Predicting the Future

We all predict the future. When we read a story, educators tell us that we are unconsciously trying to guess what comes next in the story. It’s part of the fun of reading. Sometimes the author will give us hints about what is coming next such as using the writing technique of foreshadowing.

Here is an example of how the average person might make a prediction. Someone buys an old, used car. A friend says, "You just wasted your money. It’ll break down within the year (prediction). You would have done better buying a new one." We are not only good at making a lot of predictions we are also good at covering our tracks when the prediction doesn’t pan out. If the car is purring along after a year, the friend might say, "Of course, it lasted longer than a year. You took better care of it than most people." After two years, the friend might be saying, "Well, I guess you just got lucky and got a better-than-average care." Very few people would say, "I was flat wrong about my prediction because your car is still running."

Of course, we mortals act like this. That’s because we are not professional prognosticators. We all know that the pros do a much better job at making predictions. That is why they are interviewed for the knowledge they have to share.

Oops, maybe they aren’t all that good. Several years ago, a psychologist decided to check out how well professional forecasters actually do. Philip Tetlock is a professor at the Haas School of Business in Berkeley. He decided to find out if experts who actually made their living in the field of politics and economics could predict events accurately in their field of study. He found people who regularly offered advice and made public comments on a variety of trends in their specific fields of expertise. He chose 284 experts to study. Over the course of the study, the experts had made an amazing total of 82,361 forecasts.

Let’s see how these experts did. Would you pass the envelope, please. Okay, let’s look at the results of these super mortals. Oh — something must be wrong here. The results are unimpressive. Did they do only slightly better than you or I would have done? No. Did they do the same as Jane and John Doe might have done. Nope. Omagosh. They actually did worse than the average person would have done by just guessing.

The study also found that the more the experts knew the less reliable they were at guessing what would happen to the world in the future. Dr. Tetlock explained this by saying, "We reach the point of diminishing marginal predictive returns for knowledge disconcertingly quickly. . . . In this age of academic hyperspecialization, there is no reason for supposing that contributors to top journals—distinguished political scientists, area study specialists, economists, and so on—are any better than journalists or attentive readers of the New York Times in ‘reading’ emerging situations." This study also showed that forecasters who were well known would have exaggerated confidence in their forecasts. He concluded that "Experts in demand were more overconfident than their colleagues who eked out existences far from the limelight."

This is terrible. Why do our experts do so poorly? The best guess is based on human nature. People love to be right but hate being wrong. So, when we make a guess (forecast) we "fall in love" with our choice. No matter how it turns out we stick with the choice, justifying it right to the bitter end. This seems to be exactly what plagued the experts.

You would think that really smart people would learn from their mistakes. Even though experts are smarter than most of us, they are also human and subject to the thinking errors that affect all humans. One (of the many) thinking errors that might explain why smart people don’t learn from their failed predictions is called confirmation bias. This error describes how most people tend to dismiss new information that doesn’t fit with what they already believe. So if experts really believe their predictions actually come true most of the time, then they will automatically refuse to accept the failures.

Other psychologists think that maybe too much information may also be a handicap for accurate predictions. By having more information than the rest of us, an expert can marshal more facts to support her predictions. Although these predictions may be more appealing to the average person, they are still subject to the same failure rate.

Even when a prediction does come true, an expert will believe they had made the prediction with a great amount of certainty. Dr. Tetlock found out this did not match the data they had collected. In other words the experts were actually more tentative prior to the prediction than what they thought after the predicted event.

This also happens to people who believe they have special powers to see into the future, like psychics. Years ago, a young woman contacted me to tell me that she had precognitive dreams. For example, she would dream about a terrible tragedy like an airplane crash prior to it actually happening. After she gave me some very impressive examples, I suggested she write down the details of her next tragedy dream immediately upon waking in the morning. After writing down the details, she was to seal the paper in an envelope and mail it to me immediately. She called me a few weeks later and excitedly told me about a dream she had about an accident that had killed many people. When she read about it a few days later all the details in her dream matched the newspaper account. I had her come to my office and we opened her letter together. She was surprised, shocked and disappointed with what she had written. The information was not even close to the event in the newspaper. Her mind had tricked her with something called retrograde memory. As she read about the accident in the newspaper the information went into that part of her brain that held long-term memory. As she tried to recall what she had dreamed, the dream details were replaced with the actually details.

