Does Anonymity Breed Cruelty?
Posted on 07/12/2011 | 1 Comments
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I don’t want to comment on the video – it speaks for itself. What I want to address are some of the comments that the video has received. Blog Tag Cloud
adhd anxiety disorders attention award awards behaviour bipolar blog brain & neurology bullying canada care carter center conference confidentiality control coping criminal justice system cruelty cutting depression discrimination doctor driving eating disordersRecent Comment
This is a great set of comments and rings very true.
I totally agree that scientists (just like everyone else) have their biases and foibles. After all, scientists are human beings too! But science is different than scientists.
The scientific method is the most objective frame that we have by which to evaluate and predict. Science is not about finding truth. It is only about being less wrong most of the time. The scientific method (experimental design and mathematics) gives us the ability to test what we believe. The scientific method is not used to prove something is correct, on the contrary, the scientific method is designed to prove that something is not correct! It is designed to test what is called the “null hypothesis”. It takes ideas that come out of left field (or wherever else they come from) and puts those ideas to an independent test.
t does not drive our beliefs. It does however challenge our beliefs. In that way it is self-correcting. Of course scientific inquiry and understanding lives within a wider social context. That is one of the great features of science.
But gravity is gravity, social context notwithstanding. And thus it is nasty, brutish and long. As Brecht said, (something like this) - the purpose of science is to save us from everlasting error.
By Christina Carew on May 11th
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Lesekele said...
Thank you, Judith, for an interesting post, rasiing debate about such an important topic.I think more research is needed, but the kind of research that needs to be done is a matter of differing opinions. I think more attention needs to be given to the social conditions which affect people’s mental health. Like The Critical Psychiatry Network, I disagree with the emphasis on biological research. Both here and in the US so much research focuses on neurobiology and genetics. Yet, after many years of research, there is no evidence that brain disease is the basis of what are known as mental illnesses. The Campaign to Abolish Psychiatric Diagnoses (rightly in my view) calls for an end to the years of fruitless research to find biological correlates which continue to deliver nothing clinically useful.‘I would like to see more recognition of the importance of user-led research into issues of concern for the service user, which often professionally-led research has failed to address. I agree, Judith, that drug treatments have debilitating effects on the lives of people who take them. More research is neeeded to look into service users’ experiences of psychiatric drugs and into finding alternatives to drug treatments. The unaceptable adverse effects of drugs tends to be ignored or denied when research is initiated and funded by drugs companies motivated by their profits.I appreciate the good work and intentions of the Time to Change anti-stigma campaign. We do need to fight against stigma, but perhaps we should look first at the stigmatising attitudes coming from within the mental health services and question the validity of stimatising diagnostic labels.
Comment made on March 13th, 2012
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