Self Justification, Cognitive Dissonance, and Confirmation Bias

Following a theme from a recent blog, and a recent article that myself and James Steele published, I thought it appropriate to talk a little about self justification, and cognitive dissonance.

In the article I briefly discuss the concept that many scientists appear unwilling to let go of deep-rooted beliefs even when evidence appears to prove to the contrary, and that this can effect the places of publication based on the philosophies of organisations and the like.

A few days back I started reading 'Mistakes Were Made (but not by me)' by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson. The first section starts with a really nice description of the concept:

"...mindless self-justification, like quicksand, can draw us deeper into disaster. It blocks our ability to even see our errors, let alone correct them. It distorts reality, keeping us from getting all the information we need and assessing issues clearly....And it keeps many professionals from changing attitudes, and procedures that can be harmful to the public."

The book progresses to discuss cognitive dissonance which is best described by the discomfort of holding conflicting thoughts. An example of this might be the decision to smoke, whilst knowing the harmful effects. Choosing to justify these actions with whatever (false) logic you can apply; "only a certain number of people contract cancer", "my Grandfather/mother smoked every day and didn't get cancer", "if I quit I'll eat more", etc , etc.

Of course then there's confirmation bias. I've blogged about this previously when discussing mathematical probability and randomness; this is the concept that we set out to prove correct pre-conceived ideas.

I guess the point in this blog is to relate this back to exercise. Maybe you're a HIT advocate, or maybe not. Maybe you still train for hours at a time, for multiple sessions a week, with multiple sets and not training to muscular failure. Maybe you're justifying your training for some reason or another and ignoring all the scientific evidence. Maybe this has always worked for you so why change it? (by far the most common reason to avoid change - fear of the unknown) - but what if there was something even better than what you're currently doing. Perhaps you reassure yourself of your workouts because of a friend or a bodybuilder or a trainer (ignoring the genetic factors that allow them to grow well, whilst you struggle to grow at all!).

Are you choosing to do what you do because you are justifying it to yourself. Ask yourself the right questions for your goals and whether you're getting anywhere. If you are then great, if not then don't give yourself excuses; make changes; improve your workout.

The reality of it is that there are always things that we consider and perhaps provide some self-justification not to do, or continue doing. Just in the past few days this has opened my eyes to things I personally justify doing or not doing because of pre-conceived ideas or deep-rooted beliefs.

Perhaps it's time for each of us to open our eyes and our minds and test things, honestly, for ourself.

Be Well

JF 

Infimetrics, Isometrics and Logical Strength Training

It's been a while since I've blogged, and while that is partially due to my absence of good time management, it is also because I've had nothing to blog about....

Until now...

I was recently forwarded the embedded video by James Steele, a colleague of mine here at Southampton Solent University. I'm not showing it because I am in favour of it completely, but simply because the commentator is using a logical approach to training muscles. Which is the fundamentally the most essential part of everything we do. Watch it, and have a think, feel free to comment.



The other thing that this video has prompted is some novel ideas in my own training that I wanted to share. You likely know from my blogs that I am an advocate of slow, controlled movements, normally utilising resistance machines for a single set to muscular failure. However, I chose a different approach to a leg session a matter of hours earlier today.

We are blessed with a clinical MedX Knee Extension machine (see picture) here in one of the labs (which by the way is about as good as knee extension machines get), which in it's function is capable of isometric testing. (Isometric testing might best be described as locking the joint at a specific angle and measuring the force applied to the pad by attempting to move the joint normally - in this example a shin pad is locked in place with your knee at a pre-determined angle through the range of motion, and then the subject attempts to extend the knee with maximal force, this force (torque) is registered on a computer screen by way of a strain gauge).

MedX Knee Extension

So from the video it occurred to me that ultimately our goal in resistance training is to recruit as many muscle fibres as we can in a given part of the body to stimulate muscular growth (e.g. strength and/or hypertrophy) and also reap the rewards that resistance training has on the rest of our physiology.

[On the off-chance you're not clear on fibre recruitment and this principle please read Carpinelli's BRILLIANT article here!)

So for my workout, I chose to lock the machine at a given angle and apply maximal force.....for a while. Of course the muscle fibres fatigue and as such the force produced diminishes gradually, but essentially what we are seeing is that the effort remains constant irrespective of the force production. This is clearly the main goal of training our muscles. This being the case I elected to work maximally for about 90 seconds. No movement. No external forces, such as momentum. No rest phases or sticking points. Plain and simple. Knowing that I was always applying maximal effort to the pad. James Steele was on hand to provide some feedback reporting the force every 10-15 seconds as it decreased and of course encourage me (thank you!).

I elected to do 3 different angles ranging from near full knee flexion to near full knee extension. Each contraction phase was 1 minute long. That's 3 minutes of MAXIMAL work on my quadriceps whilst James watched the force decrease progressively to around 10% of my starting force.

When was the last time you did 3 minutes of MAXIMAL work on your quads. Phew. We're in the process of developing ideas as to more practical applications of this but essentially you need a joint locked in place and you need to be applying maximal force (which is the major limitation with any kind of isointertial exercise).

Anyway, I know isometrics is nothing new, but I thought I'd fill you in on that one. If you have any ideas how to progress it or apply it, or any other thoughts please feel free to comment below.

Be Well

JF

Limitations to the publication of Scientific Research

A somewhat contemporary issue that has arisen amongst some of my colleagues has been that of the 'spectrum of evidence'. Easily identified as the differing validity and reliability of the resources available and those we choose to use. Of course this exists in every sense; on a simply scale; the differences, and our perceptions of truth in news reporting from broadsheet or tabloid press, and so on.

However, what about the creme de la creme; the peer-reviewed, scientific journal articles? How reliable is the research? What biases have existed in the publication process? What effects are there with regard to the place of publication? What about 'impact factor', or accessibility? How do identify quality, and shy away from falsehoods?

Whilst this blog will go on to mention a number of articles with relevance to this including the sacking of a high profile cardiovascular physiologist in the Netherlands, the main focus of this blog is the (shameful self-promotion) recent publication of our own article discussing the limitations of the actual publication process. Including pre-conceived ideas over accuracy based on named author, or location of publication. Aptly titled "Truth in Authority or Authority in Truth?". Which to me is the best place to start.....

....Once you've read that....

Having considered the limitations to publication it is also worth recognising the limitation to the research process itself, and perhaps biased reason to even perform research, including progression of career in attaining tenure, notoriety, protection of a research discipline, and so forth. The renowned cardiovascular researcher; Donald Poldermans, having published over 500 articles was recently sacked from Erasmus Medical Centre, Rotterdam for publishing falsified data. The British Medical Journal (BMJ) have discussed this in two recent articles.(1, 2). And indeed, the BMJ regularly discuss some of the concerns over inaccuracies in the research process.

More recently still PLoS Medicine published an article 'Why most Published research findings are False'. A controversial title that discusses false positive findings, sample size, effect size, and research for promotion, (e.g. tenure)

It's hard to recognise that biases exist in something we would at least hope to see is an honest institution of society, but alas human failings appear to lurk in every shadow, or every page. I was recently directed to this discussion of peer review, and as a published author and co-author of multiple articles as well as having been on the review process for journal articles and books this is obviously an area I am extremely passionate about. Ultimately though as myself and James Steele state at the end of our article:

"We can hope that by exposing and discussing these potential biases that we encourage reviewers, editors and scientists alike to retain nothing more than an attachment to scientific process and a search for the truth, whatever that might be, rather than previous research or a set of beliefs."

Be Well

JF