Debunking Denialism

Defending science against the forces of irrationality.

Tag Archives: ADHD

Natural News: “If We Add Fluoride in Drinking Water, Why Not Arsenic?”

5 Comments Posted by Emil Karlsson on January 22, 2016

Anti-fluoridation stupidity.

Recently, Natural News writer Jennifer Lea Reynolds published a scientifically illiterate piece of pseudoscientific garbage entitled “Why don’t dentists promote adding ARSENIC to the water alongside FLUORIDE? They’re both ‘naturally occurring,’ after all”. Yes, it is that stupid. This post explains the benefits of water fluoridation, why we should not add arsenic in the drinking water, why arbitrary correlations do not demonstrate causation, why fluoride is the same regardless of the source and why water fluoridation is not mass medication.

The anti-fluoridation movement is a pseudoscientific movement that resembles and indeed regurgitates the same flawed debating methods as anti-vaccine and anti-GMO activists. This is a shame because there is at least some merit to the idea of specifically tailoring the amount of fluoride in the drinking water for different communities with different needs, but batshit anti-fluoridation activists make this discussion impossible to have.

What is water fluoridation and why is it used?

All water out in nature contain some level of fluoride. This is because it is leached out of the bedrock where it occurs e. g. in the form of calcium fluoride CaF₂. The dental benefits of water fluoridation was first discovered studying areas where there was sufficient concentration of fluoride in the drinking water. Then some countries added fluoride in an optimal concentration to other kinds of drinking water that contain very little fluoride.

Water fluoridation is used because it works. Numerous studies (reviewed here and here) have shown that it reduces cavities by a considerable proportion and both the CDC and the WHO agrees that there is substantial evidence of efficacy, the latter even calling it “the most effective public health measure for the prevention of dental decay.”.

The Anti-Psychiatry Propaganda of Nathan Shachar

3 Comments Posted by Emil Karlsson on January 2, 2014

The Anti-psychiatry propaganda by Nathan Shachar

Dagens Nyheter (the largest morning newspaper in Sweden) continues to promote pseudoscience. Last month, the newspaper decided to publish a full-page anti-immigration ad with flawed equivocations, ignorance of confounders and the deceptive framing of published statistics. Out of the ashes into the fire, Dagens Nyheter decided to publish a column filled with anti-psychiatry propaganda by Nathan Shachar. He has previously come under fire for his ignorant ADHD denialism, where he fear mongered about the side-effects of ADHD medications, butchered the complex etiology of ADHD and misrepresented scientific reports on ADHD rating scales.

In his latest pseudoscientific screed, Shachar continues to recycle common anti-psychiatry myths. He claims that the FDA and the Swedish counterpart (Medical Products Agency) is bought by pharmaceutical companies, but the FDA charges pharmaceutical companies to ensure fast and high-quality drug review process. He asserts that modern psychiatry holds that all psychiatric conditions are caused by “chemical imbalance”, when the scientific consensus position is that they result from a complex interaction between biological, psychological and social factors. Shachar makes a false comparison between “pure amphetamine” and ADHD medication, completely without insight that it differs in chemical nature, dosage and release rate. He bases his case against modern psychiatry on the writings of Janne Larsson, a member of the Scientology-based organization Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR). Counter to the myths promoted by Shachar, several large-scale meta-analysis has found that antidepressants are more effective than placebo even when you take publication bias into account. He continues by showing that pharmaceutical companies sometimes behave unethical, but that is an issue of corporate ethics, not the science of psychiatry or the efficacy of psychiatric medication. Finally, he dismisses ADHD as merely a “maturity” issue, despite the well-known biological underpinnings of the condition. Read more of this post

Anti-psychiatry ADHD, antidepressants, chemical imbalance, corporate ethics, Dagens Nyheter, Janne Larsson, Nathan Shachar, Peter Wolodarski, placebo, scientology

Entertaining the Denialism of Yet Another Anti-Psychiatry Troll

2 Comments Posted by Emil Karlsson on November 3, 2013

anti-psychiatry category

Out of all the pseudoscience that are criticized on this website — from creationism and the anti-vaccine movement to anti-GM sentiments and alternative medicine — no subject has attracted more malicious attention from denialists trolls than the articles refuting anti-psychiatry. I often respond and end up in never-ending debates where they simply repeat the same arguments over and over again despite having had their errors explain to them in great detail with references to the scientific literature. When they fail their misguided war of attrition, they resort to verbal abuse by calling me fascist, pig, dickhead, Führer etc. and claim that I must consider individuals with mental conditions who receive evidence-based treatment to be “roadkill” (I do not). After a while this comes very tiresome, so those individuals have their comment privileges removed for violating the comment guidelines. However, they do not let this stop them from spouting their nonsense. They simply use proxies, new names and email addresses to continue with their behavior (while keeping the assertions exactly the same). Some even try to impersonate me. I ban the new identities or turn off comments. This makes things calm down for a while, but it starts back up again the next time I publish a post debunking anti-psychiatry.

