Patrick Vermeren is a Belgian skeptic, science writer, and expert in human resources. Along with his coauthor Bart Van de Ven, he was sued by a multimillionaire for a skeptical article about the multimillionaire’s claims about human resources (HR) and an analysis of his modus operandi. (“The field of Human Resources (HR) is at the intersection of psychology and organisational behaviour and aims to recruit, select, hire or promote employees, along with training and screening applicants. People concerned with HR manage and plan administrative functions of an organization.”)
AH: Hi, Patrick. Thank you for the interview. Could you please quickly introduce yourself?
PV: I am fifty-six years old, and after an early career as a leader in banks and the automotive industry, I decided my future was in the broad field of human resources, more specifically as a coach in training social skills, leadership training, and individual coaching. I soon became very active in the skeptics movement because of a personal experience I talked about in my TEDx Talk.
AH: What are your hobbies? What do you do in your spare time or to relax?
PV: I try to use science in my daily life too, so I try to take good care of my health. I eat healthy foods and go cycling on average twice a week, play tennis, and go to the fitness center once a week. In the winter, I get about four to five hours of intensive practice, but in the summer this climbs up to ten hours. I like reading a lot, but I admit that besides the daily newspaper, it is mainly professional stuff, mostly psychology. As a last hobby, I listen to music whenever I can, and that is most of the time while commuting in my car. So, I am not one of these skeptics who invests every moment of their spare time in scanning the internet or other sources for nonsense. I advise them to use science for keeping a healthy balance as well.
AH: Can you tell me about the Skeptics HR dictionary?
PV: My last book is the result of a reading process that started back in 2005 and a writing process that lasted for 4.5 years—from 2014 to 2019. My first and my last book explicitly deal with a lot of nonsense such as NLP, Jungian Typology and the questionnaires MBTI and Insights Discovery are based on, but also alpha training, the 70:20:10 model by Jenkins. I must admit that it helped me a lot that for several years, I was responsible within our company for following up on the academic research. I was also translating it into digestible pieces of pedagogical writings and into writing scenarios for teaching and training social skills and leadership skills.
My first book got a lot of criticism because I only criticized ten models used in HR and offered no alternative. So now my latest book comprises fifty-five reviews of models and theories used in HR. I divided my reviews into three separate parts based on a theoretical evaluation, as well as an evaluation of the quality and trustworthiness of the empirical evidence. It resulted in twenty-five full-blown myths, two near-myths such as Positive Psychology and Mindfulness at Work, thirteen partial truths such as Self-Determination Theory, and fifteen provisionally true theories, models, and questionnaires.
There are some other chapters in the book, such as the chapters explaining why organizations need science-based HR and the damage caused by basing HR on pseudoscience. One of the brief chapters I am quite proud of is where I debunk the most often heard self-rationalizations or motivated reasoning such as “It doesn’t matter whether a questionnaire is scientific or not; it is just a conversation starter helping people to learn more about themselves.”
AH: How did you become a skeptic?
PV: It was because of a personal experience. My sister-in-law and mother-in-law both suffered from schizophrenia. We were well-informed about the disease, and when we found out that a quack was selling her his Bach-blossom therapy for lots of money, advising her to stop her much-needed medication, I was very upset. My sister-in-law was so desperately seeking a cure for her disease that she was an easy victim for fraudsters. We used a lawyer to stop him from doing that, but the disease had damaged her so badly that she tried to commit suicide several times. She finally succeeded in doing that at the age of only thirty-six. That was the trigger to join the skeptics’ movement, but I don’t exactly remember what the Belgian branch did. I guess it was because of their quest against homeopathy.
AH: My condolences, and thank you for sharing your personal story here. How did you then become active in the skeptical movement?
PV: My first article for them was about another personal experience in trying to find a good psychiatrist and treatment for a family member suffering from major depression. Now and then, I published an article on a HR topic—myths and nonsense of course. That’s how the board got to know me, and they asked me to become a working member and later a member of the board. Now I am a board member and also one of the authors and editors for the Belgian skeptical magazine.
AH: You got sued recently. What happened?
PV: Bart Van de Ven (industrial psychologist with a teaching position at the University of Ghent) and I wrote an article for the Belgian skeptics’ magazine. It was about two companies that used dubious theories and practices—one fully in the field of human resources, the other one partly in HR and leadership but also in marketing. We discussed both the dubious content such as NLP and the characterization of people based on phrenology and physiognomy. One company decided to sue us because we compared his marketing practices with the criteria used by Skeptic and psychologist Anthony Pratkanis, and the practices of influence described by Robert Cialdini. We also briefly discussed content such as their use of NLP and other bunk. They were obviously not pleased. They claimed 400,000 Euro in damages. We tried to convince the court that this was a SLAPP lawsuit (in Belgium the literal translation is “excruciating and reckless litigation of lawsuit”) and asked for a damage amounting to 10 percent of his claim as a counterclaim.
In December 2019, the judge of the Court of First Instance ruled that we had the right to criticize the company and its CEO but declined our counterclaim. The company was condemned to pay the cost of the lawsuit and some 8,000 Euro to us as a compensation for the cost of our lawyers, but they appealed. The appeal will only be pleaded in November 2021, and now our lawyers are exchanging arguments and conclusions. So, it is a lot of extra work and stress.
AH: Is there any way the international community can help or support you?
PV: The legal costs for our lawyers so far have exceeded 50,000 Euro, so any financial support would be welcome through the fundraiser my colleagues from SKEPP have set up. If skeptics can chip in even small amounts, that would help. Of course, any moral support is welcome, too! Here you can find out more about the fundraiser.
AH: What is the problem or the difference with getting sued in Belgium in comparison to the United States?
PV: If you win a case in Belgium, judges only award you small damages, which cover only a small percentage of the attorney’s fees actually incurred. So, if the party that sues you has deep pockets, they can always hurt you financially and mentally. The losing party is never punished as severely as in the United States.
AH: How will the court case proceed now?
PV: There are three rounds of exchanges between the lawyers. The appeal is scheduled in November 2021, so we will probably have a ruling somewhere in March 2022.
AH: What developments in recent years have you been most concerned or happy about?
PV: There is an undeniable tendency of people to try to silence you through intimidation on social media or through other means, and to initiate SLAPP lawsuits to frighten off critics. The laws don’t seem to prevent such things from happening, as anyone who wants to sue you can do so. Obviously, those with deep pockets will use this strategy more, assuming they can hurt individuals who criticize them by drawing them into a long and uncertain legal battle. And I don’t think I am biased, although I have experienced this excruciating process three times now. I once was threatened with a lawsuit for my criticism on MBTI, while SKEPP was actually taken to court for another article regarding my criticism on alpha training. SKEPP won the case in front of the Court of Appeal.
AH: What are your professional, personal, and skeptical goals for the coming years?
PV: I hope I can contribute to debunking the many myths in psychology and HR and help my colleagues in writing good articles. I will occasionally debunk some new ones, but I am slowing down a bit. I am indeed gradually slowing down my professional career and enjoying the good life together with my wife and family more. And there is so much more music to discover and places to visit after the pandemic. After all, we cannot win every battle, and lots of people will stay gullible, and others will not hesitate to cheat you to beat money out of your pockets. I hope in the future we will see some more bright, young skeptics who will take over the relay with passion.
AH: Thanks for the interview!