ADHD is 'not a real disease'

Cito di Pense · **#181** by **Cito di Pense** » May 09, 2014 8:11 am

Asta666 wrote:I ask you the same thing I asked CDP when we reached this point in a previous and almost identical discussion:
¿why in God's name should we compare the success of behavioral technology with physical ones, when they have different goals? You can bring all the laser beams and mathematical equations about what is going on inside the sun or a black hole, but that won't help a person suffering from the most simple form or phobia, or make a dog respond to your commands. It would be like comparing basketball points with football goals, that would only start making (some) sense if we were able to previously develop some formal system of equivalence, like between meters and inches.

And you get the same abrupt reply, the import of which you apparently did not glean from what The Metatron wrote. You write, in reference to physics:

that won't help a person suffering from the most simple form or phobia

and thereby begging the fricking question of whether anything you come up with actually helps anyone. Given your failure to delineate what constitutes 'help' in this remark, you're dodgily dodging the question with nothing but dodgy rhetoric. And what it boils down to is that your evidence that anyone is 'helped' is transmitted by means of verbal anecdotes from people claiming to have been 'helped', or people claiming that a third party has been 'helped'. Your solution is to class anecdotes as scientific evidence, which is exactly where your empty rejoinder left the discussion the last time you emitted it.

In fact, your conception of 'help' is just as circular as it was before. What's the fricking goal of (fuck me sideways!) behavioural technology? Whatever in the blue fuck behavioural technology turns out to be, you're going to have to elaborate. "Ah," you say, "the goal is to help people." And we're back to square one, circular though the path may be.

There isn't any technology there, Asta, unless you (as an anthropologist) class a paintbrush as technology for painting over some graffiti on a wall somewhere.

I understand well how someone with your point of view classes psychology as a science in order to win an argument on the internet: "It's scientific, ergo, I win the argument." Consider the alternative of coming up with some evidence, and actually using that to win a fucking argument. You got a dog to stop barking. Whoop-dee-doo. When you fail to get a dog to stop barking, do you have a procedure for explaining it? No? Then don't fucking call it a 'technology'.

What's the goal of treating people the same way we treat dogs, and gleefully patting ourselves on the back because it sometimes works? Religion is also a great tool for achieving crowd control by controlling individuals, but it doesn't make the mistake of passing itself off as a 'technology', whilst explaining how it sometimes fails with tautologies the spitting image of yours. What's the goal, Asta? What's the goal? Really? Just to help people? Religion makes precisely the same claim.

Instead of blaming "your sinful nature", we can say, "your cingulate cortex is fucked up". Relative to what?

Cito di Pense · **#182** by **Cito di Pense** » May 09, 2014 8:45 am

Here's the thing, Asta: I understand the stages of data analysis, starting with summary statistics, and proceeding through exploratory analysis, and if feasible, constructing inferential, predictive, causal, or mechanistic models, depending on the sort of data you are able to collect. As I understand it, behavioural psychology is stuck in a loop between inferential and predictive analysis, and trying desperately to get to causal models, hence the pretty brain scan pix. And it might be a tad easier if the phenomena on which you decide to gather data were not themselves derived from what people with their own behavioural quirks classify as 'abnormal', as they do with ADHD. I guess studying the norm is a bit cut and dried, now. Publish or perish!

Ask yourself who the clients are of programs to reduce the variance in the distribution, when it doesn't apply to quality control at a widget factory.

I really do empathise with psychologists who have tired of the old joke, "How many shrinks does it take to change a lightbulb? One, but the lightbulb really has to want to change." I have no complaint about the norms that society has constructed to get its most important business done. What I object to is sneaking around forgetting that they're constructed, the better to pass off the work as scientific. Now we have people it is claimed really want to change, presumably under social pressure, but they just can't, and so the solution is to drug them. We understand that they want to change by the fact that you don't have to force-feed them the drugs. It's a minefield out there.

This website has more than a few members who have, in fact, shrugged off one prominent social norm, that of religiosity, and we even have a 'neuroscientist' like Sam Harris who examines brain scans of people experiencing unjustified certainty to try to find out what gives them such a buzz, while still clinging tightly to a social norm. Nobody's scanning brains for the energetics of clinging to social norms. Hmm. I wonder why.

Asta666 · **#183** by **Asta666** » May 09, 2014 3:27 pm

Cito di Pense wrote:and thereby begging the fricking question of whether anything you come up with actually helps anyone. Given your failure to delineate what constitutes 'help' in this remark, you're dodgily dodging the question with nothing but dodgy rhetoric.

It is delineated Cito, but given your failure to look anything up regarding the subject matter you are attempting to talk about makes it all seem question begging (to you).

