Auditory Integration Training -- A Times `Advertisement' For More Pseudoscience

Editor, The Times:

The promotion of pseudoscience by The Times continues unabated. The July 29 Scene section presented what was basically an unpaid, full-page advertisement for one of the more pernicious pseudoscientific scams to come along recently: auditory integration training (AIT). AIT alleges to alleviate not only vague afflictions such as hypersensitive hearing, or lack of energy, but serious and very real problems such as autism, behavior disorders and reading difficulties in children. Your printing of this "advertisement" will encourage desperate parents to pay the $1,000 fee to the AIT people in the false hope that it will help their children. It won't.

We can assure the readers that the people running these AIT clinics don't have a clue as to: a) how the auditory system works, b) how to measure anything having to do with hearing sensitivity or acuity, and c) what, if anything, their silly little machine actually does to the signal (not mentioned in the article is the fact that these machines do not have FDA approval). The idea that listening to music can have therapeutic effects is not exactly novel; it has been around about as long as music itself, so if listening to music a half hour a day makes people feel better, great. However, there is no need to pay big bucks for such a "treatment." Just get a CD player and some headphones. The concept of music "personalized to emphasize notes of various pitch (sic) and intensity," which "provides a workout for the minuscule muscles of the inner ear," is, to put it bluntly, garbage, with no basis in auditory physiology or psychophysics.

The bottom line is this: promotion of psuedoscience under the guise of human-interest stories is detrimental in three ways. First, it demeans the intelligence of your readers. Second, it further erodes scientific literacy in a society that is already arguably the most scientifically illiterate in the developed world. Third, and most dangerous, in specific cases such as this AIT story, it leads to false hope in, and increased financial burden on, people (or parents of people) with real disorders, such as autism.

Edward M. Burns, Ph.D. Richard C. Folsom, Ph.D. George A. Gates, M.D. Susan J. Norton, Ph.D. Edwin W. Rubel, Ph.D.

Virginia Merrill Bloedel Hearing Research Center; Departments of Speech and Hearing Sciences and Otolaryngology; and Children's Hospital and Medical Center University of Washington