Jerome Kagan, a highly prominent developmental psychologist, weighs in the Dana Foundation’s Cerebrum on the roots of the skyrocketing rates of diagnosis of childhood bipolar disorder, autism, and ADHD. “[it] is important … to ask,” he writes whether this troubling [increase] reflects a true rise in mental illness or is the result of changes in…
Monthly Archives: November 2008
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Psych Problem #2: Cooking the Books
by David Dobbs •
Critics of the FDA drug-trial process have often complained that the drug companies are free to publish only the trials that are flattering to their cause (that is, only those that show effects above placebo and relatively low side-effects). As explained in Wired Science, UC San Francisco health policy expert and Cochrane Collaboration co-director Lisa Bero has been picking this process apart:
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Watch a delicious con: The pigeon drop
by David Dobbs •
If you liked the Grifters, you’ll love this: Watch Skeptic editor Michael Shermer participate in a classic con called the pigeon drop. Beautiful stuff.