-time proponent of the idea, now close to retirement: "It might be time to consider the possibility that this was a bad idea"

In truth, step 14 may never come. Even if it does, there's no guarantee that it will catch on with other proponents, many of whom can expect to continue to make a buck from pushing it, and at this point may even associate the idea with themselves so closely that attacking it is no different than attacking them.

Examples:

• Learning styles

  • Popularized in the 1970's

  • Still rearing its head from time to time to this day, even where I work

• The whole language method

  • Popularized in the 1840's

  • Has more lives than a cat; has died in the past, sometimes comes back under a new name

  • Still preferred by ~75% of teachers in the US despite having virtually no scientific support

  • If you’re wondering what’s supposed to be taught instead of the whole language method, that would be phonics

There are definitely more examples, and I may add to this list in the future. A couple of questions for readers:

1. Do you have any other examples that fit this general trend, even loosely?

2. What is a relatively new idea that you believe is headed down this path?

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