“Journalists have a role to play in exposing false and misleading information in the reading world.”
A response to the response to the initial commentary.
By Claude Goldenberg
There is much to comment on here, but I’ll just point out two facts that support my suggestion that journalists have a role to play in exposing false and misleading information in the reading world (and education more generally) — just as they have a role to play in ferreting out Covid, climate change, and political misinformation and statements by unqualified individuals.
First, Drs. Mora et al ask this rhetorical question:
In a dispute between two highly respected neuroscientists, Dr. Strauss and Dr. Dehaene, do journalists believe that they/you are qualified to determine which neuroscientist is wrong, and which one is right about how language(s) are processed in the brain?
The question is premised on Strauss and Dehaene being “two highly respected neuroscientists.” Dr. Strauss might be highly respected by Drs. Mora et al, but he’s not a neuroscientist. How can I say this with such certainty? Because he’s published no research that’s appeared in the scientific literature, and neither Dr. Mora nor anyone else has been able to point me to any. I’ve asked Dr. Mora specifically, and prior to the CABE webinar I submitted a question asking for citations to Dr. Strauss’s research. I received no response.
Dr. Strauss appears to be a very well-regarded clinician, as indicated by US News and World Report:
Dr. Steven L. Strauss is a neurologist in Rosedale, Maryland and is affiliated with UPMC Altoona. He received his medical degree from University of New Mexico School of Medicine and has been in practice for more than 20 years. Dr. Steven L. Strauss has expertise in treating sleep apnea, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, among other conditions – see all areas of expertise. Dr. Steven L. Strauss accepts Aetna, Humana, Cigna, Blue Cross, United Healthcare – see other insurance plans accepted. Dr. Steven L. Strauss is highly recommended by patients.
But a neuroscientist he is not.
Still don’t believe me? Search for Steven L. Strauss at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov, the federal government’s repository for biomedical government sponsored research.
I found a piece by him entitled Politics and Reading at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a commentary (some might call it a polemic) not a research report.
In some of her online posts, Dr. Mora cites a paper by Strauss (2013), “We need a paradigm shift in research on reading and dyslexia: Fundamental problems with fMRI studies of written language processing.”
I searched for but couldn’t find an actual article. The abstract appeared in an issue of the Journal of the Neurological Sciences (333, e579-e628), which contained abstracts from the XXI World Congress of Neurology. Apparently there is no actual paper, at least not one that was published.
I emailed Dr. Mora for a copy of the paper but received no response.
In contrast to Dr. Strauss’s non-existent record of research, I searched for Stanislas Dehaene on pubmed and got 319 results. Granted, some of these are commentaries, but a quick look suggests most are research reports. Drs. Mora et al might want to double check and see if I’m mistaken.
Drs. Mora et al. doubt that journalists “are qualified to determine which neuroscientist is wrong, and which one is right.” In this case they don’t need to. It can easily be determined that Dehaene is a well-published and world-renowned neuroscientist, while Strauss doesn’t do research, or if he does, he does not publish it. This is not a difficult call.
Second, and a little bit in the weeds (so please bear with), Dr. Mora does not understand basic concepts in reading education and research. Indicative of this is her statement in the article cited in their response, “To Cue or Not to Cue: Is That the Question” in Language Magazine (June 2023), that “orthographic mapping [is] the technical term for decoding.” This is simply incorrect. It’s wrong, not a matter of alternate interpretations. It’s as if someone defined a triangle as a polygon with four sides.
Orthographic mapping refers to the mental binding of a word’s letters to the sounds they represent to the word’s meaning. Among other errors, Dr. Mora makes the common mistake of equating decoding with word recognition. Most people, understandably, equate the two. But anyone who claims some sort of expertise should know they are not the same thing. I’ve tried to clarify for her in email correspondence, but to no avail.
One final point. Drs. Mora et al cite “highly respected literacy research scholars, Robert Tierney and P. David Pearson” to support their position. It is an insult to Tierney and Pearson putting them in the same category as Strauss. Tierney and Pearson — especially David Pearson — are very well-known reading researchers with long track records of contributions to reading research and practice. Their book, unfortunately, consists of a series of straw-person statements that they slay, one by one.
There is less there than meets the eye, but that’s a different story for another time.
