The transition to scientific research and the fallout of speaking publicly: perspectives from a former proponent of “body language” pseudoscience

Abstract

Despite decades of research and thousands of peer-reviewed articles on nonverbal communication written by a worldwide community of academics, a number of people in position of power, including security, justice and legal practitioners have embraced “body language” pseudoscience. This autoethnography aims to offer an otherwise inaccessible glimpse of the process a person can go through when turning to and away from pseudoscience. To achieve this objective, I describe and reflect upon the main events that, as a young lawyer, influenced my transition from body language pseudoscience to scientific research. To shed additional lights on these events, I turn to the cyberbullying and intimidation attempts that followed my journey and my decision to speak publicly. This autoethnography ends with a call for scholarly institutions to adequately protect researchers, including graduate students, from cyberbullying and intimidation attempts.

Keywords:

• Nonverbal communication
• pseudoscience
• body language
• cyberbullying
• intimidation

Acknowledgements

The author would like to thank former proponents of synergology, as well as friends and colleagues, including Alexandre Coutant, Boris Brummans, François Cooren, Louise Marie Jupe, Miles Patterson, Norah Dunbar, Pierrich Plusquellec, Serge Larivée, Thierry Bardini, and Vincent Larivière for their constructive comments on earlier versions of this article. The author would also like to thank the Quebec Research Funds—Society and Culture for their financial support during his doctoral studies. This article is dedicated to Prof. Scott O. Lilienfeld (1960–2020) whose writings on pseudoscience have greatly influenced the author’s research.

Author’s note

This article was initially written during the author’s doctoral studies at Université de Montréal. Revisions were made during the author’s postdoctoral fellowship at the same university. The author is now a postdoctoral fellow at McGill University where final revisions were made.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Britt Marie Hermes is a notable exception. Hermes is a former naturopath who transitioned to scientific research and decided to speak publicly. She was sued for defamation by a proponent of naturopathy. But a judge ruled in favor of Hermes. She documented her experience (e.g. Hermes, 2018, 2020).

2 Furthermore, to capture thoughts, emotions, and behaviors at the time of data collection, researchers can, for example, collect information in Excel worksheet (e.g. occurrence frequency), record narratives, either on site or retrospectively, and hold field notes (Chang, 2008; see also Cooper & Lilyea, 2022 ).

3 Synergology is also presented as a tool for a host of other contexts, including education, human resources and healthcare (Synergology, The Official Website, n.d.b).

4 For criticisms of synergology, see Denault et al. (2015, 2020), Denault and and Jupe (2018), Rochat et al. (2018).

5 Paul Ekman’s work contributed to my transition to scientific research. However, it should be noted that I later took a critical stance toward his work.

6 The personal attacks still continue. For example, just last year, a proponent of synergology sent a bizarre email to academics I worked with, insulting them, and trying to intimidate them and to undermine my credibility.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vincent Denault

Vincent Denault is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Educational and Counselling Psychology of McGill University, and a Lecturer in the Faculty of Law of University of Sherbrooke, and at the Department of Communication of University of Montreal.