[twir]

Ooh, here come the Scientologists!

I'm as skeptical of big Pharma as the next guy, but to say with such grandiose broad-stroked generalizing that psychiatry (or, perhaps you mean instead/also neurological pharmacology) is not science is simply untrue.

Anyone with Google at their fingertips can find a dozen peer-reviewed articles about serotonin's link to mood and behavior.

EDIT: accidentally a word or two.

[lutusp]

> Ooh, here come the Scientologists!

So, because some critics of psychiatry are Scientologists, therefore all critics of psychiatry are Scientologists? I can only recommend a crash course in logic.

> to say with such grandiose broad-stroked generalizing that psychiatry (or, perhaps you mean instead/also neurological pharmacology) is not science is simply untrue.

The burden is not on critics to prove that psychiatry isn't a science, the burden is on psychiatry to prove that it is (for the history-illiterate, it has never been a science and many of its staunchest advocates freely admit this, including Freud). The recent NIMH ruling, to which I alluded in my post above, suggests that the granting agencies aren't going to wait for that burden of evidence to be met ---- psychiatry is not a science, is not an evidence-based practice, and can't masquerade as such without evidence.

> Anyone with Google at their fingertips can find a dozen peer-reviewed articles about serotonin's link to mood and behavior.

Yes, and there's a name for that: confirmation bias. Have you bothered to ask yourself how the FDA could come out and say that SSRIs don't actually work, and how that meta-analysis could coexist what all those other studies that claim otherwise? And how could this most recent study, which shows no correlation between serotonin and depression, survive the critical eyes of editors and reviewers to find its way into print?

The FDA meta-analysis, which for the first time included studies that the drug companies funded but then chose not to publish, and which showed no clinically significant effect from SSRIs, is not by itself conclusive, but the silence that followed it certainly is. There are too many interested parties involved for that study to go unchallenged ... if a challenge were possible.

This most recent study simply shows why SSRIs don't work -- because serotonin and depression aren't correlated, therefore SSRIs cannot possibly work, in principle.

[gipp]

They can also find a dozen peer-reviewed articles thoroughly skewering the misuse of statistics, intentional massaging and selective cherry-picking of results, weak significance testing, and general lack of replicability that are all incredibly rife in biomedical research, and particularly in psychiatric research.

It's hard to know what to trust in that area at all anymore.

[coldtea]

>Anyone with Google at their fingertips can find a dozen peer-reviewed articles about serotonin's link to mood and behavior.

And a ton of "peer reviewed" articles are crap too.

Peer review aint what it used to be.

[lrem]

Still, it's what demarcates the boundary between "blog about your idea, show it to some smart folk" and "proper science". And we like clean demarcation lines, they allow us to categorize without actually investigating (which is infeasible if you want to get broad knowledge).

[coldtea]

I'd say avoid "peer reviewed" papers like the plague if you want to find out what's actually "worth investigating" and " get a broad knowledge".

Instead, wait for 2-5 years to see what still floats from all the crap that has been published.

Better to read slightly behind the times, but solid, university guidebooks and published books that stood out, than to read the hot, but crappy, steam of published research.

[lrem]

Is waiting 5 years always an option? Is 5 years always enough to distinguish good from bad science? Then, you still use the "peer reviewed" filtering, just add "test of time" to the pipeline. Which is fine, as long as the topic is of level of importance to you at which being 5 years behind the trend is ok.

Unless you really mean that being peer reviewed is bad. I don't want to delve into that option...

[coldtea]

>Is waiting 5 years always an option?

If your goal, as stated above, is to get a "broad knowledge", then yes.

If you want to know recent research trends, or are doing research yourself, then no, go read current papers.

>Is 5 years always enough to distinguish good from bad science?

No, sometimes you have to wait even more. Just gave it as a delay period to counter the "read the peer reviewed papers" notion.

>Then, you still use the "peer reviewed" filtering, just add "test of time" to the pipeline.

No, I'm saying "forget the peer reviewed" in themselves, go for items that not only have stood the "test of time", but have also become succesful and well regarded books and/or university guides in their domain.

In essense, I'm saying that a journal's tiny "peer review" team is BS, the majority of the scientific community agreeing on matured material is better.

>Which is fine, as long as the topic is of level of importance to you at which being 5 years behind the trend is ok.

It's not a matter of "importance to you", it's what you want to use it for.

A subject could be extremely important to you as a study subject, and you could still avoid losing time with the current, unfiltered, papers as they come in.

It's only when you want to take advantage of recent research (e.g because you are a researcher yourself, or an implementor and needs a new solution etc) that you have to have the latest research -- which I think is different than "importance". Let's call it "business importance" if you wish...

[lutusp]

> Is waiting 5 years always an option? Is 5 years always enough to distinguish good from bad science?

In the case of Relativity theory, it took 55 years for full validation of all its aspects. In principle, to assure solid science, one might say, "as long as it takes."

[dllthomas]

Do you have any evidence that Paul is actually a Scientologist, beyond his sharing - in broad strokes - one of their opinions?