How about those of us who buy into the predictions made by other people? Why would we be so gullible? There are many factors that make it more likely we will do this. One reason is that people tend to be more willing to believe information that has a lot of detail. One study asked people which of two health policies they might choose. The first policy covered their hospital expenses for any reason. The second policy also covered their hospitalization expenses for all diseases and accidents. Even though the coverage on these policies were identical, most people said they would be willing to pay a higher insurance premium for the second policy. More detail. This might mean we are more likely to accept a prediction if it has a lot of details instead of one that is less descriptive.

All of this is to say that people should be cautious about making decisions. A few years a really smart person made the mistake of making his prediction public. William Dembski is a Ph.D. mathematician who did not understand the pitfalls of predictions. Oddly enough, even though he teaches in an academic setting, he is a vocal critic of Darwin and evolution. He believes that evolution will never be able to answer how life evolved on our planet and is a strong supporter of something called Intelligent Design. He was so confident in his beliefs that he wagered a bottle of single-malt scotch about the truth of his beliefs. He publicly said that if the issue of teaching evolution or Intelligent Design in schools should ever go to trial, Intelligent Design would win hands down. Then the Dover trial took place. Intelligent Design was thoroughly dismissed (by a conservative judge) as an acceptable subject for school biology classes. Like many prognosticators, Dr. Dembski will not admit defeat. Evidently he has never given away that bottle of single-malt scotch.

Another smart person is more humble. Paul Krugman, the 2008 Nobel Prize winner in economics and a professor at Princeton University, says that "making predictions is hard … especially about the future, and sometimes about the recent past." Even that great philosopher about life, Yogi Berra, agreed with Dr. Krugman when he said, "It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future."

If you are interested in the book from which much of this material was taken, it is called "Expert Political Judgment: How Good is it? How Can we Know?" (2005), Princeton University Press.

Science Doesn't Know Everything

Have you ever heard someone say that science doesn’t know everything? I hear it often when a someone is trying to explain something based on science. A listener may nod sagely and respond with the above observation. For example, at a party someone mentions they have found that psychics are really good at what they do. Eventually, someone else will say there is absolutely no scientific evidence that psychics can do what they claim to do: talk to dead people, read the future, know something private about someone they have never met. The person who finds psychics helpful will retort that it doesn’t make any difference that science doesn’t support psychics because "science doesn’t know everything."

This actually is a correct statement. Every scientist I have known has readily admitted that as a scientist they cannot explain everything. Not even close to everything. Why would a smart scientist admit such a thing? Doesn’t this just bolster the notion that science is not such a big deal after all? Even the great Einstein said, "The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and all science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed."

Wow! How could such a hard-headed egghead make such an admission? It’s because the job of science is to probe the mysteries of life and the universe. Science is always wandering into areas that are not understood or not yet explained. They can do this because the tools they use are the most powerful ever developed by the human mind. Who would have ever thought that we would even attempt to try understand emotions such as love or even the nature of consciousness? Yet, this is what psychologists around the world attempt to understand daily.

But, since science can’t explain everything, doesn’t this take the glow off the adoration that people have towards science? Not really. The average person loves absolutes, but science does not deal in the absolute. Instead of concentrating on "everything" what if we were to emphasize what science can actually explain. Think about what humans did not know before the advent of science about 400 years ago.

Contributions of Science
Here are some discovers made by scientists in the early years:

• Johannes Kepler (1609) was able to figure out that the planets in our solar system had orbits that were elliptical. Prior to this everyone knew (because Aristotle said so) that the orbits were circular.


• William Harvey (1628) found out how blood was circulated through the body. His discovery was the beginning of modern physiology.


• Robert Boyle (1661) made an important distinction between alchemy and chemistry. He introduced the concept of earth’s building blocks, the elements, and helped found the new science of chemistry.


• Isaac Newton (1687) revolutionized how we understood our world. He was able to show us that natural laws exist in nature. For example, the three laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation.


• Edmund Halley (1758) was the first person to accurately predict the appearance of a specific comet.


• Joseph Priestley (1774) found out through the scientific method that the air we breath is made up of oxygen and carbon dioxide.


• Richard Trevithick (1804) was able to use the principles of science to invent the steam locomotive.


• Michael Faraday (1823) was the first person who was able to turn a liquid into a gas.


• Friedrich Wilhelm Essel (1838) used science to shrink the size of our solar system by finding out that a star, 61 Cygni, turned out to be 35 quadrillion miles away. It is so far that it takes six years for the star’s light to reach us.


• Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von Helmholtz (1847) gathered enough scientific data to show that the total amount of energy in the universe was constant. This came to be known as the law of conservation of energy and was later called the first law of thermodynamics.


• Charles Darwin (1858) published The Origen of Species which rocked the world of science and became the basis for a new biology. Some scientists consider his painstaking data collection and conclusions to be the equivalent of the accomplishments of the great Isaac Newton.


• William Huggins (1863) discovered that everything was made up of the same elements.


• Alexander Graham Bell (1876) invented the telephone.


• Charles-Louis-Alphonse Laveran (1880) isolated the microorganism that causes malaria.

This is an incredibly small sampling of what science discovered in its first two hundred years. From then on the scientific discoveries came faster and faster. The speed of light was measured at 186,000 miles per second. The bacterium that caused tuberculosis was found. A vehicle was designed to be driven by internal combustion. More elements were discovered. Science found out about radio waves.

You get the idea. We haven’t even listed any discoveries of the twentieth century. You may want to think of the contributions that science made in the last hundred years. As you make your list, you will notice that the rate of discovery is accelerating.

The Power of Prediction
Anyone can make predictions. And many have tried. Market analysts are constantly making predictions about what direction the market will take. Some religious people love to predict the end of the earth. Psychics make predictions of what will happen in the future: meeting someone to fall in love with; natural disasters; what is going to happen to famous people in the next year.
It only takes a few minutes of reflection to realize how inaccurate nonscientific predictions are. If you listen to the talking heads on the financial channels you will quickly notice that everyone contradicts everyone else. One says the market will soar in the next year, while the next expert says we will have a financial melt down.

Christianity has a long list of dates when momentous events were supposed to happen but didn’t. One of the favorite predictions by "end times" Christians is the date of the world’s end (the rapture): a dozen predictions were made that 1988 would be the year of earth’s demise. Even the great apostle Paul predicted that Jesus would return in his lifetime.

For many years an acquaintance of mine would cull all the tabloids on January 1st in order to list all the predictions psychics made for the coming year. On December 31, he would publish the predictions. Year after year, every psychic failed to make a single prediction that came true. Yet, year after year people continue to be amazed at the non-predictions of psychics.

Only scientists consistently make accurate predictions. Of course they cannot do this with 100% accuracy because the data they use is sometimes faulty or skimpy. What other group or institution could predict within minutes the sunrise for any date in the distant future? What other group devised a tool that can predict—with an 87 accuracy—which newlywed couple will divorce? What other non-scientific organization can accurately determine the age of the earth and its moon?

The answer, of course, is that only scientists can accomplish these amazingly difficult tasks. Many other organizations have attempted through the millennia to explain how nature works. Philosophers have debated and disagreed among themselves how things are. Theologians try to explain life but have no data to back it up so find themselves fractured and disagreeing vigorously between each other.

Since the dawning of humans on our planet people have tried many methods to discover the truth about life and the world in which we live. Humans have tried to increase knowledge by an appeal to authority and this works sometimes. However, smart authority figures still make mistakes because of the biases built into the human brain. This may explain why so many intelligent people will follow the lead of a powerful figure: Jim Jones and Adolf Hitler are only two examples of the power of authority. Authority figures usually have a public platform they can use to constantly pass on ideas and information to their followers. the problem with this is that experiments have shown us that simply repeating a false statement over and over leads people to believe that it is true. Accepting the words of an authority figure must be done cautiously.

Societies have used tradition to establish what we must believe and how we must behave. One problem with tradition is that each new generation wants to put its own stamp on the traditions of their elders. This introduces differences between the old traditions and the new traditions. Another problem is that each culture has its own tradition. No matter how revered the traditions are they often contradict one another — they can’t all be right.

Humans love to decide what is right and true by attending to testimonials. This is why advertising relies so heavily on testimonials. Robert Cialdini, a social psychologist and author of the powerful book Influence, discovered that people make decisions on what to believe or how to act by looking at what other people believe. If they know or like the other person they are even more likely to be persuaded to adopt the other person’s beliefs. Advertising has made us cynical because we all know that famous people are paid enormous sums of money to say what the advertiser wants them to say. Nevertheless, testimonials still convince people to believe the unbelievable.

In more recent times, humans have turned to majority opinion to determine what is right. Although this works sometimes, we have also discovered what is called the "tyranny of the majority"—when a majority of people decide that wrong is right. Slavery is an excellent example of majority opinion going down the wrong path.

