I was watching the conspiracy files on BBC 2 the other day and the subject was – not unsurprisingly – a conspiracy, which even less surprisingly focused its attention on the use of the web as the organ of choice for the conspiracy theorists de nos jours. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006x8d6 The particularly conspiracy under investigation was the idea that the 7/7 bombing was not the responsibility of four Muslim young men but the work of MI5 or even Mossad. The programme trawled through the evidence placed on the web by a range of those interested in investigating these possibilities. The assertion that the bombers caught the 7.40 train from Luton to Kings Cross was pretty quickly disproved – the train didn’t run that day and this was subsequently corrected by the then Home Secretary, John Reid. However, there were a number of other more fanciful exposés which were interpreted to mean that the hand of a shadowy government force – British or overseas – was definitely behind the tragic events of that day. Each was unpacked one by one and shown as the tissue of lies, half truths and selective interpretation which it was. Two of the most influential conspiracy theorists – including the producer of a web distributed video – the 7/7 Ripple Effect – were shown to have particularly dubious backgrounds. One a holocaust denier, the other a septuagenarian from Sheffield, now based in Ireland where his other website declared he was the Messiah! So far, so bonkers. Offensively eccentric and clearly disturbing but nothing too much to worry about. Except when the programme visited a mosque and found a clear – if not unanimous - belief that the nonsense these two peddled was absolutely true. Despite the holes in their theories and the obvious omissions, the stories they had concocted were being accepted as truth – gospel truth in one case, obviously. The web gives its own imprimatur, especially as in the case of the Ripple Effect where it was produced with some technical skill. The fact that this patina of authority can now be worn by an individual in their bedroom, is not something which necessarily causes pause for thought amongst the consumers of these stories. This is one area where I think the training world would be best to be cautious. The web as a reference source for learning materials is now pretty well known and pretty well used. Whether it’s from Wikipedia or the result of a quick google, the information produced is often taken as reputable, authoritative and true – despite the fact that it could be the work of one person with a certain software skill, a strong opinion and a questionable track record.   Now we might not have major conspiracies at work in the world of training and organisational development, but let’s have a look at one such distortion often portrayed as irrefutable fact because of its ubiquity on the web. The learning pyramid (or I should say Pyramids – there are different varieties out there) is an interesting model. (The image accompanying this blog from http://homepages.gold.ac.uk/polovina/learnpyramid/about.htm). It seems like it should be right and of course it makes a compelling point. Except ,it’s based on no known research. See http://www.articlearchives.com/education-training/students-student-life/1505347-1.html for a critical review of its origin and the widely accredited birth of this model – Edgar Dale’s ‘Cone of Experience’ developed in the 1950’s. Don’t the rather neat percentages mean we might want to question this? Maybe, but we want to believe it’s true so we turn off our reality filter and promulgate as fact a model which is at best a hypothesis. As usual, the detail in Dale’s original work on this – which was that a balance of methods was necessary to learn effectively – has been misinterpreted despite his warnings of the illustrative nature of his original idea. The Pyramid is now widely credited to National Training Labs in Bethel, Maine, USA, though there is no evidence that they have undertaken research to validate this rather convenient model. http://www.ntl.org/ If we are going to harness the web and the contributions of non-trainers via web 2.0 technology to enhance the learning experience – and I strongly think we should facilitate this exploration – we also need to prepare our learners to be appropriately sceptical about what they see and increasing hear via the world wide web. Just because we might want something to be true doesn’t mean it is. Being a skilled information seeker is a key skill for everyone in work today and checking facts, checking sources, reading widely and drawing balanced conclusions are behaviours we would do well to encourage everyone to demonstrate.