30 ms·

Clinical means nothing. I can open a chiropractic clinic and create “clinical” evidence all day long. It’s still pseudo-science if the results aren’t replicable

Clinical means nothing. I can open a chiropractic clinic and create “clinical” evidence all day long. It’s still pseudo-science if the results aren’t replicable. Studies surrounding CBT (and the field of psychology as a whole) are not replicable. They are, almost always, based on converting qualitative metrics (how you feel) and filtering them through a designed survey in order to convert these qualitative, subjective abstractions into something that resembles something quantitative and scientific. The result is a field has with a ~40% replicability rate in it’s most “prestigious” journals. So, yes, the “professionals” have PhDs and use the doctor salutation. They’re not scientists. They’re just pretending. Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” Good luck finding a study indicating that any significant subset of “depressed” people got over their issues as a result of the CBT itself with a HARD LIFE OUTCOME as the point of investigation. It’s all subjective feelings filtered through qualitative 1 thru 10 surveys. Patients never improve. They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it, often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human. Psychotropic intervention in this field is barbaric and pseudoscientific. If there is any justice in this world, it will be held in the same esteem as lobotomy in the future.

skyyler 4y ago
This could be interesting reading for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ I'm still not sure what is pseudoscientific about "People with psychological problems can learn ways of coping with the problems, thereby relieving their symptoms." That's what CBT is...
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
  The assessment of their psychological “problem” (often too broad to even be considered a condition) is pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The assessment of the success of CBT is also pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The result is a field with 40% replicability of journal results. And you share a meta analysis of these pseudo-scientific “studies”. Add another layer of abstraction to the nonsense.
  - skyyler 4y ago
    Ahhhhh, all psychology is pseudoscience to you. That makes sense now. That's completely fair, and I don't want to interact with that at all. Have a nice day!
  - ketzo 4y ago
    Why do you completely discount qualitative evaluations? If I say I feel shitty all the time, and then I go to therapy, and I say that I feel less shitty all the time... why is that invalid data?
anna_hope 4y ago
"Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” That's actually exactly how they measure the efficacy of many psychological and psychiatric interventions for chronic mental health conditions, to the point of it being almost laughable, like if you managed to get a job or get better grades, that must mean you are doing better, everything else be damned. But I suppose that's the most objective metric there is. "They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it" This is anecdotal, but every psychiatrist I've been to has attempted to titrate down the dose or remove a medication from my regimen if I've been on it a while, and observe if the improvements from those can be maintained. Similarly, most of the therapists I have worked with proactively suggested reducing the frequency of sessions once they've observed improvement. "often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human." It's attitudes like these that contributed to me failing to seek the proper mental health treatment until later in my life, until my very real, very observable, non-nebulous conditions reached a life-threatening degree. Something that is "normal" for some people some of the time can be disabling or life-threatening if experienced by someone most of the time. Most people experience physical pain at some points in their lives, but if you are in serious pain nearly every day, you would be right to seek treatment — and no, we don't have perfect tests for all kinds of pain either. The fields of psychiatry and psychology have many problems, but being a pseudoscience is not one of them.
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
  >being a pseudoscience is not one of them. Replicability is the measure. You don't get to opinion your way out of this. 40% replicability = not science.
  - Sporktacular 4y ago
imiric 4y ago
> They’re not scientists. They’re just pretending. That's harsh. You seem to want quantitative studies to prove the efficacy of methods that treat _psychological_ problems. Depending on the disorder, researchers can often only rely on patient assessments. Whether or not someone attained education or employment would be difficult to correlate as a direct effect of any specific treatment. Methods like CBT serve to give the patient a set of tools to approach their problems, and in the real world are often combined with other treatments. They're not silver bullets, nor do they work as well for everyone, since they do require a conscious effort from the patient. It's like with meditation; some people claim it has transformed their lives, while it has little effect on others. There's little quantitative evidence to prove its efficacy. Should we dismiss the practice entirely because of this?
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
  > That's harsh. It’s meant to be harsh. They’re mass-prescribing poorly understood psychoactive drugs based on unscientific assessments. They’re giving young children amphetamines for normal behavior (disliking school). They are kooks, and I have as much regards for them as I do for those that performed lobotomies.
  - Eleison23 4y ago
    The drugs typically have inverse effects to what they're supposed to do. Antidepressants cause suicidal ideations, this is well known, but did you know that they also cause homicidal ideations? The kids at Columbine were really smart kids, but their parents started medicating them and they got a lot worse. Charles Whitman, U Texas, 1966, was on psychoactive medications such as Dexedrine; it's no coincidence that he was compelled to murder lots of people from that tower, not because of mental defect but because of drugs he was on. Nancy Reagan was right. "Just Say No." I listen to Nancy Reagan.
  - imiric 4y ago
    It's pointless arguing with you, as you have no intention of considering alternative viewpoints. I'll just say that I wouldn't dismiss an entire field of study based on wrong actions by some, or even a majority, of practitioners. Psychology and psychiatry do help many people, and it's the best we can do for many psychological issues. Can it be abused and wrongly applied? Sure. But it's not pseudoscience, and its practitioners aren't "kooks". The mind is an abstract concept, and we don't yet have the knowledge of how it interacts with the brain, a physical entity. If we did, all psychological issues would be studied and treated by neuroscience instead. In the meantime, we need branches of research that are not as well defined as traditional "hard" sciences.

skyyler 4y ago

This could be interesting reading for you: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3584580/ I'm still not sure what is pseudoscientific about "People with psychological problems can learn ways of coping with the problems, thereby relieving their symptoms." That's what CBT is...

