[wahern]

There are certain brain structures (or lack of structures) that are shared by the vast majority of people who would be roundly classified as sociopaths by psychiatrists. The presence of the markers in non-sociopaths is relatively rare, though it nonetheless suggests there's an important environmental dimension. There's an article online by a researcher who studied psychopathy through neuroimaging and discovered he possessed this neural marker.

Classic sociopathy is lumped in with other personality disorders in the DSM, and at the margins there's a large group where there's wide disagreement about classification. But regarding the classic sociopath studied by Hare and others, AFAIU the majority of psychiatrists can spot those a mile away. And DSM or no DSM, most psychiatrists see them as a distinct group. But such people have no reason to seek psychiatric help for their condition, and because it's not susceptible to any kind of treatment in the traditional sense, there's little reason for these people to interact with the medical community the way other categories of "abnormal" people do. So that limits how much scholarship and research that will occur, especially considering that most sociopaths are non-violent. And while a large portion of violent criminals seem to be sociopathic (less or more depending on how you define it, but nonetheless significant), the direct cause of the violence seems related to other mental issues--sociopathy just merely removes one of the natural inhibitors of violent behavior.

[smt88]

> There's an article online by a researcher who studied psychopathy through neuroimaging and discovered he possessed this neural marker.

You are referring to James Fallon, of TED Talk fame, and his science is not sound: http://www.skepticalraptor.com/skepticalraptorblog.php/pseud...

> the majority of psychiatrists can spot those a mile away. And DSM or no DSM, most psychiatrists see them as a distinct group

That's impossible to know for sure. If you don't have reliable diagnostic criteria (and the ability to thoroughly examine the subject), these people can't test their belief that someone is a psychopath. It's just not science.

[wahern]

Which part of Fallon's research is unsound, 1) the neurological correlation, 2) his characterization of it, or 3) the characterization of himself?

Regarding, e.g., the Hare criteria not being science, it's not true that such criteria are not testable. You're conflating accuracy (or trueness) with precision. The diagnostic criteria clearly lack precision, but they don't necessarily lack accuracy. Macroeconomics lacks precision but various theories are incredibly accurate. That said, actually rigorous testing is lacking. It's lacking partly for the reasons I specified, but lacking nonetheless. And that's fair. But experimental results are not the sine quo non of how we understand the world; it's not black & white like that. There are other modes of understanding the world, and other substantive indicia of the correctness of theories. The Scientific Method is one of the best modes and its results some of the best forms of evidence, but it's hardly exclusive.

In any event, look at the similar condition of narcissism. Like sociopathy that word gets thrown around so much it's almost meaningless in a lay context, and there are wide margins where the classification is dubious even in a medical context. When people (including experts) claim Nixon, Clinton, or Alex Baldwin are narcissists, you sort of roll your eyes because such aversions tend to expose the term for being so loose and imprecise to the point of being useless. You can't even agree or disagree.

But is there any doubt in your mind that Donald Trump is a testament to some physiological phenomenon that fits squarely within the box we label narcissist? What that classification implies regarding his fitness as president is another matter altogether, but I don't think there exists many practitioners even loosely related to the study of the human brain that don't sense he's the archetype of some concrete and identifiable human condition.