That's the thing that bugs me about a lot of psychology. No true scientific verification process. I take what I read with a wheelbarrow of salt. Most of it isn't filed in the fact folder but the "interesting, maybe" folder, because for all I know it could just be some plausible sounding bullshit. I may even believe a lot of it myself, but I've learned to not believe everything I think. I think a lot of academics are just trying to sound clever and make a name for themselves. And then you have what the video clip mentions too, people trying to make a buck.
I think it's just the old repetitive pattern of the science of today being the joke of tomorrow. Look back a few hundred years at some of the scientific ideas in vogue back then, and here we are today smugly laughing at them, not knowing the idiocies of our own time...
I didn't know the DSM guys actually
voted these things into "fact"... Seriously, science is NOT a democracy! That sounds downright ridiculous. I'm fairly certain that there is such a thing as madness and that the physiological processes of the brain are tightly connected to the output of the mind and personality and all. Damage to the brain can and does warp the mind. People can be born with six fingers on each hand and lacking a foot, and I don't think the brain is an exception. Taking the physiological angle doesen't seem like a flawed concept, but physiology is
chemical. Not vague touchy, feely psychobabble that can't be proven or disproven. It shouldn't be THAT hard to explore this scientifically, and if it is that hard they certainly have no business talking about it as if they know.
As a slight aside - slight because it is very related - I find it disconcerting that the incentives of the pharmacautical companies and medical professionals isn't in keeping you healthy but in you being sick. That's not to say they're all a bunch of evil guys visciously conspiring against people but they do most definitely profit from ill health. Also, the pharmaceutical corporations are just that. Not a part of the medical system with any kind of responsibility beyond any other corporation i.e., releasing a shoddy product. But just corporations in the same way as coca cola and general motors or whatever. There are enough bad apples in the world that watching which way the incentives go sounds real important to me.
If the company only makes money when people are sick, then how much real interest is there really in keeping people healthy? AIDS for instance. Why on earth should a company produce a cure for AIDS even if it could? With the medicines available today an AIDS afflicted person has about the same life expectancy as a healthy person. Not quite as long of course but they'll probably turn bald and gray haired, at which point there's no real reason to complain, all things considered. Now these meds bring in a pretty penny for a long long time. Why should a company release a one-time cure for this income stream, er sorry, disease? That's not to say it won't happen but there isn't much of an incentive to do so from a business point of view.
It's like being paid by the hour. the slower you work, the more money you make for each unit of work, so to speak. (unless you get sacked of course, got to find that balance you know.) The reward for fast and effective work? more work, but no more pay. Why should I work hard when I can work at a comfortable pace? work ethics you say? Work ethics isn't currency. I can't buy crap off of the internet with work ethics.
Incentives...The more disease, the more money.
I'm going to refrain from making any assumptions or claims from all this but I will say that it is very convenient that they are able to sell what was it $76 billion worth of meds when the diseases they are for cannot even be proven to exist. Cui bono indeed... This shit needs proper regulation.
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