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Re: The Worst Scientific Scandal of Our Generation
Posted:
Dec 17, 2009 9:54 PM
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On Dec 17, 2009, at 2:29 PM, Haim wrote:
> Speaking of science, earlier I made the point that scientists are
> human beings, and fully capable of being motivated by ambitions
> other than the desire to discover truth. Well, I just came across
> the following passage in my current subway reading,
>
> "Without Conscience: The Disturbing World Of The Psychopaths Among
> Us", by Robert D. Hare, PhD.
>
> - ------------
> As a result, the prison records were often filled with carefully
> written personality profiles that seemed embarrassingly at odds with
> what everyone else in the prison knew about the inmates in
> question. I recall one file in which the psychologist had used a
> battery of self-report tests to conclude that a callous killer was
> actually a sensitive, caring individual who needed only the
> psychological equivalent of a warm hug! Because of the uncritical
> use of personality tests, the literature was (and still is)
> cluttered with studies that purported to be about psychopathy but
> actually had very little to do with it.
> - ----------------
>
> In other words, in addition to ideology, conformity, and careerism,
> we can add naivete and incompetence to the list of reasons why
> nothing, not even science articles in peer reviewed journals, can be
> the final word on anything.
Now there's a red herring if ever there was one.
Psychiatry is science? Since when?
- --Lou Talman
Department of Mathematical & Computer Sciences
Metropolitan State College of Denver
<http://rowdy.mscd.edu/%7Etalmanl>
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