Cito di Pense wrote:Your solution is to class anecdotes as scientific evidence, which is exactly where your empty rejoinder left the discussion the last time you emitted it.

That's a deep analysis of the research :roll:

.

Cito di Pense wrote:I understand well how someone with your point of view classes psychology as a science in order to win an argument on the internet: "It's scientific, ergo, I win the argument." Consider the alternative of coming up with some evidence, and actually using that to win a fucking argument. You got a dog to stop barking. Whoop-dee-doo. When you fail to get a dog to stop barking, do you have a procedure for explaining it? No? Then don't fucking call it a 'technology'.

There is evidence, and there there are procedures to explain failures in that kind of scenario, but that's not what I'm trying to discuss here, that's what was being discussed in the other thread, I just didn't want to alter the quote.
What I'm interested in is understanding why you and the_megatron think we should compare the DSM with an ampere and the success of probe in reaching another planet.

Cito di Pense wrote:This website has more than a few members who have, in fact, shrugged off one prominent social norm, that of religiosity, and we even have a 'neuroscientist' like Sam Harris who examines brain scans of people experiencing unjustified certainty to try to find out what gives them such a buzz, while still clinging tightly to a social norm. Nobody's scanning brains for the energetics of clinging to social norms. Hmm. I wonder why.

Yes Cito, and the world is filled with modern crusaders eager to prevent the waste of the taxpayer's money and the brainwashing of children. Finding the relationships between posting behaviour and displaced forms of religiosity is as fun as it is off topic.

Cito di Pense · **#184** by **Cito di Pense** » May 09, 2014 4:43 pm

Asta666 wrote:given your failure to look anything up regarding the subject matter you are attempting to talk about makes it all seem question begging (to you).

Aha! "We read up on the subject; ergo, we are experts." The same can be said by literary critics. They're experts by virtue of their academic fiefdom in the expertise of reading, even though no spoons are bent. Got any science? Then it should be fairly easy for you simply to present the data. What's that you say? The data are equivocal? The data are complex?

It's like cosmology, Asta. Nobody expects to make his case in an internet forum, but then again, no cosmologist tells the general public to go read the literature. Read what I wrote about summary statistics, and get back to me, pronto.

Asta666 · **#185** by **Asta666** » May 09, 2014 5:05 pm

Cito di Pense wrote:
Asta666 wrote:given your failure to look anything up regarding the subject matter you are attempting to talk about makes it all seem question begging (to you).

Aha! "We read up on the subject; ergo, we are experts." The same can be said by literary critics. They're experts by virtue of their academic fiefdom in the expertise of reading, even though no spoons are bent. Got any science? Then it should be fairly easy for you simply to present the data. What's that you say? The data are equivocal? The data are complex?

Read what I wrote about summary statistics, and get back to me, pronto.

I'm not presenting you data any more after the last time when you just dismissed everything by saying it was mere jargon and quoting random papers from the 1970s.
If you want your criticisms to be taken seriously you'll address the relevant aspects of the diagnosis and it's construction, instead of trying to make an argument from the precision of the definition of an ampere and the distance a probe has travelled.
And how is it that no spoons are bent? I thought you and the_megatron were against the possible dangers of drugging children and diagnosing them. Maybe the spoon is bending, but not towards the side you'd want it to. Oh yes, this is getting enlightening.

The_Metatron · **#186** by **The_Metatron** » May 09, 2014 7:33 pm

Asta666 wrote:
The_Metatron wrote:"An ampere is several electrons flowing past a point in a little bit of time."

See what you can build with that.

Oh come on, this has never been about building anything. Nor it has been about arguments, at least from Cito's perspective, if he was presented operationally defined variables in mathematical terms from an observed experiment he'd say it's just physics envy or empty jargon. It's all about showing how his random babbling can allegedly be seen as having the same value as the results of an empirical study and therefore nothing in the field can be taken seriously, it's all just a battle of mere opinions.
I ask you the same thing I asked CDP when we reached this point in a previous and almost identical discussion:
¿why in God's name should we compare the success of behavioral technology with physical ones, when they have different goals? You can bring all the laser beams and mathematical equations about what is going on inside the sun or a black hole, but that won't help a person suffering from the most simple form or phobia, or make a dog respond to your commands. It would be like comparing basketball points with football goals, that would only start making (some) sense if we were able to previously develop some formal system of equivalence, like between meters and inches.

I don't think that makes it more useful anyway. You can't just say how precise someone else is at doing something completely different and pretend that it is meaningful for the subject in question. It's just called a syndrome, and it's not a direct product of basic scientific research, but a clinical tool that aims to take into account the data gathered from field trials and basic research in related areas, it's not presented as the psychiatric equivalent of a probe or an ampere. I sincerely hope that you and/or CDP can make contributions that'll make these tools more precise and scientific and quit talking from the random stranger POV, like how worried CDP seems to be about the possible waste of the taxpayer's money.

