Photoreading - A Scam

When I first found out about photoreading I believed that the system would solve all of my reading problems. I was informed that this revolutionary system would allow you to read at 25,000 wpm (words per minute) and allow you to recall the information easily. I was particularly interested in using this as a revision tool since it would only take moments to go through content and recall it during a test! I'm afraid to say that this system isn't all that it sounds which I'll explain later. 

The system works as follows:

• Preview - looking at the blurb of a book, table of contents, and index to find out what the book is about.
  
• Photoread - using a method to flash each page in front of your eyes while not trying to read or remember what you see.
  
• Activate - get the information that you need from your inner mind.
  
• Rapid Read - go back through the book and get any additional information you require.
  

This process seemed fairly straightforward and looked a genuine approach for reading books. I learnt the system using the personal learning course and when using it I felt that it really worked and that I felt the benefits! The problem was that even thought I felt I was drastically improving my reading, the results were rubbish. To be honest the system is just a long way to look something up in a book. When you have finished photoreading you think of what you want to find out and then go slowly through each page letting you subconscious mind lead you to the answer. 

One of the exercises in the course is photoreading a dictionary. After that you think of a word and image where it is placed on the page. I did a tally of the words I got right and wrong. Even though about 80% were wrong I was told that I had achieved something and that really my wrong answers was all part of the process. I put up with this for a while but eventually I had to convince myself that it was all bollocks. I saw a video of Derren Brown doing this dictionary trick but in his book 'Tricks of the Mind' he dismisses photoreading as 'horseshit'. A report done for NASA (http://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20000011599_2000009345.pdf) concluded that the system provided no advantage over normal reading and in some of their tests the photoreaders had a significant lack of comprehension compared to normal readers. 

So why does photoreading not work? More in the next post.