JBR wrote:
Sorry to bombard you, but I wonder what you make of this article:
“Why bogus therapies seem to work” By Barry L. Beyerstein
Found in The Skeptical Inquirer: Buffalo; Sep/Oct 1997
(full text article can be found on http://proquest.umi.com (search data base).
I found it interesting because your observations of the unscientific methods employed in determining psychiatric diagnosis (ADHD, specifically) seems to have been projected (in the article) onto “alternative therapies.” Exactly what you are accusing the psychiatric “authorities” of bypassing, this author accuses the “alternative” therapuetic community of doing. I just wondered what you thought of this. It was especially interesting to me that the article began with this quote: “Nothing is more dangerous than active ignorance.” –Goethe
Isn’t this just what you’ve been dealing with in your attempts to secure an answer from the “authorities” on the ADHD “Is it a disease or not” question?
[Fred A. Baughman Jr., MD:
Exactly! There is an immense alternative therapy industry out there in ADHD and in all psychiatric and other invented diseases. And all of them trade on ADHD or whatever the market-place acronym happens to be. Psychiatry, having no rightful place in a rightful medical profession leads the way with an invented disease a month. In ADHD the alternative therapists can always proclaim, their therapy does away with the drugging, but nonetheless it is the substitution of one scam for another. I love the Goethe quote.]