The point you insist on missing is simple enough to grasp.

I know how long I need to cut a dipole antenna for 144 MHz. It always has to be cut to that length. Period. Not close, not sometimes, there is no distribution curve to plot its behavior if it is cut to the wrong length. This length has always been the same, and it will always be the same. In fact, we can use the science behind that calculation to predict at what frequency an antenna of different length will resonate. Or, we can predict at what length we must cut an antenna to operate at another given frequency. This always works. Not sometimes. Always.

Now here's the point, spelled out for you: A different edition of an antenna manual may never give a different length, regardless of the consensus of the authors. Nor can they arbitrarily change the conditions required for an antenna to operate at its designed frequency.

Having another look at those differences in ADHD diagnosis between DSM IV and V, the question that comes to mind is: Why? Why the changes? It seems pretty clear that something happens after a diagnosis of ADHD is made. Something is done with that diagnosis. What is it that is done? To whom is it being done? Is it being done more or less frequently as a result of the arbitrary changes in the diagnosis criteria? If more frequently, why? What's wrong with people's brains? What can we predict about the state of our species 200 years from now?

Or, more likely, a good deal of this is a flash in the pan compared to the amount of time our species has evolved to what it is today. I say, it is more likely that we are now pretty much as we were 50, 100, 500, 1000, 10,000 years ago. I think our species has evolved very little in recent decades, and what is changing is the consensus of what actually makes up these untestable disorders.

This doesn't sound particularly scientific to me.

As Cito di Pense asked elsewhere, how would you explain when a treatment based on DSMx diagnosis fails to work?

tuco · **#187** by **tuco** » May 09, 2014 7:58 pm

If I may, curved statistical distribution is about as scientific as cutting to length. We could even bicker that exact length is impossible, but that is physics of elementary particles not study of human behaviour. What is not scientific is the goal , as noted, unless we venture to a moral landscape.

Its not aliens, its just genuine concern about application of branch of science, which is not physics of elementary particles, on % of population where impact on their lives could be irreversible. But its the same like with cancer so why not to have the same concerns over oncology? Good question, but for another debate.

Cito di Pense · **#188** by **Cito di Pense** » May 09, 2014 8:09 pm

tuco wrote:If I may, curved statistical distribution is about as scientific as cutting to length.

It is if you know how to measure anything related to the distribution, such as, ummmm, length. You know how it is. If you're testing the water depth of one murky fathom with a five-foot oar, the sea appears bottomless. But thanks for sticking your oar in.

Clive Durdle · **#189** by **Clive Durdle** » May 09, 2014 9:34 pm

Last year I did a MOOC by University of Geneva about global health, and one of the modules was about sedentary lifestyles. I propose ADHD is a direct result of forcing children to sit in classrooms for years.

Create you own strategy for Prevention of a Non-Communicable Disease

1. question:
Which country and which risk factor did you choose and why exactly

Sedentary lifestyle, Britain – personal reasons, asthma, overweight, office worker now retired, show evidence about this in terms of health “Lack of physical activity detrimentally increases several risk factors for chronic disease and death, including raised blood levels of lipids, glucose, as well as high blood pressure. Inactive people are more likely to develop obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease (heart disease and stroke), osteoporosis and some cancers (breast and bowel), all of which pose major public health problems. Interestingly, evidence emerges concerning the link between low activity and a greater risk of dementia, depression and impaired physical function in the elderly. Convincing research suggests that sedentary behaviour has harmful health effects independent of physical activity, meaning that high levels of activity don't cancel out the effects of sitting down for extended periods of time.”

is that risk factor important in your context? (Please use data or references to back up your claim).

2. question:
What does your prevention strategy consist of and who are the key stakeholders? (Who would support and who may be against?)

“Physical activity can be pursued in four 'domains' of daily life including leisure time, work, transport and at home.”1

Arguably, physical activity has become specialized in urban situations primarily in the leisure domain. A key purpose of the strategy is for activity to be normal across all domains.

Homo Sapiens is a very mobile primate, what should our environment look like? Are there opportunities for climbing, play and fun for adults not only children everywhere and everywhen?

“We are monkeys”
““Laughing” is probably one of the most important social behaviours we have.”

The main stakeholders are planners, architects, health, government, artists, comedians, people. Volkswagen’s Fun Theory is an example.