Recently, a previously banned user now going by the name of Tin attempted to post an anti-psychiatry diatribe on an argument describing some common anti-psychiatry archetypes that scientific skeptics are likely to come across when they take on anti-psychiatry proponents online. Although using a new name and IP, he still used the same email address as he did when he was banned the first time, thereby giving it away and so the comment got caught by the spam filter. Usually I would not bother to write anything about it and just empty the spam queue, but some of the claims he made in that comment was absurdly wrong on so many different levels that it could be useful for other scientific skeptics to have access to a detail refutation of those assertions.

In his comment, Tin confuses a debate about the scientific details with a debate on the validity of the entire field and tosses in appeals to false balance. He also makes a number of other flawed arguments, such as calling Psychology Today an academic journal, when it is really just a magazine and blog website. He also asserts that antidepressants are not better than placebo despite the fact that meta-analyses taking publication bias into account show that they do outperform placebo in a clinically significant way. Tin even fails to understand that ICD-10 also has an ADHD diagnosis and that ADHD is diagnosed outside the U.S. Finally, the five papers that allegedly show that anti-psychiatry is based on evidence either do not support his position, directly contradicts his position or is irrelevant to the discussion. The rest of this article examines those anti-psychiatry claims in additional detail. Read more of this post

Anti-psychiatry ADHD, ADHD Denialism, anti-psychiatry, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM, efficacy of antidepressants, false balance, hyperkinetic disorder, ICD, Kirsch, Psychology Today, Thomas Insel, Turner

Swedish Comedian Magnus Betnér Promotes Anti-psychiatry Nonsense about ADHD on TV

10 Comments Posted by Emil Karlsson on May 17, 2012

Magnus Betnér is a Swedish stand-up comedian that now has his own TV show called Betnér Direkt. His style is strongly reminiscent of giants like George Carlin and Bill Maher, but he is bald, brutal and takes no prisoners in his social criticisms of things like anti-immigration, religious and social conservatism and general societal wrongdoings. He almost always push the envelope, making volatile sex jokes and is one of the first Swedish comedians who has taken support of feminism to an art form.

However, just like George Carlin and Bill Maher, he sometimes stays from the path of evidence-based reason. In his later years, George Carlin gave partial support for 9/11 truth ideas and Bill Maher has issues with vaccines and the germ theory of disease. To be fair, both George Carlin and Bill Maher has strongly criticized anti-science sentiments as well. Mill Maher personally help threw out 9/11 truthers that disrupted his shown and George Carlin often made fun of creationists. Betnér has also mocked creationists and poked fun at supporters of Zeitgeist, so what I will be discussion below maybe be a rare exception, but statements that I think should be challenged.

In the latest episode of Betnér Direkt (episode 7 of the first season), in the segment called Betnérs bud (a monologue at the end of the program), Betnér makes the following claims (2:27 ->, my translation):

We must stop diagnosing our children. A study revealed that it is more common with ADHD the later in the year you are born. Among reasons to get the diagnoses, “run around and climb on things” and that “they do not like school or homework” is mentioned. I see. You mean that what it takes to get the diagnosis is that you are a child! And stop calling that which you get for ADHD medicine. The medicine that the government prescribes is amphetamine. That is not medicine, that is breakfast [picture of a Swedish celebrity that has been in the news for taking drugs eating white powder as breakfast cereal]. It is fucking obvious that children become more effective if they get amphetamine! Do you know who also gets more effective if they get amphetamine? Everyone!

In other words, Betnér makes the central claims that (1) ADHD is an invalid diagnosis and that (2) medical treatment for ADHD is amphetamine, not medicine. These are fairly common claims in the anti-psychiatry play book and I will be discussing them each in turn.

ADHD is a legitimate and science-based condition

Singh (2008) outlines the major positions that exists with respect to ADHD. The first is the notion that ADHD is primarily caused by interacting biological factors. This means that medical treatment is reasonable as it attempts to adjust for the neurological issues facing individuals with ADHD. The second is the position that both biological and social factors are important in explaining the cause of ADHD. From this perspective, the diagnosis does not yet capture the full range of heterogeneity or complexity of the condition and so medication is accepted, but it also emphasizes behavioral therapies. The third perspective is that the primary factors influencing the development of ADHD is environmental factors and support preventative interventions, rather than psychotropic drugs. While all of these three scientific positions accepted that ADHD is a valid diagnosis, there is a fourth position which rejects it all together. The main proponents of this fourth perspective are scientologists and certain sophisticated sociologists. Read more of this post

Anti-psychiatry ADHD, anti-psychiatry, Magnus Betnér, Ritalin

Irresponsible Science Journalism on Swedish ADHD Report

3 Comments Posted by Emil Karlsson on January 14, 2012

Here we go again.

The Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment has recently released a report on topics that included the reliability of tests used for ADHD diagnosis in Sweden. The basic gist of the report is that many of the tests have limitations if used exclusively alone, but that the current of practice of using many different rating scales together with critical clinical assessment is acceptable. The report says that (p. 26, my translation):

The diagnosis of children and young adults with ADHD is today carried out with the aid of several different rating scales, which each by themselves alone lacking scientific evidence. The rating scales are filled out by parents, teachers and the young adult it pertains to. We have not evaluated how the weighting between these different informants look. To make the diagnosis today, it requires additionally a clinical evaluation and an evaluation of the level of disability in the child/adult.

In conclusions, the results show that none of the diagnostic tests that have been evaluated can be used by itself to make the ADHD diagnosis. Instead, this report supports the current practice, that the foundation for the diagnosis is the clinical evaluation and that the diagnostic tests for ADHD should be used as a basis for the gathering of information that is then evaluated by the clinician.

Guess how Swedish media carried the story? By falsely claiming that little science supported the ADHD diagnosis. The sad part of this story is that the “Sveriges Radio” is a popular public radio station, and not some marginalized crackpot network. The journalist behind the story was in other words guilty of irresponsibly making sensationalist science journalism, bordering on anti-psychiatry, and confusing the valid scientific discussion with how to make diagnostic tools better with the pseudoscientific nonsense of anti-psychiatry. The comment section of the article is already bogged down by crackpots.

First rule of doing and reading science journalism: always read the original paper or report.

Anti-psychiatry ADHD, diagnosis, irresponsible science journalism, reliability, sweden, Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment

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We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster.

- Carl Sagan, astronomer, author and popularizer of science (source).

"I realize that 'complementary and alternative medicine' (CAM) or, what quackademics like to call it now, 'integrative medicine' (IM) is meant to refer to 'integrating' alternative therapies into SBM or 'complementing' SBM with a touch of the ol’ woo, but I could never manage to understand how 'integrating' quackery with SBM would do anything but weaken the scientific foundation of medicine."

- David Gorski, cancer surgeon and debunker of pseudoscience (source).

"Postmodernism, the school of 'thought' that proclaimed 'There are no truths, only interpretations' has largely played itself out in absurdity, but it has left behind a generation of academics in the humanities disabled by their distrust of the very idea of truth and their disrespect for evidence, settling for 'conversations' in which nobody is wrong and nothing can be confirmed, only asserted with whatever style you can muster."

- Daniel Dennett, philosopher and cognitive scientist (source).

"As an aside, it is ironic that CAM proponents often simultaneously tout how individualized their treatment approach is, but then claim that one product or treatment can cure all cancer. Meanwhile they criticize the alleged cookie-cutter approach of mainstream medicine, which is actually producing a more and more individualized (and evidence-based) approach to such things as cancer."

- Steven Novella, neurologist and founder of the New England Skeptical Society. (source).

"While Galileo was a rebel, not all rebels are Galileo."

- Norman Levitt, mathematician and critic of anti-science postmodernism (quoted in Paul Offit's Autism's False Prophets, p. 37).

"Twenty epidemiologic studies have shown that neither thimerosal nor MMR vaccine causes autism. These studies have been performed in several countries by many different investigators who have employed a multitude of epidemiologic and statistical methods. The large size of the studied populations has afforded a level of statistical power sufﬁcient to detect even rare associations. These studies, in concert with the biological implausibility that vaccines overwhelm a child’s immune system, have effectively dismissed the notion that vaccines cause autism. Further studies on the cause or causes of autism should focus on more-promising leads."

- Gerber and Offit (2009) (source).

"To me, skepticism is not believing what someone tells you, investigating all the information before coming to a conclusion. Skepticism is a good thing. Global warming skepticism is not that. It’s the complete opposite of that. It’s coming to a preconceived conclusion and cherry-picking the information that backs up your opinion. Global warming skepticism isn’t skepticism at all."

- John Cook, Climate Communication Fellow for the Global Change Institute at the University of Queensland (source).

"Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia but I realised that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there and we had to tell the truth."

- Christiane Amanpour, award-winning journalist (source)

“In our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degrees of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence. A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.”

- David Hume, philosopher, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X: Of Miracles (source)

“I believe science is a search for the truth, not a lesson in manners, [...] I don't do politeness.”

- Dan Graur, evolutionary biologist (source)

"You've had your eight, now I have my eighty."

- Brad Whitaker (source), Bond villain in The Living Daylights (1987)

One might even say, solipsism is necessarily foundationless, for to make an appeal to logical rules or empirical evidence the solipsist would implicitly have to affirm the very thing that he purportedly refuses to believe: the reality of intersubjectively valid criteria and a public, extra-mental world. There is a temptation to say that solipsism is a false philosophical theory, but this is not quite strong or accurate enough. As a theory, it is incoherent.