aphar

Ailurophobia and ailurophilia.
Almost recovered from a bout of cat allergy (spent the last Shabbos in a house with a lovely orange cat).

Cats are cute and cuddly, but scientists suspect a correlation between cat ownership in childhood and later development of schizophrenia, so think twice before getting such a risky pet.

My problem with psychiatry is the combination of the following two observations:

• Inability of psychiatrists to reliably diagnose mental illness or even agree on what is a mental illness


• Arrogation by psychiatrists of two rights:
  
  • to chemically meddle with the patients' brains
  
  
  • to deprive the patients of their civil rights by declaring them insane

While I agree that psychiatry is useful, and is usually used in the interests of the patients, I think a more cautious approach to the use of psychotropic drugs is a good idea.
Specifically, using psychotropic drugs usually means that the patient has to keep taking them for life (no exit strategy).

In some cases a more cautious - clinical - approach [1] might be better (cognitive behavioral therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy and other talking treatments).
Alas, it is being aggressively disputed [2] touting recent research (which makes fascinating claims like PTSD has been shown to be highly heritable despite being definitionally linked to specific experiences).

[1] vs [2] might be the usual turf struggle for funding, but I would hate to see people being medicated for life when it is possible to instead "talk them out of being ill".

PS. See also an old entry.

To get the trivial issues out of the way, let me state with utmost clarity that all the problems that humanity have ever solved were solved by science and technology - from staving off the Malthusian starvation with the Green revolution, to avoiding NYC being buried by horse manure. Thus I believe we should fund STEM research - DARPA, ARPA-e, NASA and national labs - at 101% of what scientists request (and 70+% of my compatriots agree with me!).

However, given the real and perceived "war on science" by the Trump administration, we need to understand what is really going on, and how to advance our progress.

The dominant explanation of the "war on science" is Knowledge Deficit: people don't know enough. This explanation is, apparently, wrong, because there is a (weak) positive correlation between science knowledge and skepticism of recommendations of climate scientists (IOW, more knowledgeable people - as determined by a quiz - are more skeptical).

Let me try to advance an alternative view of the apparent conflict.

There are two parts to what the scientists say:

• Positive statements - what is


• Normative statements - what should be done

We ("the literate public") certainly trust the scientists' area of expertise - the Positive statements.
However, there is no reason to trust their Normative statements any more than that of an average intelligent person.

The poster child of this attitude is the aforementioned "manure crisis": we did not need to do what the scientists recommended to solve it, it was solved by the automotive revolution.

Similarly, there is absolutely no need for wedges, treaties &c &c.

If it ever will be stopped, the climate change will be stopped by introducing new technology, so what we need is a stiff carbon tax without grandfather clauses which will make alternative energy more economically attractive (and maybe give extra money to STEM R&D).