Wherever and whenever someone goes, interesting fun things should happen, people should have choices to climb over or under things, hear echoes, have magical experiences – a fountain in Montlucon France asks you to wet the noses of lions and make a wish! Buses, trains, offices, all should be made fun and exciting. Cars and sitting in offices should deliberately be made boring. Dancing and celebration would be far more common.

The urban landscape would also have plenty of opportunities for napping. “Take regular naps. People who nap at least five times a week for half an hour have 35% reduced chance of cardiovascular disease. Stress hormones also decrease when you’re napping.”6 It would of course use the best examples of inclusive design.

The delivery mechanism for this policy would be contagion, well placed examples allowing others to copy and riff on and develop the ideas.

1 http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/gates-c ... 39088.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03bdpl5 Sophie Scott comment in programme. This programme also discusses laughter
https://class.coursera.org/globalhealth ... age=week-4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7lE2cl2zFo Professor Scott discussing how laughter bonds.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw

http://www.barbaraehrenreich.com/dancin ... treets.htm

http://www.bluezones.com/live-longer/ed ... ia-greece/

Clive Durdle · **#190** by **Clive Durdle** » May 09, 2014 9:43 pm

There was a time when standing desks were a curiosity—used by eccentrics like Hemingway, Dickens and Kierkegaard, but seldom seen inside a regular office setting.

That's changed, in large part due to research showing that the cumulative impact of sitting all day for years is associated with a range of health problems, from obesity to diabetes to cancer. Because the average office worker spends 5 hours and 41 minutes sitting each day at his or her desk, some describe the problem with a pithy new phrase that's undeniably catchy, if somewhat exaggerated: "Sitting is the new smoking."

Much of this research has been spurred by James Levine, an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic. "The way we live now is to sit all day, occasionally punctuated by a walk from the parking lot to the office," he recently said during a phone interview, speaking as he strolled around his living room. "The default has become to sit. We need the default to be standing."

All this might sound suspiciously like the latest health fad, and nothing more. But a growing body of research—conducted both by Levine and other scientists—confirms that a sedentary lifestyle appears to be detrimental in the long-term.

Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-n ... QtUDTrR.99
Give the gift of Smithsonian magazine for only $12! http://bit.ly/1cGUiGv
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

Why do not people just observe behaviour? If you force young apes to sit quietly many will, but some won't, especially if they have high sugar loads.

Mr.Samsa · **#191** by **Mr.Samsa** » May 10, 2014 7:18 am

Cito di Pense wrote:
This isn't just snark, Mr.Samsa. You could always debate the point, instead of personalising.

There is no point to debate, it's all just wibble CIto. As for "personalising", bend the other spoon mate.

Cito di Pense wrote:
stijndeloose wrote:"Personalizing"?

I disagree. It would be ad hom to assert that someone took a particular position w.r.t. ADHD because of having self-diagnosed as such or accepted a diagnosis from someone else. Anyone who lets someone else diagnose them with ADHD is already on the back foot. Unless it makes a great excuse, a leg up in an otherwise free-for-all competition. All you have to do is game the system into treating ADHD as an affliction. I empathise. I really do. ADHD really precludes a career in physics, but other departments leave their doors wide open to people who want to research their own peculiarities in the guise of researching human diversity.

...What is this wall of gibberish even supposed to mean? Who's arguing their position on the basis of having been diagnosed with ADHD? Why would ADHD preclude a career in physics and how is that even relevant? What other departments intentionally open their doors to people with ADHD and why does that matter?

Jesus titty fucking christ.

The_Metatron wrote:Samsa amuses me very much with that trope about "the poor sampling methods of the mental health professionals at the time", in an attempt to handwave away the uncomfortable truth about homosexuality being classed as a disorder until recently. Something changed, and it wasn't the homosexuals.

Facts aren't "tropes", Metatron. And who is "handwaving" away the horrific mistake that was made? The point being made was that the mistakes in diagnostic criteria was due to subjective and social opinions on the matter and I simply corrected this historical inaccuracy.

If, for some reason, you think it is more ethical or compassionate to literally rewrite history to suit your personal beliefs then feel free to do that.

The_Metatron wrote:Are we to believe that the study of statistics is a recent development? That there has been a revolution in sampling methods in our lifetime? That scientists were previously unable to control for other variables?

Sampling methods and biases in methodology have come a great way since the 40s and 50s, yes. This shouldn't be surprising.

The_Metatron wrote:There are other scientific fields that didn't seem to suffer this problem. Ampere, Coulomb, Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz, and many others in my field of science were able to figure shit out that still holds perfectly true today.

To be fair, they were studying easy topics. But so what, psychologists like Helmholtz, Fechner, Pavlov, etc, all discovered things which still hold true today.