Faith is another method for determining what is right and good. Yet even faith has its limitations. Since faith is defined as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen," each person or group of individuals can believe what they want without any evidence to back it up. Some people believe that God will heal their sick child even when the parents avoid any medical intervention. This kind of faith almost always ends in disaster and grief. As philosophers often disagree, people of faith disagree, sometimes violently, with people of a differing faith. To guard against someone else’s faith interfering with their own, many people declare that their faith is the only true faith. When thousands of groups demand that their version of faith is right (orthodox) and all other faiths are heretical, something must be amiss. How can everyone be right at the same that everyone is wrong?

A more recent style of discovering truth is the use of personal experience. Have you ever heard someone say, "I don’t care what the evidence is, I know what I believe." People who believe they have seen or experienced a UFO from somewhere outside our solar system or galaxy use this method a lot. "You can tell me all you want about how impossible it is for someone that far away to get to our planet, but you can’t convince me that I didn’t experience it." If personal experience is the final word, we are all in trouble. It only takes two people to be in the same location for a disagreement to arise. With six billion people on planet earth, there is a lot of divergent experience.

All of these methods for finding knowledge are flawed in that they have extremely high error rates. When the scientific method became a viable option, people realized that science was now the method with the lowest error rate. Though not perfect, science has reduced human error dramatically. Scientists are trained to put aside all the above methods for increasing knowledge.

When they do this (even though they also can slip up) the results are stunning. What other organization of people have given us the wonders of modern medicine? No other group. What other collection of humans have discovered how the world operates? There aren’t any. Science is the only organization that has made any significant contribution towards increased life expectancy. Science alone has shown us how vast our universe is. Only science can explain the microscopic world of molecules, atoms and leptons. Will power and determination did not land people on the moon — scientists did that.

More importantly, only science is willing to say, "we were wrong" because that is the nature of science. By definition every scientist is supposed to be skeptical of the work of all other scientists. Science is not a method driven by opinion, faith, authority, or majority vote. No association of scientists voted on whether or not to believe in gravity. The secret of science’s amazing productivity is the reliance on what the evidence says. When scientists disagree it is because the evidence is not yet complete.

Science doesn’t know everything and never will. Science is based on understanding the unknown by letting the unknown speak forth its truths. Once the unknown is known the scientist moves on to the next unknown. Why will science never finish its job? The editors of The Encyclopedia of Ignorance wrote, "Compared to the pond of knowledge, our ignorance remains atlantic. Indeed the horizon of the unknown recedes as we approach it." This is the job of science—to light candles in the darkness of our ignorance.

Cosmology and the Bible

If you are not familiar with the word cosmology, it merely means the the study of the origin and nature of the universe.

From the very beginning, the Bible teaches that we live in a three-tiered universe. We find this idea in the story of creation. And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. (Genesis 1:6)

The original readers of these words, the Hebrews, understood this to mean that the earth was like a hemisphere floating on a giant body of water. The firmament was a solid, arched vault that sat over the earth. It had several functions: it supported a reservoir of water (Psalms. 148:4); it also supported the stars; and it was the dividing line between heaven and earth. In this solid dome were windows and doors that let moisture fall to earth in the form of rain and snow (Genesis. 7:11; Isaiah. 24:18; Malachi. 3:10).

Ancient people had no idea of the vast distances in our solar system, let alone the universe. They thought the firmament was close enough that birds could fly to it and cruise along its underside. The writer of the Book of Baruch adds additional details to the tower of Babel story. He said the people who built the tower (or ziggurat) wanted to find out what the firmament was made of: clay, brass, or iron. When they reached it their intent was to poke a hole in it (3 Baruch 3:7-8). Sounds like an early scientific experiment. Since God wouldn’t allow them to mess with his creation, he caused them to go blind and scrambled their brains.

Without modern technology and mathematics, people believed that God and other divine beings such as the angels lived above the firmament (The Lord is high over all nations, and his glory is higher than the heavens.—Psalm 113:4). Below the earth was a dark, watery place of chaos (The great dragon was hurled down—that ancient serpent called the Devil.—Revelation 12:9). Over the millennia, people have always assumed God lived "up there." People refer to the "Man Upstairs" and will raise their eyes or point upward when speaking of God. A familiar hymn sung in churches is titled "Glory to God in the Highest."

