[Alex3917]

> Your condescending google links don't help

Which I posted in response to getting blatantly gaslighted.

I don't care if you disagree with me, but pretending you don't know how to use Google to try to discredit someone is a lame debating technique.

[ajkjk]

You weren't gaslighted. That's not what that word means. And everyone here knows how to use google. The problem here is that you said "Depression is the feeling you get from brain inflammation" instead of "there's a theory that depression is sometimes linked to brain inflammation". The former is far from factual, and it's dead wrong to claim it matter-of-factly.

Totally not surprisingly, when you google brain inflammation and depression, you get lots of references that suggest a possible link and none that justify claiming it as a fact. So, [citation still needed], and it's not because we're bad at using google.

[Alex3917]

> You weren't gaslighted. That's not what that word means.

Gaslighting is a form of personal attack that's designed to make someone doubt the validity of their own senses or personal experience. The reason I took yellowapple's comment as gaslighting is that he was calling into question the existence of a large body of research that shows up with even the most trivial Google search. If you don't buy into the cytokine theory of depression or think that my summary of the theory/research was false or whatever then that's fine. But by implicitly claiming that the research itself doesn't exist and is just something I invented, then at point I take it as a personal attack.

> The former is far from factual, and it's dead wrong to claim it matter-of-factly.

This 2008 paper is already one of the most cited journal articles on depression of all time:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2919277/

"It has been established that pro-inflammatory cytokines induce not only symptoms of sickness, but also true major depressive disorders in physically ill patients with no previous history of mental disorders. Some of the mechanisms that might be responsible for inflammation-mediated sickness and depression have now been elucidated."

"A role for cytokines in depression was first proposed by Smith in the form of the ‘macrophage theory of depression’ and further studied by Maes in the early 1990s. [...] Despite its originality, especially at a time when depression was thought to be associated with decreased rather than increased immunity, this hypothesis failed to attract the interest of the psychiatry community. Because biomarkers of inflammation in clinically depressed patients are not always elevated, the postulate that common pathophysiological mechanisms link depression to inflammation was limited. Other key components that would support this postulate were also missing, such as a demonstration that stimulation of the immune system induces depression-like disorders; identification of a possible common pathophysiological mechanism between the effects of cytokines in the brain and the neurobiological basis of depression; and proof that decreasing the inflammatory response attenuates symptoms of depression. As discussed below, research in this field has now supplied these key components."

"A growing amount of clinical data point to the importance of the relationship between inflammation and depression in physically ill patients and in conditions that are associated with increased activity of the innate immune system, including ageing and obesity. For instance, the prevalence of co-morbid depression in patients with coronary heart disease, a disease in which inflammation is now recognized as a major contributing factor, is three times higher than in the general population."

"A growing amount of clinical data point to the importance of the relationship between inflammation and depression in physically ill patients and in conditions that are associated with increased activity of the innate immune system, including ageing and obesity. For instance, the prevalence of co-morbid depression in patients with coronary heart disease, a disease in which inflammation is now recognized as a major contributing factor, is three times higher than in the general population."

In order to say definitively that inflammation causes depression there is a lot of stuff we'd need to know that we don't currently know. However, in order for it not to be true, there is a lot of stuff that would need to be false that we know is true. That's why I don't think it's inappropriate to claim it matter-of-factly, even though there are still a lot of missing details that need to be filled in.

[Fnoord]

> Gaslighting is a form of personal attack that's designed to make someone doubt the validity of their own senses or personal experience.

Asking someone for a source (ie. "citation needed") isn't the same as 'gaslighting'.

There is no need to feel offended when someone asks for a source when you boldly claim something.

Using the website 'lmgtfy' and using this as source however is condescending. Say you are writing a paper. Would you then provide a Google search link as source? You wouldn't. That is why (indirect) Google links are not a source. Google is a tool to find a source.

[ajkjk]

No one's questioning the claim that research shows there's a connection. You're being rejected because you claimed it was a 100%, if-and-only-if connection. Even if depression is frequently caused by brain inflammation, it is definitely not the case that current science shows depression is always (or always minus epsilon) caused by brain inflammation, so what you said is still wrong.

No one's trying to make you question the validity of your senses. You just need to make claims that are corroborated by reality, at least approximately. It's fine to say there's a connection. It's not fine to say that depression is always caused by brain inflammation, and if you try to do that you'll be downvoted and ignored unless you make an extremely compelling argument (which you didn't).

Based on the research I've perused from google / your references, if you matter-of-factly claimed that some depression is caused by inflammation (or causes brain inflammation? how to tell?) you'd be fine. But to claim depression as a whole -- all of it -- is caused by inflammation? that's still wildly unscientific.

[yellowapple]

For reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting

"Gaslighting or gas-lighting is a form of manipulation through persistent denial, misdirection, contradiction, and lying in an attempt to destabilize and delegitimize a target."

There's a clear difference between that and calling out (EDIT for clarification: what I believe to be) incorrect information, and my admittedly-biased opinion is that my previous two comments in response to your own are squarely in the latter camp versus the former. I'd also hardly call one or two comments "persistent", though - again - my viewpoint is obviously biased in my favor.

I'll admit that pulling a [citation needed] was excessively snarky, though. I'm sorry. I ought to know better than to be a jerk, no matter how right I think I am.

----

With that said, "just Google it" (and similar approaches, like linking to a search engine query or some snarky wrapper thereof) is a very poor rhetorical technique in general; as I've already demonstrated, it's not guaranteed to actually prove one's point, and it reeks of either or both of two hidden meanings:

1. "I don't really care enough about the topic to give a meaningful citation, so I'm just going to tell the other party to find citations oneself"

2. "I don't actually have any source for the information I've provided (maybe I did once upon a time, but I sure don't anymore), so I'm going to tell the other party to 'just Google it' and hope that said other party is somehow impressed by the number of search results regardless of the sites in question or what the linked pages actually say"

Thus, it's generally a good idea to avoid those potential hidden meanings and just provide an actual source.