The_Metatron wrote:Clearly, the ability to apply the scientific method and analyze data has existed for a far longer time than the age of DSM IV, or whatever manual it was in which its authors decided that homosexuality wasn't really a disorder. There is no possibility of a committee changing Maxwell's field equations, regardless of what society does or does not hold to be true.

Are you serious? I can't believe this train wreck of a conspiracy theorists wet dream is still in the science section with shitty scientifically ignorant comments like that. Do you understand why there is a difference between an applied science field and an experimental science field? You realise that your comments apply to medicine as a whole right?

The reason is that medicine (including clinical psychology) involve value judgements, you can't scientifically demonstrate that someone is sick. You first need to define what criteria you include as "sick" and make judgements as to where to draw the line. For that you need things like committees.

The_Metatron wrote:So, why the incompetence in this field?

You haven't demonstrated any incompetence yet. But I feel that that's probably because you're out of your depth in this discussion (what with knowing nothing about science).

The_Metatron wrote:Here's some fun stuff about how DSM IV compares to DSM IV regarding ADHD:
Try that kind of shit in engineering and see how far you get. Try sending a probe to another planet by burning the thrusters "several" times. This isn't science, I don't care how it's presented. You do not get to use vague, undefined terms to make a diagnosis of anything and call it science based. Oh, you can call it a hunch, a wild-assed guess, or a feeling, you can even call it a consensus. Science, my ass.

"An ampere is several electrons flowing past a point in a little bit of time."

See what you can build with that.

Try what "kind of shit"?

And why bring up engineering? It's not a science (obviously).

Mr.Samsa · **#192** by **Mr.Samsa** » May 10, 2014 7:23 am

Clive Durdle wrote:Last year I did a MOOC by University of Geneva about global health, and one of the modules was about sedentary lifestyles. I propose ADHD is a direct result of forcing children to sit in classrooms for years.

Impossible as you need to demonstrate that the behaviors occur in a number of places outside of school, and that they are consistent and persistent across time.

The_Metatron · **#193** by **The_Metatron** » May 10, 2014 8:30 am

Mr.Samsa wrote:
Cito di Pense wrote:This isn't just snark, Mr.Samsa. You could always debate the point, instead of personalising.

There is no point to debate, it's all just wibble CIto. As for "personalising", bend the other spoon mate.

Cito di Pense wrote:
stijndeloose wrote:"Personalizing"?

I disagree. It would be ad hom to assert that someone took a particular position w.r.t. ADHD because of having self-diagnosed as such or accepted a diagnosis from someone else. Anyone who lets someone else diagnose them with ADHD is already on the back foot. Unless it makes a great excuse, a leg up in an otherwise free-for-all competition. All you have to do is game the system into treating ADHD as an affliction. I empathise. I really do. ADHD really precludes a career in physics, but other departments leave their doors wide open to people who want to research their own peculiarities in the guise of researching human diversity.

...What is this wall of gibberish even supposed to mean? Who's arguing their position on the basis of having been diagnosed with ADHD? Why would ADHD preclude a career in physics and how is that even relevant? What other departments intentionally open their doors to people with ADHD and why does that matter?

Jesus titty fucking christ.

The_Metatron wrote:Samsa amuses me very much with that trope about "the poor sampling methods of the mental health professionals at the time", in an attempt to handwave away the uncomfortable truth about homosexuality being classed as a disorder until recently. Something changed, and it wasn't the homosexuals.

Facts aren't "tropes", Metatron. And who is "handwaving" away the horrific mistake that was made? The point being made was that the mistakes in diagnostic criteria was due to subjective and social opinions on the matter and I simply corrected this historical inaccuracy.

And, all this time, I thought you were telling us how scientific that was. Subjectivity. Opinion. The hallmarks of science done well, eh?

Mr.Samsa wrote:If, for some reason, you think it is more ethical or compassionate to literally rewrite history to suit your personal beliefs then feel free to do that.

The_Metatron wrote:Are we to believe that the study of statistics is a recent development? That there has been a revolution in sampling methods in our lifetime? That scientists were previously unable to control for other variables?

Sampling methods and biases in methodology have come a great way since the 40s and 50s, yes. This shouldn't be surprising.

Really? That little claim will require a little more than your assertion that it is so.

Mr.Samsa wrote:
The_Metatron wrote:There are other scientific fields that didn't seem to suffer this problem. Ampere, Coulomb, Faraday, Maxwell, Hertz, and many others in my field of science were able to figure shit out that still holds perfectly true today.

To be fair, they were studying easy topics. But so what, psychologists like Helmholtz, Fechner, Pavlov, etc, all discovered things which still hold true today.

Yeah. The easy stuff. You do amuse from time to time with your posts.