In this day and age we know that God doesn’t sit on a throne above the heavens. If you travel high enough you won’t be bumping into any angels flitting about. Many Christians have even began to wonder about Jesus ascending into the clouds. Even though the writer of Luke told two different stories (one in the Gospel of Luke, the other in the Acts of the Apostles) about how Jesus left his disciples, Christian tradition has always focused on the first story — that Jesus was bodily lifted into the sky on his journey to heaven. Contemporary Christians question this story. Even if Jesus had been able to travel at the speed of light in his journey to heaven, two thousand years later, he would not even have left our galaxy.

Does this mean that Christians today know better than our ancestors long ago? Have Christians stopped thinking that God lives "up there?" As I’ve mentioned before, psychologists like to try to find answers to human questions. Psychologists from Gettysburg College and North Dakota State University wondered if people still thought of God as being above the earth. Or in their words, did people "consistently employ descriptions of vertical space in both Christian and non-Christian religions?" The researchers also recognized that most people thought of the Devil as being "down there."

They devised a clever experiment to find out if people associated God with "up" and the Devil with "down." They did this by showing a series of four God-related words (Almighty, Creator, Deity, and Lord) and four Devil-related words (Antichrist, Demon, Lucifer, and Satan) on a computer monitor. The total of eight words were randomly shown either at the top of the monitor or near the bottom of the monitor. When the word appeared the subjects were supposed to indicate whether it was God related or Devil related. Sometimes the God words appeared near the top and sometimes near the bottom of the monitor. Likewise for the Devil-related words.

The researchers were not interested in whether or not people assigned the words to the correct category — God or Devil. They measured how quickly each person responded. The psychologists guessed that people would take longer to assign a word to the correct category if the word were in a mismatched space, namely, a God word at the bottom or a Devil word at the top.

The results verified what they thougth would happen. The subjects took longer to match the God word when it was at the bottom than when it appeared at the top. Here is how they explain their results.

It seems that our results are consistent with religious symbolism and ritual. Preachers, priests, or ministers often speak to their congregations from an elevated platform known as the pulpit. This practice intentionally or unintentionally builds on the sorts of perceptual representational processes examined here, with a higher vertical position suggesting a closer relationship to God.

Our data are also consistent with the frequent observation, in anecdotes at least, that higher realms of attention seem to promote experiences of closeness to God. Along these lines, it has been reported that military pilots and astronauts tend to have experiences of God when flying high above the earth Similarly . . . an upward eye gaze is generally associated with experiences of being closer to God. Such systematic links seem particularly amenable to conceptions of divinity emphasizing high regions of vertical space.

The authors of the study explain the reason people do this is because our brains have a mechanism for using metaphors for describing something that is not directly accessible to our senses. The human brain is a sensory-based organ. Consequently, when we need to describe and make sense of abstract concepts, we need to use metaphors to make sense of what we are attempting to communicate. Since nothing supernatural can be perceived through our five senses, humans need to use metaphors for describing God or the Devil. That is why humans use metaphors such as "up" to describe something as ineffable as God.

A final note. The study did not find as strong a relationship between Devil and "down" as it did between God and "up." The data also found no significant differences in performance between believers and nonbelievers.

If you want to read the original study, you can go to the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology (2007, Volume 93, Number 5, pages 699-710). I can also send you a copy of the article in PDF format if you send your request to terry@sandbek.com.

Cleanliness Is Not Next to Godliness

As a doctor and waiting-woman eavesdrop on Lady Macbeth, they have the following whispered conversation followed by Lady Macbeth's immortal words.

Doctor:
What is it she does now? Look how she rubs her hands.

Gentlewoman:
It is an accustom’d action with her, to seem thus washing her hands. I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.

Lady Macbeth:
Yet here’s a spot.

Doctor:
Hark, she speaks. I will set down what comes from her, to satisfy my remembrance the more strongly.

Lady Macbeth:
Out, damn’d spot! out, I say!—One; two: why, then ‘tis time to do’t.—Hell is murky.—Fie, my lord, fie, a soldier, and afeard? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our pow’r to accompt?—Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him?

Macbeth Act 5, scene 1, 26–40

Today, we call it mysophobia — an irrational fear of contamination. Lady Macbeth had developed an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). It is a common after someone who has experienced or witnessed a traumatic event. Although there was a time delay for her, she was the one who convinced her husband, Macbeth to murder King Duncan of Scotland. By so doing, she became Queen of Scotland. Eventually, the awareness of what she had done began take its toll on her. The excerpt above is from the famous scene (Act 5 of Shakespeare's play Macbeth) and typifies the agony of living with OCD.

