People learn lots of information by reading. We are taught in school from the first grade to read books, magazines, and anything else that has words. For the most part, reading is a wonderful thing. The dark side of reading involves information that is of no value, information that hurts, rather than helps people. There is no way to prevent harmful information from being printed; for some reason, people have no interest in making sure that what is printed is worth reading. The various religions have tried to bring this problem to light, but to no avail. Trash and misleading information is everywhere, ready to infect our minds and ruin the work of good, dedicated facilitators.

Sadly, there are publications written by doctors and other learned people that are presented as valuable, researched information – that is entirely wrong. For example, in the field of sports medicine, there is a formula that is used to estimate the maximum heart-rate of a person. It appears in all textbooks on the subject and it is accepted by everyone (almost everyone). It states that to determine a person’s maximum heart rate one simply subtracts their age from a constant of 220. So, if you are twenty years of age, you subtract 20 from 220 and that gives you a maximum heart rate of 200. This only works if you are twenty years old or by coincidence. The tragedy here is that all textbooks and other literature carry this formula as if it were from the Bible itself. The formula is wrong but all students of physiology are required to learn it, pass tests with it, and then use it to treat clients. Another example, a research medical doctor has written a book about how to get and to stay healthy by eating correctly. In the text he makes a reference to a person’s muscle turning to fat as the person ages. This is totally wrong! Muscle is muscle and fat is fat. One does not turn into the other. How is it that this doctor does not know this simple fact? Later on in the same book he states that a vegetarian is the same as a vegan. Once again, this is wrong information. If a person is reading a book to gain information on a particular subject, and relying on the author to give true facts, then the reader will learn whatever the book says. Damage done. In the above examples we must question all of the information stated by the author because his blunders are so obvious; we have to ask ourselves what else in the book is wrong?

The solution to the problem of being mislead is to come to any publication with at least a rudimentary knowledge of the subject matter. Try reading the simplest books on a given subject to gain a little knowledge. Then, try out that knowledge for yourself to see if it looks right to you. If it pans out, then read other books to increase your knowledge. Again, try out the new information to see if it works. People, including authors, are not perfect. They make mistakes just like everyone else, but, when you are in a position of authority, you dare not publish something that is wrong because people are reading your book to educate themselves. The danger is in misleading these people and hurting their chances to gain knowledge. Unfortunately, there is so much junk out there that people frequently get misled into thinking all sorts of nonsense. This hurts these people in ways that they do not recognize and many of them shy away from good reading because of the discomfort visited on their lives.