Mr.Samsa wrote:
The_Metatron wrote:Clearly, the ability to apply the scientific method and analyze data has existed for a far longer time than the age of DSM IV, or whatever manual it was in which its authors decided that homosexuality wasn't really a disorder. There is no possibility of a committee changing Maxwell's field equations, regardless of what society does or does not hold to be true.

Are you serious? I can't believe this train wreck of a conspiracy theorists wet dream is still in the science section with shitty scientifically ignorant comments like that. Do you understand why there is a difference between an applied science field and an experimental science field? You realise that your comments apply to medicine as a whole right?

Yes. I do. Are you now going to tell us all about the whole field of medicine?

I've always found it a failing that in much of medicine, troubleshooting is done through elimination. That is, we don't often see the process by which the diagnostician will make this or that test, and show what a condition is, then treat it. Instead, we see an awful lot of diagnosing through experimenting on the person who is sick. Present symptoms X, Y, Z? Well, lets address those with drugs A, B, and C. If that doesn't work, we'll try something else. Far too often, drugs effect only the symptom, not the condition. Oh, to the person with the condition, the result is the same. Most of the time. Except when the selected drug doesn't have the expected result.

Mr.Samsa wrote:The reason is that medicine (including clinical psychology) involve value judgements, you can't scientifically demonstrate that someone is sick. You first need to define what criteria you include as "sick" and make judgements as to where to draw the line. For that you need things like committees.

Really? Microscopes don't work any more? Radiography? etc, etc... Most people can do better than that in constructing their arguments.

Mr.Samsa wrote:
The_Metatron wrote:So, why the incompetence in this field?

You haven't demonstrated any incompetence yet. But I feel that that's probably because you're out of your depth in this discussion (what with knowing nothing about science).

You can retract that bullshit about knowing nothing about science, and you can do it now. You want to say something about what I write, have at it. What I know, or don't know, is not the topic for discussion. Got that shit, Mr.Samsa?

In fact, you demonstrated the incompetence farther up in this post to which I am replying. You remember: "...mistakes in diagnostic criteria was due to subjective and social opinions on the matter. Who made these mistakes? Remind us.

Mr.Samsa wrote:
The_Metatron wrote:Here's some fun stuff about how DSM IV compares to DSM IV regarding ADHD:
Try that kind of shit in engineering and see how far you get. Try sending a probe to another planet by burning the thrusters "several" times. This isn't science, I don't care how it's presented. You do not get to use vague, undefined terms to make a diagnosis of anything and call it science based. Oh, you can call it a hunch, a wild-assed guess, or a feeling, you can even call it a consensus. Science, my ass.

"An ampere is several electrons flowing past a point in a little bit of time."

See what you can build with that.

Try what "kind of shit"?

And why bring up engineering? It's not a science (obviously).

Yeah. The kind of shit that made it possible for you to sit wherever on earth you are and annoy people over the internet. That kind of shit. Try building something like that based on "science" characterized be concepts like "several".

Cito di Pense · **#194** by **Cito di Pense** » May 10, 2014 9:57 am

Mr.Samsa wrote:

Cito di Pense wrote: ADHD really precludes a career in physics, but other departments leave their doors wide open to people who want to research their own peculiarities in the guise of researching human diversity.

...What is this wall of gibberish even supposed to mean?

I bet you can figure it out if you would only focus your attention on it. Got a scientific test that discriminates selective inattention from ADHD in every case? No? Thought not.

Clinical psychologists develop their own measures of the several conditions they diagnose. Every so often, they bring out a new version of the DSM, to add and delete some entries. It's a living.

Mr.Samsa wrote:And why bring up engineering? It's not a science (obviously).

You were telling us what makes clinical psychology a science, besides reminding us that you've read up on the subject. In view of that, a science is any field that collects data. Therefore, engineering is science.

The_Metatron wrote:
Mr.Samsa wrote:If, for some reason, you think it is more ethical or compassionate to literally rewrite history to suit your personal beliefs then feel free to do that.

The_Metatron wrote:Are we to believe that the study of statistics is a recent development? That there has been a revolution in sampling methods in our lifetime? That scientists were previously unable to control for other variables?

Sampling methods and biases in methodology have come a great way since the 40s and 50s, yes. This shouldn't be surprising.

Really? That little claim will require a little more than your assertion that it is so.

The_Metatron · **#195** by **The_Metatron** » May 10, 2014 11:42 am

Taking the high ground here, Mr.Samsa, posting where you think I won't reply?:

Mr.Samsa wrote:Come on guys, now we have The_Metatron spewing anti-scientific crap in the thread. It needs to be placed where it belongs or you guys need to explain how it isn't pseudoscience.