I still remember when my new client walked into my office many years ago. Moving slowly so that she would not brush against anything, she carefully wiped off a place on the couch with a tissue she kept in her purse. During the interview she admitted that she used up two large spray cans of Lysol in her house every week.

She was deathly afraid of germs contaminating her body, Like Lady Macbeth, she never really saw what she desperately tried so hard to clean. Education had no effect on her compulsive behavior. She was an intelligent person who understood that her body contained about 100 trillion cells. She also knew that ninety percent of these cells belonged to bacteria (germs) living in and on her body. When she recounted these facts, she curled up in a ball, closed her eyes and looked like she was attempting to hide from the germs.

As a nation we now have people who, although they don’t have mysophobia or OCD, have gone overboard on cleanliness. As the twentieth century progressed, Americans became more consciously aware and afraid of uncleanliness. Maybe it all started with deodorant and mouthwash. Although originally cosmetic, their effectiveness had to do with being able to kill "germs." Most people had never heard of anti-bacterial soap ten years ago. If they did, it was because of its use in medical facilities.

Gradually this product made its way to the average consumer. Now these products can be found in any drug store or grocery store. The big jump in usage came in 2005. People spent more than sixty-five million dollars on sanitizers which was a jump of more than fifty-four percent from only the year before.

Microbiologists have become concerned about our obsession with killing germs because our bodies need bacteria for a variety of reasons. These good germs and bugs help us digest and use the nutrition in the foods we eat. They also protect us from bad bugs that get into our bodies. Microbiologists have determined that if you could become totally germ-free, you would be dead within two weeks.

We need to begin to have a balance in our lives regarding cleanliness. Appropriate hygiene is important but knowing where to draw the line is equally important. Dr. Anne Maczulak, a microbiologist, has written a book entitled The Five-Second Rule and Other Myths About Germs.
Some of her gems (not germs) are startling. One of the big questions many people think about is related to the use of public toilet seats. She says it is extremely difficult to catch a disease from toilet seats. Studies have shown that there are about fifty microbes per square inch of surface on a public toilet seat. Your average office has about 21,000 microbes per square inch of surface. Scary.

She also says it is important what you do with your hands. After using the bathroom you are advised to wash your hands with soap and warm water for about twenty seconds. This will kill about eighty percent of any dangerous germs. On the other hand (no pun intended) try to keep your hands away from your face until after you have washed your hands. Why? Because these are the openings in your face — eyes, nose and mouth — that the germs use to get inside your body.

You’ve probably read by now that your kitchen cutting board is a breeding ground for the bad guys. After using a cutting board, she suggests you wash it with hot, soapy water, rinse it well, then pat it with a paper towel and let it air dry. Why go to so much trouble? She points to studies that have shown the average cutting board has two hundred times more fecal bacteria than your toilet seat. More scary.

For many people in our society, the old saying that "cleanliness is next to Godliness" has now been converted to "cleanliness is next to perfection." Basically, Dr. Maczulak tries to convince us that perfect cleanliness is not only impossible but is harmful.

Back to OCD and mysophobia. What is this all about? The condition is generally maintained by an attempt to control anxiety and discomfort. If a person feels uncomfortable in the presence of dirt or invisible germs, he might feel better after cleaning. Once this happens, it can escalate. When the anxiety returns, the person believes that if he doesn’t clean, then the anxiety will get worse and last forever. Unfortunately, it is like taking drugs to feel better. The effectiveness eventually wears off and more cleaning is needed to get the same sense of relief.

How do psychologists treat this problem when it has evolved into OCD/mysophobia? Our current treatments are quite effective. Unfortunately, there are people who try to sell treatments that are unproven and may not be any more effective than a placebo. Some of the more common examples of unproven therapies include hypnotherapy, neuro-linguistic programming, and so-called "energy therapies."

Cognitive-behavior therapy and exposure therapy have proven track records and have helped millions of people lead more normal lives. Sometimes these two are used by themselves; other times they are used in conjunction with each other. These treatments are extremely effective and, if properly administered, work after just a few months.

Some people have been helped with SSRI antidepressant medications used along side of psychological therapy. However, you must understand that few people get a permanent cure using these drugs by themselves. There is also the problem of unwanted side effects.

So, if you know of someone suffering from mysophobia or OCD related to germs and dirt, contact an experienced cognitive behavior psychologist who has had experience with this problem.