The speed reading scam was missing just one thing: the word "quantum"

Quantum Speed Reading is an obvious scam, yet people believe it. Why? And, more importantly, how can we protect them from this and countless similar scams?

“A completely new technique for reading books without looking at the pages.”

It’s like eating dinner without consuming any food. Fueling your car without putting anything into it. Becoming an expert on something without studying it.

Or teaching your kids to read without reading anything.

I wish this was an April Fool’s post, but it’s not. Quantum Speed Reading (QSR) is found mainly in Asia, from India to Japan. Parents are conned into buying these expensive classes for their kids by obviously hoaxed sales videos of children fanning books, or even just holding them, then answering detailed questions about their contents. One article found a class being sold in China for $38,000.

It’s so nakedly fake that I’m not going to waste your time “debunking” it or “looking up studies.” Instead, I want to talk about two far more important and relevant questions: how can people believe in something this dumb; and since they do, how can we protect them from such scams?

1. How can intelligent adults in the 21st century believe something so obviously fake?

We might tend to open by laughing at how stupid they are; if we do, we’re missing the point and not helping. There are real reasons that intelligent people can be taken advantage of by such swindles.

First, it’s important to remember two points:

1. The vast majority of people have zero interest in science or how the world works. It’s simply not a part of their day. They care about their friends, their hobbies, their music, their job, the actors on whatever series they’re bingeing. This is why so many pseudoscientific products are so wildly successful. Consider the fact that you, yourself, are completely disinterested in some popular things, and probably know and care nothing about them.

2. There is no relationship between intelligence and susceptibility to pseudoscience. None.

With those two points in mind, consider the benefits that a teaching product like QSR promises to proud parents:

1. Motivated reasoning. Parents tend to believe (or hope) that their child is special. Parents evaluating new classes don’t start from a position of skepticism; they start from a position of hope that their child will excel at something extraordinary.

2. It’s fashionable and trendy. Your friends are doing it. Putting your kid into the class makes you fashionable and trendy too.

3. It’s sold with highly proven techniques: the appeal to authority, sciencey-sounding words and jargon, confirmation bias.

4. Given all of the above, the way our brains work makes us seek evidentiary justification in service of the decision already made. And the smarter or more educated you are, the better you’ll do at this: You’re not only fooled by QSR; you’ll become a persuasive advocate with the most compelling praise.

5. When the child is found to have gained no abilities from the class, the psychological investment and sunk costs fallacy will make us still continue to believe it was well worth it, and we will continue to advocate for it.

QSR only looks stupid to someone like you & I who already go through our days with a level of science literacy, real interest in reality and rationality, and our radars turned on looking for such scams. Very few people on the street are like that.

Suddenly, QSR looks fascinating and compelling.

2. How can we protect people against such scams and scammers?

The reasons the scam’s victims are all-in on it are real, solid, and compelling. Many victims have become advocates for it. They are a tough audience to convince.

When we seek to form a strategy to protect people, we need to keep a few things in mind:

• These are not stupid people; they’ve loving and caring parents. We need to share that motivation — what’s best for the kids is the end game; not calling out anyone’s stupidity.

• Recall that directly contradicting a false belief is almost always a guaranteed failure. You’re more likely to lose a friend than you are to change a mind.

We also live in a reality where people will always seek magically easy answers to complicated problems, so there will always be a marketplace full of false hope targeting that consumer demand. QSR will certainly not be the last fraudulent product.

Prebunking is the best defense: warning parents in advance what “exceptional child” scams they are likely to encounter. I would like to see the parent of every child newly registering at any school — preschool through K-12 — be given a free booklet with a page on each of these: speed reading (quantum or otherwise), brain gyms, learning styles, Baby Einstein crap, Mozart Effect products, neurofeedback for learning disabilities, “Dore programs,” “Irlen lenses,” Fast Foreword and Cellfield and Gemmotherapy and a billion others. Just hit the ones most popular this year. Update the edition every year or two.

And end it with a page explaining that they will see others, and what the red flags are: quantum/neuroscience buzzwords, testimonials substituting for data, proprietary “syndrome” or conditions, celebrity or influencer endorsement, urgency marketing (“critical window,” “before age X”), money-back guarantees, persecution narrative (“schools don’t want you to know”), results visible after single sessions, price point calibrated to signal seriousness, resistance to independent testing — it’s a long list.

It would be a long booklet. And one that would, unfortunately, have to be read — the traditional way.