5 ms·

Do you think the word "cancer" is thrown around too lightly when people say that they had a melanoma removed?

by sls 8y ago

TangoTrotFox 8y ago
Cancer is physical, autism is psychological. It's possible to diagnose somebody who does not have autism with autism. If somebody has a cancerous growth - which is what defines cancer, it is not possible to falsely diagnose them with cancer. If somebody had a benign growth removed and called it cancer, yes I would think it was being thrown around too lightly.
- sls 8y ago
  I don't know why you point out that it's impossible to falsely diagnose cancer in a patient who has cancer. Surely you agree that it's also impossible to falsely diagnose autism in a person with autism? But perhaps your remark simply reflects a metaphor stretched too far. I realize that you are not the original commenter who alleged that the term "autism" was being thrown around too lightly, but you're happy to agree. Is the entire basis for your view that sometimes people are misdiagnosed? Or do you have a stronger claim in mind?
  - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
    In my opinion, people are different. Attributing differences to disorders is not productive, and tends to lead to things such as medication and expensive treatment and therapy when such things are not only unnecessary but absurd and can even be harmful - especially in the longrun. It's reminiscent of various 'treatments' for homosexuality in the earlier years of psychology/psychiatry, which by the way does not mean the 19th century or whatever - this was normal practice as late as the 70s. Of course the fundamental issue is that the difference between disorder and being different is not well defined. I think a reasonable definition would be a disorder is something that's likely to cause an individual to harm themselves or others in a way completely outside of their control. Schizophrenia is a good example, as are the sort of autistic children you can find that have little to no ability to communicate and might see engaging in 'autistic flapping' in a corner. Imagine if we treated things like schizophrenia the same way we do autism. We better stick every single religious individual that claims to be able to communicate with or hear the voice of god on antipsychotics and scheduled 'treatment', as they're clearly on the scale. From a secular point of view, that's kind of an amusing idea but only as a form of schadenfreude - it's of course an idiotic idea and notion. They may have eccentric views or behaviors, but that is not schizophrenia. The definition of mental illness should not slide so far as to begin to encompass people that clearly are not ill by any meaningful definition of the word.
    - Fnoord 8y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17590856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17590856 This post answers yours clearly: it is a spectrum. > I think a reasonable definition would be a disorder Homosexuality is not a disorder according to ICD or DSM. Autism is a development disorder. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder. Disorders cannot be cured, and cannot be treated either. One can learn to cope with them, but it cannot go away like a traditional disease. Its a verdict for life, so to say. Someone with autism can have other issues, on top of their autism, e.g. ADHD or depression however autism is the main issue from which the other issues derive from. The rest of your post is just denial, and I can only speculate why. > The definition of mental illness should not slide so far as to begin to encompass people that clearly are not ill by any meaningful definition of the word. That's why we have specialists who analyse people, and not laymen like people themselves, or people like you who claim about random strangers they "they don't have autism" or "don't have severe enough autism". Those people who get a diagnosis by said specialists who specialised in ASD generally don't get misdiagnosed. You may safely assume that those people have ASD. If they're not a child anymore, that generally means they have a relatively mild form but as you can read throughout this thread that doesn't mean they don't suffer, or that there's no room for QoL improvements. You can figure out how adults with so-called mild autism suffer by reading into their stories. The linked story is a great anecdote though unfortunately the subject didn't get a diagnosis. I am lucky enough to live in a relatively rich country with decent healthcare. But many in our world, including in the USA, are not as good off as I am. Those people might run around un(der)diagnosed. That saddens me, as I've been misdiagnosed and un(de)rdiagnosed myself for a good 3,5 decades.
      - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
        Homosexuality was considered a disorder by the DSM until 1973, which is what I was alluding to with my comment. And like most actions in psychology and psychiatry there was no scientific logic behind the decision to add it, or to remove it. It was simply proposed as a motion to the board of the American Psychiatry Association, and passed. Of course I'm not suggesting homosexuality is a disorder, but rather that their entire process of determining what is or is not a disorder has a very tenuous connection with science. And this perhaps generalizes to these fields in general. The entire fields of psychology and psychiatry are currently in crisis in that their studies and research in general is now, more often than not, deeply flawed. I'm sure you aware of this [4] study which showed some 61% of major psychological studies published in reputable journals did not yield the results claimed when replicated. Follow up results from different researchers have corroborated this issue. One of the responses from the psychologists and psychiatrists involved in the unreproducible studies was to complain that they didn't use the nearly identical samples - for instance using students in e.g. Germany instead of students in New York. However that is a rather direct acknowledgement that these studies do not generalize in any way. But if they don't, then these fields are in no way producing science, let alone actionable science. A very related issue here is the medicating of people. A recent study indicated that some 17% [1] of Americans are consuming psychiatric drugs. That number nearly doubled in a decade, yet the science on these drugs is very questionable. In recent trials upwards of 80% of SSRI's effects were explained by placebo alone. [2] That number should be doubly surprising as the side effects of SSRIs are, by contrast, very real and tend to undermine double blind studies. And the longterm effects are looking quite dire as well. This is all made more problematic by a pharmaceutical industry that sponsors research more aimed at them making money than on improving healthfulness of people. Emphasizing this is the fact that more than 50% [3] of preclinical medical trials also have results that were later found to be unreproducible. [1] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2592697 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... [2] - http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou... [3] - http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002165 http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour... [4] - https://www.nature.com/news/first-results-from-psychology-s-largest-reproducibility-test-1.17433 https://www.nature.com/news/first-results-from-psychology-s-...

Do you think the word "cancer" is thrown around too lightly when people say that they had a melanoma removed?

by sls 8y ago

Do you think the word "cancer" is thrown around too lightly when people say that they had a melanoma removed?