Help, help! Someone isn't buying what I'm selling! It must be anti-scientific!

Pretty lame. Predictable, but lame.

Asta666 · **#196** by **Asta666** » May 10, 2014 2:56 pm

The_Metatron wrote:The point you insist on missing is simple enough to grasp.

I know how long I need to cut a dipole antenna for 144 MHz. It always has to be cut to that length. Period. Not close, not sometimes, there is no distribution curve to plot its behavior if it is cut to the wrong length. This length has always been the same, and it will always be the same. In fact, we can use the science behind that calculation to predict at what frequency an antenna of different length will resonate. Or, we can predict at what length we must cut an antenna to operate at another given frequency. This always works. Not sometimes. Always.

Now here's the point, spelled out for you: A different edition of an antenna manual may never give a different length, regardless of the consensus of the authors. Nor can they arbitrarily change the conditions required for an antenna to operate at its designed frequency.

That's remarkable, but what I don't understand is how it is relevant here given that:
a) the DSM is not proposed as a scientific explanation but as a compilation of syndromes.
b) the subject matter is entirely different.

The_Metatron wrote:Having another look at those differences in ADHD diagnosis between DSM IV and V, the question that comes to mind is: Why? Why the changes? It seems pretty clear that something happens after a diagnosis of ADHD is made. Something is done with that diagnosis. What is it that is done? To whom is it being done? Is it being done more or less frequently as a result of the arbitrary changes in the diagnosis criteria? If more frequently, why? What's wrong with people's brains? What can we predict about the state of our species 200 years from now?

The uses of the diagnoses are summarized at page 5 of the manual: "Reliable diagnoses are essential for guiding treatment recommendations, identifying prevalence rates for mental health service planning, identifying patient groups for clinical
and basic research, and documenting important public health information such as morbidity and mortality rates."
Actually no brain malfunction is proposed in it as a cause of ADHD. What changes are the characteristics of the syndrome and that can happen for several reasons, it's not limited to psychiatric syndromes and doesn't make it a scheme or an unreal disease.

The_Metatron wrote:Or, more likely, a good deal of this is a flash in the pan compared to the amount of time our species has evolved to what it is today. I say, it is more likely that we are now pretty much as we were 50, 100, 500, 1000, 10,000 years ago. I think our species has evolved very little in recent decades, and what is changing is the consensus of what actually makes up these untestable disorders.

This doesn't sound particularly scientific to me.

As Cito di Pense asked elsewhere, how would you explain when a treatment based on DSMx diagnosis fails to work?

It doesn't sound particularly unscientific to me, especially since it's not a scientific explanation, although it might not be as perfected as antenna building :lol:

. I've not seen anyone claim that, not even the APA.
Failure could be due to a variety of reasons, as in failure of any treatment based on any diagnosis, including the failure of the computer anti-virus to identify certain viruses. The problem IMO is line with what Mr. Samsa said in the other thread about this thread:

There are certainly valid ways to criticise the validity of mental disorder categories (and those discussions have taken place in the science forum and are still there), but saying "Back in my day we used to just call them kids 'energetic', so maybe we could just treat them with yoga!" isn't really something deserving of the science forum...

But God forbid we are deprived of certain Users' invaluable aphorisms.

The_Metatron · **#197** by **The_Metatron** » May 10, 2014 3:46 pm

Asta666 wrote:
[Reveal] Spoiler:
The_Metatron wrote:The point you insist on missing is simple enough to grasp.

I know how long I need to cut a dipole antenna for 144 MHz. It always has to be cut to that length. Period. Not close, not sometimes, there is no distribution curve to plot its behavior if it is cut to the wrong length. This length has always been the same, and it will always be the same. In fact, we can use the science behind that calculation to predict at what frequency an antenna of different length will resonate. Or, we can predict at what length we must cut an antenna to operate at another given frequency. This always works. Not sometimes. Always.

Now here's the point, spelled out for you: A different edition of an antenna manual may never give a different length, regardless of the consensus of the authors. Nor can they arbitrarily change the conditions required for an antenna to operate at its designed frequency.

That's remarkable, but what I don't understand is how it is relevant here given that:
a) the DSM is not proposed as a scientific explanation but as a compilation of syndromes.
b) the subject matter is entirely different.

The_Metatron wrote:Having another look at those differences in ADHD diagnosis between DSM IV and V, the question that comes to mind is: Why? Why the changes? It seems pretty clear that something happens after a diagnosis of ADHD is made. Something is done with that diagnosis. What is it that is done? To whom is it being done? Is it being done more or less frequently as a result of the arbitrary changes in the diagnosis criteria? If more frequently, why? What's wrong with people's brains? What can we predict about the state of our species 200 years from now?

