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Someone with a better grasp of the scientific method perhaps you can answer this. I am under the impression we (science) hasn't definitively determined causati

Someone with a better grasp of the scientific method perhaps you can answer this. I am under the impression we (science) hasn't definitively determined causation for depression. How can you definitively determine a link without knowing the underlying causes. It would imply you know how it works, doesn't it?

suoduandao3 2y ago
My understanding is they've demonstrated a correlation. I don't think they've made any claims about causation.
xkcd-sucks 2y ago
> Someone with a better grasp of the scientific method perhaps you can answer this. As a (recovered, former) neurobio phd it seems the "grasp" is mostly there + the clarity you want just doesn't exist here I.e., the concept of "depression" is pretty hard to nail down quantitatively in the first place: The best model we've got is a kind of self-contained proven-by-internal-self-consistency thing bootstrapped from questionnaires, which is of course further abstracted away onto those model systems we're allowed to kill: For example, calling "how long do mice swim before giving up if you chuck them into a tank of water" is roughly equated to "amount of depression" (this is oversimplified a bit; you correlate a bunch of those measures etc. but still a lot of very weak signals). Even "relevant quantitative data" like fMRI / ECoG is bootstrapped from questionnaires when it's something undefinable like "depression" Which isn't the end of the world, everything started out like this, it just sucks when people take these results too seriously or infer too much from them. And even the human black-box stuff in the DSM manuals admits a lot of different subtypes, lots of different and sometimes opposite symptom clusters, etc. It is entirely possible that mechanistically "depression" is a diverse group of mechanisms all boxed up into the most familiar mainstream concept/word.
- byteknight 2y ago
  Firstly, thank you. > For example, calling "how long do mice swim before giving up if you chuck them into a tank of water" is roughly equated to "amount of depression" (this is oversimplified a bit; you correlate a bunch of those measures etc. but still a lot of very weak signals). Do I understand this? A purely reductionist view of my understanding: this is quantified as "the amount of will to live"? If my understanding is proper, how do you measure this without killing people? I grok that it is an extreme example, I am attempting to glean applicability of such an experiment to humans. > And even the human black-box stuff in the DSM manuals admits a lot of different subtypes, lots of different and sometimes opposite symptom clusters, etc. It is entirely possible that mechanistically "depression" is a diverse group of mechanisms all boxed up into the most familiar mainstream concept/word. Totally unrelated, but wife is an LCSW and I've glanced at the DSM. I've become convinced that book is near entirely for insurance purposes, similar to the ICD-10. ICD-10: W220.2XD: Walked into lamppost, subsequent encounter.
  - xkcd-sucks 2y ago
    > Do I understand this? A purely reductionist view of my understanding: this is quantified as "the amount of will to live"? If my understanding is proper, how do you measure this without killing people? I grok that it is an extreme example, I am attempting to glean applicability of such an experiment to humans. I mean in this is one model and typically a "result" means several models are all consistent with the researcher's mental model of the thing. But yes, the forced swim test is one measure of "will to live" and it's treated as that because of similarities to "that which we call 'depression'" or whatever It is better than nothing, unless one takes it too seriously. [0] mice float, they don't drown when they give up, assuming you take them out quickly enough [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401172/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401172/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353513/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353513/

suoduandao3 2y ago

My understanding is they've demonstrated a correlation. I don't think they've made any claims about causation.

xkcd-sucks 2y ago

> Someone with a better grasp of the scientific method perhaps you can answer this. As a (recovered, former) neurobio phd it seems the "grasp" is mostly there + the clarity you want just doesn't exist here I.e., the concept of "depression" is pretty hard to nail down quantitatively in the first place: The best model we've got is a kind of self-contained proven-by-internal-self-consistency thing bootstrapped from questionnaires, which is of course further abstracted away onto those model systems we're allowed to kill: For example, calling "how long do mice swim before giving up if you chuck them into a tank of water" is roughly equated to "amount of depression" (this is oversimplified a bit; you correlate a bunch of those measures etc. but still a lot of very weak signals). Even "relevant quantitative data" like fMRI / ECoG is bootstrapped from questionnaires when it's something undefinable like "depression" Which isn't the end of the world, everything started out like this, it just sucks when people take these results too seriously or infer too much from them. And even the human black-box stuff in the DSM manuals admits a lot of different subtypes, lots of different and sometimes opposite symptom clusters, etc. It is entirely possible that mechanistically "depression" is a diverse group of mechanisms all boxed up into the most familiar mainstream concept/word.

byteknight 2y ago
Firstly, thank you. > For example, calling "how long do mice swim before giving up if you chuck them into a tank of water" is roughly equated to "amount of depression" (this is oversimplified a bit; you correlate a bunch of those measures etc. but still a lot of very weak signals). Do I understand this? A purely reductionist view of my understanding: this is quantified as "the amount of will to live"? If my understanding is proper, how do you measure this without killing people? I grok that it is an extreme example, I am attempting to glean applicability of such an experiment to humans. > And even the human black-box stuff in the DSM manuals admits a lot of different subtypes, lots of different and sometimes opposite symptom clusters, etc. It is entirely possible that mechanistically "depression" is a diverse group of mechanisms all boxed up into the most familiar mainstream concept/word. Totally unrelated, but wife is an LCSW and I've glanced at the DSM. I've become convinced that book is near entirely for insurance purposes, similar to the ICD-10. ICD-10: W220.2XD: Walked into lamppost, subsequent encounter.
- xkcd-sucks 2y ago
  > Do I understand this? A purely reductionist view of my understanding: this is quantified as "the amount of will to live"? If my understanding is proper, how do you measure this without killing people? I grok that it is an extreme example, I am attempting to glean applicability of such an experiment to humans. I mean in this is one model and typically a "result" means several models are all consistent with the researcher's mental model of the thing. But yes, the forced swim test is one measure of "will to live" and it's treated as that because of similarities to "that which we call 'depression'" or whatever It is better than nothing, unless one takes it too seriously. [0] mice float, they don't drown when they give up, assuming you take them out quickly enough [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401172/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4401172/ [2] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353513/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353513/