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
The assessment of their psychological “problem” (often too broad to even be considered a condition) is pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The assessment of the success of CBT is also pseudoscientific: a qualitative evaluation. The result is a field with 40% replicability of journal results. And you share a meta analysis of these pseudo-scientific “studies”. Add another layer of abstraction to the nonsense.
- skyyler 4y ago
  Ahhhhh, all psychology is pseudoscience to you. That makes sense now. That's completely fair, and I don't want to interact with that at all. Have a nice day!
- ketzo 4y ago
  Why do you completely discount qualitative evaluations? If I say I feel shitty all the time, and then I go to therapy, and I say that I feel less shitty all the time... why is that invalid data?

anna_hope 4y ago

"Want to know what you almost never see in the studies investigating the effectiveness of these “therapies”? Life outcome investigations. “Do patients doing CBT actually recover from their depression, as measured by educational attainment/employment/regaining employment?” That's actually exactly how they measure the efficacy of many psychological and psychiatric interventions for chronic mental health conditions, to the point of it being almost laughable, like if you managed to get a job or get better grades, that must mean you are doing better, everything else be damned. But I suppose that's the most objective metric there is. "They stay on the $200/session revenue stream forever and get a lifetime prescription to go with it" This is anecdotal, but every psychiatrist I've been to has attempted to titrate down the dose or remove a medication from my regimen if I've been on it a while, and observe if the improvements from those can be maintained. Similarly, most of the therapists I have worked with proactively suggested reducing the frequency of sessions once they've observed improvement. "often for a nebulous “condition” that is basically synonymous with descriptions of the normal human condition. “I feel anxious” gets you a script. Outside of panic attacks, it’s a normal feeling. “I have trouble focusing” gets you an amphetamine script. It’s a normal feeling. “I lack motivation and purpose” gets you an SSRI, with nary a blood test or a scan of the brain. Again, a perfectly normal part of being a human." It's attitudes like these that contributed to me failing to seek the proper mental health treatment until later in my life, until my very real, very observable, non-nebulous conditions reached a life-threatening degree. Something that is "normal" for some people some of the time can be disabling or life-threatening if experienced by someone most of the time. Most people experience physical pain at some points in their lives, but if you are in serious pain nearly every day, you would be right to seek treatment — and no, we don't have perfect tests for all kinds of pain either. The fields of psychiatry and psychology have many problems, but being a pseudoscience is not one of them.

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
>being a pseudoscience is not one of them. Replicability is the measure. You don't get to opinion your way out of this. 40% replicability = not science.
- Sporktacular 4y ago

imiric 4y ago

> They’re not scientists. They’re just pretending. That's harsh. You seem to want quantitative studies to prove the efficacy of methods that treat _psychological_ problems. Depending on the disorder, researchers can often only rely on patient assessments. Whether or not someone attained education or employment would be difficult to correlate as a direct effect of any specific treatment. Methods like CBT serve to give the patient a set of tools to approach their problems, and in the real world are often combined with other treatments. They're not silver bullets, nor do they work as well for everyone, since they do require a conscious effort from the patient. It's like with meditation; some people claim it has transformed their lives, while it has little effect on others. There's little quantitative evidence to prove its efficacy. Should we dismiss the practice entirely because of this?

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
> That's harsh. It’s meant to be harsh. They’re mass-prescribing poorly understood psychoactive drugs based on unscientific assessments. They’re giving young children amphetamines for normal behavior (disliking school). They are kooks, and I have as much regards for them as I do for those that performed lobotomies.
- Eleison23 4y ago
  The drugs typically have inverse effects to what they're supposed to do. Antidepressants cause suicidal ideations, this is well known, but did you know that they also cause homicidal ideations? The kids at Columbine were really smart kids, but their parents started medicating them and they got a lot worse. Charles Whitman, U Texas, 1966, was on psychoactive medications such as Dexedrine; it's no coincidence that he was compelled to murder lots of people from that tower, not because of mental defect but because of drugs he was on. Nancy Reagan was right. "Just Say No." I listen to Nancy Reagan.
- imiric 4y ago
  It's pointless arguing with you, as you have no intention of considering alternative viewpoints. I'll just say that I wouldn't dismiss an entire field of study based on wrong actions by some, or even a majority, of practitioners. Psychology and psychiatry do help many people, and it's the best we can do for many psychological issues. Can it be abused and wrongly applied? Sure. But it's not pseudoscience, and its practitioners aren't "kooks". The mind is an abstract concept, and we don't yet have the knowledge of how it interacts with the brain, a physical entity. If we did, all psychological issues would be studied and treated by neuroscience instead. In the meantime, we need branches of research that are not as well defined as traditional "hard" sciences.