Sunny Side Down!

By Vithal C Nadkarni

Alan Sokal strikes again. The New York University physicist who some years ago fooled an academic journal with a nonsensical paper on post-modern physics, has just trashed ‘top-notch’ research that said a 3-to-1 positivity ratio can change life radically.

Psychologists Barbara Fredrickson and Marcial Losada put forward the notion based on a mathematical idea from fluid dynamics, namely, positivity obeys “tipping point” logic of non-linear dynamic systems. In plain terms this means sunny vibes had to attain a certain ‘take-off ’ velocity to deliver tangible results.

So you are supposed to be stuck on the same emotional ground if you take one positive step forward and one negative leap backwards. Twice as positive as negative is no good either. For the world to fall at your feet, you need to be three times as positive as negative.

Arguably, unalloyed positivity with nary a trace of negativity will lead to blow-out nirvana! Enter Sokal and his colleagues Nicholas Brown and Harris Friedman: the trio of spoilers shows that the socalled data on positivity is absolutely the wrong kind of input for differential equations! Losada is apparently too busy to respond and Fredrickson now admits she didn’t follow her co-worker’s figures at all.

The moral of the story reveals the folly of social psychology’s search of mathematical certitude for concepts that are innately speculative and extremely vague. Sadly, it took eight years before a grad student caught on to the bogus math behind a paper that was toasted around town by peers as a blockbuster!