The uses of the diagnoses are summarized at page 5 of the manual: "Reliable diagnoses are essential for guiding treatment recommendations, identifying prevalence rates for mental health service planning, identifying patient groups for clinical
and basic research, and documenting important public health information such as morbidity and mortality rates."
Actually no brain malfunction is proposed in it as a cause of ADHD. What changes are the characteristics of the syndrome and that can happen for several reasons, it's not limited to psychiatric syndromes and doesn't make it a scheme or an unreal disease.

The_Metatron wrote:
[Reveal] Spoiler:
Or, more likely, a good deal of this is a flash in the pan compared to the amount of time our species has evolved to what it is today. I say, it is more likely that we are now pretty much as we were 50, 100, 500, 1000, 10,000 years ago. I think our species has evolved very little in recent decades, and what is changing is the consensus of what actually makes up these untestable disorders.

This doesn't sound particularly scientific to me.

As Cito di Pense asked elsewhere, how would you explain when a treatment based on DSMx diagnosis fails to work?

It doesn't sound particularly unscientific to me, especially since it's not a scientific explanation, although it might not be as perfected as antenna building . I've not seen anyone claims that, not even the APA....

Failure could be due to a variety of reasons, as in failure of any treatment based on any diagnosis, including the failure of the computer anti-virus to identify certain viruses.

Not even close. Anti-virus computer programs never identify a certain virus, then fail to identify the same one later. They never fail to detect one, then magically start detecting that same one later. Ever. Try it with an EICAR file yourself. See? Science you can do yourself.

Fuck up the checksum of a TCP packet and the receiver will reject that packet. Not sometimes. Every time. I can assure you, fields in science exist that do not tolerate concepts like "several".

Asta666 wrote:
[Reveal] Spoiler:
The problem IMO is line with what Mr. Samsa said in the other thread about this thread:
There are certainly valid ways to criticise the validity of mental disorder categories (and those discussions have taken place in the science forum and are still there), but saying "Back in my day we used to just call them kids 'energetic', so maybe we could just treat them with yoga!" isn't really something deserving of the science forum...

But God forbid we are deprived of certain Users' invaluable aphorisms.

Asta666 · **#198** by **Asta666** » May 10, 2014 4:36 pm

The_Metatron wrote:Not even close.

Sorry but close to what?

The_Metatron wrote:Anti-virus computer programs never identify a certain virus, then fail to identify the same one later. They never fail to detect one, then magically start detecting that same one later. Ever. Try it with an EICAR file yourself. See? Science you can do yourself..

I didn't say they did that.

The_Metatron wrote:Fuck up the checksum of a TCP packet and the receiver will reject that packet. Not sometimes. Every time. I can assure you, fields in science exist that do not tolerate concepts like "several".

Again, that's remarkable but I don't see the usefulness regarding this topic, unless you want to start proposing ways that you think could help to reduce ambiguity. Maybe an antenna would help.

The_Metatron · **#199** by **The_Metatron** » May 10, 2014 4:42 pm

Asta666 wrote:
The_Metatron wrote:Not even close.

Sorry but close to what?

The_Metatron wrote:Anti-virus computer programs never identify a certain virus, then fail to identify the same one later. They never fail to detect one, then magically start detecting that same one later. Ever. Try it with an EICAR file yourself. See? Science you can do yourself..

I didn't say they did that.

Oh, I see, you left some wiggle room, didn't you? You are instead comparing a failure in a psychiatric treatment (of some condition it is designed to correct) to failure of a computer program to detect a particular virus signature it is not designed to detect.

Yeah. That's apt, isn't it?

Asta666 wrote:
The_Metatron wrote:Fuck up the checksum of a TCP packet and the receiver will reject that packet. Not sometimes. Every time. I can assure you, fields in science exist that do not tolerate concepts like "several".

Again, that's remarkable but I don't see the usefulness regarding this topic, unless you want to start proposing ways that you think could help to reduce ambiguity. Maybe an antenna would help.

And, you are now asking me to chip in to fix the failings of psychiatry? Isn't all this wonderful science Samsa keeps trying to ram down our throats doing the job?

Asta666 · **#200** by **Asta666** » May 10, 2014 5:18 pm

The_Metatron wrote:And, you are now asking me to chip in to fix the failings of psychiatry? Isn't all this wonderful science Samsa keeps trying to ram down our throats doing the job?

Yes it is, and yes, The_Metatron, I am. At least that'd be something useful for a change, you're not precisely discovering fire or inventing the wheel right now. Maybe a good starting point would be reading the book you attempt to criticize.

ADHD is 'not a real disease'

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