I think cognitive psychology and neuropsychology are pretty legit.
I also think the field as a whole has huge problems and that much of what's dressed up in scientific language isn't scientific at all. I think our current standards for diagnosing and prescribing drugs are pretty terrible and are going to look about as good a century from now as medicine from a century ago looks now. I don't think psychologists are frauds, I think they're doing their level best with a bunch of poorly understood systems. Treatments just aren't anywhere near as effective when looking at meta-analysis as anyone paying attention would like them to be.
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Right, it's certainly possible that there's a legitimately massive difference in rate of occurrence (male/female biological differences are quite real), but the culture-specificity of the diagnoses here sure looks an awful lot like just drugging boys into being docile because it's more convenient for teachers and parents.
it could be due to a difference in learning styles. maybe its voodoo to you, but some people do far better when actively engaged in what they are learning.Right, it's certainly possible that there's a legitimately massive difference in rate of occurrence (male/female biological differences are quite real), but the culture-specificity of the diagnoses here sure looks an awful lot like just drugging boys into being docile because it's more convenient for teachers and parents.
Uh-huh, and who ensures the just are just? Never ending cycle full of humans who don't have to be just running the show. Only thing anyone can do is to live their life justly and let the rest sort itself out.
But my point is you don't have to make things a public venture in order to regulate them.
My claim isn't that drugs never help and that there aren't clear-cut cases where a diagnosis is obvious and the appropriate drug is obvious. It's that we're wildly overprescribing drugs that we barely understand the downstream mechanisms for and that this is largely a result of the old saw that when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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One creates bias, the other creates direct incentive. These are very different in effect.
Well, no, that's pretty plainly not the only relevant difference. If you take me out to dinner and tell me about your product, I learn something about the product and have a more favorable attitude towards it. This may bias me in favor of it (or I might be prescribing it because I legitimately learned something about it). If, on the other hand, I receive direct payment for each prescription, this provides a biasing incentive.
I can buy into it being over diagnosed but it being total fiction? Hog wash.
Years ago, people who came back from war, were just stressed out when showing strange behavior. Now,we have PTSD... what's up with that?
Folly and fakery have always been with us... but it has never before been as dangerous as it is now, never in history have we been able to afford it less. - Isaac Asimov
Every damn thing you do in this life, you pay for. - Edith Piaf
The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. - Orwell
No amount of belief makes something a fact. - James Randi
This is actually pretty funny. I've been completely accurate in each of my posts about the matter - are you sure you shouldn't be receiving instruction from me?
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My view is that it's an ethical violation in medicine as well. I've said repeatedly in the thread that I think psychoactive medications are wildly overprescribed. This doesn't rescue the claim that there's a direct pay-for-prescription model.