Cancer is physical, autism is psychological. It's possible to diagnose somebody who does not have autism with autism. If somebody has a cancerous growth - which is what defines cancer, it is not possible to falsely diagnose them with cancer. If somebody had a benign growth removed and called it cancer, yes I would think it was being thrown around too lightly.

sls 8y ago
I don't know why you point out that it's impossible to falsely diagnose cancer in a patient who has cancer. Surely you agree that it's also impossible to falsely diagnose autism in a person with autism? But perhaps your remark simply reflects a metaphor stretched too far. I realize that you are not the original commenter who alleged that the term "autism" was being thrown around too lightly, but you're happy to agree. Is the entire basis for your view that sometimes people are misdiagnosed? Or do you have a stronger claim in mind?
- TangoTrotFox 8y ago
  In my opinion, people are different. Attributing differences to disorders is not productive, and tends to lead to things such as medication and expensive treatment and therapy when such things are not only unnecessary but absurd and can even be harmful - especially in the longrun. It's reminiscent of various 'treatments' for homosexuality in the earlier years of psychology/psychiatry, which by the way does not mean the 19th century or whatever - this was normal practice as late as the 70s. Of course the fundamental issue is that the difference between disorder and being different is not well defined. I think a reasonable definition would be a disorder is something that's likely to cause an individual to harm themselves or others in a way completely outside of their control. Schizophrenia is a good example, as are the sort of autistic children you can find that have little to no ability to communicate and might see engaging in 'autistic flapping' in a corner. Imagine if we treated things like schizophrenia the same way we do autism. We better stick every single religious individual that claims to be able to communicate with or hear the voice of god on antipsychotics and scheduled 'treatment', as they're clearly on the scale. From a secular point of view, that's kind of an amusing idea but only as a form of schadenfreude - it's of course an idiotic idea and notion. They may have eccentric views or behaviors, but that is not schizophrenia. The definition of mental illness should not slide so far as to begin to encompass people that clearly are not ill by any meaningful definition of the word.
  - Fnoord 8y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17590856 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17590856 This post answers yours clearly: it is a spectrum. > I think a reasonable definition would be a disorder Homosexuality is not a disorder according to ICD or DSM. Autism is a development disorder. Schizophrenia is a psychotic disorder. Disorders cannot be cured, and cannot be treated either. One can learn to cope with them, but it cannot go away like a traditional disease. Its a verdict for life, so to say. Someone with autism can have other issues, on top of their autism, e.g. ADHD or depression however autism is the main issue from which the other issues derive from. The rest of your post is just denial, and I can only speculate why. > The definition of mental illness should not slide so far as to begin to encompass people that clearly are not ill by any meaningful definition of the word. That's why we have specialists who analyse people, and not laymen like people themselves, or people like you who claim about random strangers they "they don't have autism" or "don't have severe enough autism". Those people who get a diagnosis by said specialists who specialised in ASD generally don't get misdiagnosed. You may safely assume that those people have ASD. If they're not a child anymore, that generally means they have a relatively mild form but as you can read throughout this thread that doesn't mean they don't suffer, or that there's no room for QoL improvements. You can figure out how adults with so-called mild autism suffer by reading into their stories. The linked story is a great anecdote though unfortunately the subject didn't get a diagnosis. I am lucky enough to live in a relatively rich country with decent healthcare. But many in our world, including in the USA, are not as good off as I am. Those people might run around un(der)diagnosed. That saddens me, as I've been misdiagnosed and un(de)rdiagnosed myself for a good 3,5 decades.
    - TangoTrotFox 8y ago
      Homosexuality was considered a disorder by the DSM until 1973, which is what I was alluding to with my comment. And like most actions in psychology and psychiatry there was no scientific logic behind the decision to add it, or to remove it. It was simply proposed as a motion to the board of the American Psychiatry Association, and passed. Of course I'm not suggesting homosexuality is a disorder, but rather that their entire process of determining what is or is not a disorder has a very tenuous connection with science. And this perhaps generalizes to these fields in general. The entire fields of psychology and psychiatry are currently in crisis in that their studies and research in general is now, more often than not, deeply flawed. I'm sure you aware of this [4] study which showed some 61% of major psychological studies published in reputable journals did not yield the results claimed when replicated. Follow up results from different researchers have corroborated this issue. One of the responses from the psychologists and psychiatrists involved in the unreproducible studies was to complain that they didn't use the nearly identical samples - for instance using students in e.g. Germany instead of students in New York. However that is a rather direct acknowledgement that these studies do not generalize in any way. But if they don't, then these fields are in no way producing science, let alone actionable science. A very related issue here is the medicating of people. A recent study indicated that some 17% [1] of Americans are consuming psychiatric drugs. That number nearly doubled in a decade, yet the science on these drugs is very questionable. In recent trials upwards of 80% of SSRI's effects were explained by placebo alone. [2] That number should be doubly surprising as the side effects of SSRIs are, by contrast, very real and tend to undermine double blind studies. And the longterm effects are looking quite dire as well. This is all made more problematic by a pharmaceutical industry that sponsors research more aimed at them making money than on improving healthfulness of people. Emphasizing this is the fact that more than 50% [3] of preclinical medical trials also have results that were later found to be unreproducible. [1] - https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2592697 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullar... [2] - http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045 http://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/jou... [3] - http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/journal.pbio.1002165 http://journals.plos.org/plosbiology/article?id=10.1371/jour... [4] - https://www.nature.com/news/first-results-from-psychology-s-largest-reproducibility-test-1.17433 https://www.nature.com/news/first-results-from-psychology-s-...