Hana Whitfield Guest Post: What Happened when Hubbard Used the Data Series Himself?

The Data Series is Hubbard’s “special sauce” for how to analyze an organization and either fix what’s broken or improve what’s working.  Today’s post features Hana Whitfield, who spent years working directly for L. Ron Hubbard in the 1960s and 1970s.  She recalls a story of Hubbard using the Data Series “tech” to fix a problem in the organization.

The ending of the story surprised me, and I’ll try to fit what happened into the overall context of the multi-part critique of the Data Series that Chris Shelton, Dr. Jeff Wasel and I have been doing.  There are already two videos on Chris’s YouTube channel. Click for Part 1 and here for Part 2.  We’ll have several more parts to go in the coming weeks.   Understanding the Data Series is key to understanding why the Scientology organization will ultimately fail.   Continue reading “Hana Whitfield Guest Post: What Happened when Hubbard Used the Data Series Himself?”

Hana Whitfield Writes About the Sinister “Particle Speed Flow Officer”

In a recent conversation with Hana Whitfield, former captain of the Apollo and the Avon River, as well as a senior executive who reported directly to Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard, I broached the subject of the most absurd job title I’d ever seen. In Scientology, the person who pushes the mail cart around emptying everyone’s OUT box and refilling the IN box with more mind-numbing paperwork, is called the “Particle Speed Flow Officer.” I figured this was just another comical example of Hubbard’s pomposity of trying to make everything vastly more important than it was.  But Hana pointed out that she was actually the first “Particle Speed Flow Officer” in the history of Scientology, and she reveals here that there’s a sinister side to this.  

There’s a valuable object lesson in the story: that there’s almost always a sinister side to Scientology, even in small-scale things that initially seem to have only comic relief value.   Continue reading “Hana Whitfield Writes About the Sinister “Particle Speed Flow Officer””

Hana Whitfield Interview: Was Hubbard Really Sincere About Helping People?

Scientology devotes an immense fraction of its staff to fixing substandard delivery of its services. It has more people devoted to detecting and deterring “thoughtcrime” from members whose loyalty may be wavering … and even more toiling away in a complex organization designed to ferret out and punish staff incompetence and disloyalty.

To a never-in, this smacks of a poorly designed product from an incompetent organization.  But more importantly, it suggests that Scientology “tech” may actually be deliberately and cynically designed to be impossible to succeed at, with the punishment of failure used as a retention mechanism to keep people in the cult.

Hana Whitfield, a prominent ex-Scientologist who worked personally for founder L. Ron Hubbard for many years, has contributed her perspective on whether Scientology is intentionally (and cynically) designed to fail, whether it was designed to help people but failed at that noble goal or whether Hubbard had a very different approach.  The answer will surprise you.

Continue reading “Hana Whitfield Interview: Was Hubbard Really Sincere About Helping People?”