The case of Charles “Disgraced” Nemeroff, the Emory University professor of psychiatry, is a touchstone in the sense that it reveals something about the morals (or lack thereof) of those who brush against it. That GlaxoSmithKline (which called Nemeroff “a recognized world leader in the field of psychiatry”) is amoral we already knew — a kind of positive control. The responses of Emory dean Claudia Adkison (“ grateful” that a reporter didn’t know enough to fully expose Nemeroff) and the Emory administration (which called him “a leader in psychiatric research, education, and practice”) are more interesting.
But Nemeroff is also a touchstone in reverse. Not only can we learn about X and Y by seeing how they react to Nemeroff, we can also learn about X and Y by seeing how Nemeroff reacts to them. In a 2006 New Scientist series called Brilliant Minds Forecast the Next 50 Years, Nemeroff wrote this:
In the next 50 years, we can expect several breakthroughs. Identifying gene variants that confer vulnerability [to major psychiatric disorders] will result in the emergence of a new field, preventative psychiatry. Elucidating the causes of mental illness will lead to novel treatments. We will also see breakthroughs in understanding the biology of resilience, now poorly understood. And in contrast with our largely trial-and-error-based system, treatments will be individualised, based on genomics and brain imaging.
That Nemeroff likes these ideas suggests they are wrong. Supporting what I’ve said earlier.
Ernst Mach advocated a version of Occam’s razor which he called the Principle of Economy, stating that “Scientists must use the simplest means of arriving at their results and exclude everything not perceived by the senses.”(1)
Brain imaging, genome analysis and proprietary pharmacotherapy are the way to go according to Nemeroff and those owning the current paradigm of medicine. He and his colleagues foresee a future in which the tools become more and more complex and the treatments more expensive and toxic. I suggest that correcting and balancing the CNS neurotransmitters will be the future. Simple, cheap and safe, precursors of dopamine and serotonin can correct craving and neuropsychiatric disorders; but Glaxo and Nemeroff will be redundant when this is recognized.
1. https://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html
“He and his colleagues foresee a future in which the tools become more and more complex and the treatments more expensive and toxic.” That’s a great way of putting it. The increase in danger usually goes unmentioned.
I’d love a way to teach and inculcate resilience rather than merely biology.
Do you know the expression, “Oracle of Wrong”? It’s really hard to be always right, and hardly anybody is, and it’s even harder to recognize one who is. It seems to be amazingly easy, though, to be always wrong, and it’s not very hard to find people who are.
The latter are almost as useful as the former. After you’ve identified an Oracle of Wrong, then when in doubt you just do the opposite of what they recommend.
I myself have done psychiatric drug trials but usually for others. I did not get remuneration. Nemeroff and the other 7 Grassley went after (Biederman, Wilens, Keller, Rush, Wagner, DelBello and Schatzberg) are legitimate scientists with talent and I personally believe their science is honest. However there are numerous small-fry who run drug company mills who have no scientific talent whose findings are whatever the drug company wants them to find. Some of them are tied to medical schools. These are the guys who make drug money as a living and need to be investigated
Whoops — the html tags goofed up my previous submission. This one should be better.
But Nemeroff is also a touchstone in reverse. Not only can we learn about X and Y by seeing how they react to Nemeroff, we can also learn about X and Y by seeing how Nemeroff reacts to them.
…
That Nemeroff likes these ideas suggests they are wrong. Supporting what I’ve said earlier.
@Seth
I would advise caution in drawing this type of conclusion. You are falling prey to the anti-expert fallacy. Nemeroff liking those ideas and those ideas being wrong (or right) are in fact, independent of one another.
Allow me to illustrate:
From Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything:
In one of his last professional acts before his death in 1955, -A FAMOUS SCIENTIST- wrote a short but glowing foreword to a book by a geologist named Charles Hapgood entitled “Earth’s Shifting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earth Science”. Hapgood’s book was a steady demolition of the idea that continents were in motion. In a tone that all but invited the reader to join him in a tolerant chuckle, Hapgood observed that a few gullible souls had noticed “an apparent correspondence in shape between certain continents.” It would appear, he went on, “that South America might be fitted with Africa, and so on….It is even claimed that rock formations on opposite sides of the Atlantic match. Mr. Hapgood briskly dismissed any such notions, noting that the geologists K.E. Caster and J.C. Mendes had done extensive fieldwork on both sides of the Atlantic and had established beyond question that no such similarities existed. Goodness knows what outcrops Messrs. Caster and Mendes had looked at, because in fact many of the rock formations on both sides of the Atlantic are the same– not just very similar but the same.
If that was all you knew about this famous scientist, is that he endorsed a book that erroneously attempted to invalidate the theory of plate tectonics, and you followed your line of reasoning, you would think this person’s judgement suspect and likely wrong on many other important ideas, no? And perhaps he is.
But for record, the person who endorsed Hapgood’s book and ideas was none other than Albert Einstein.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hapgood
BTW another person came to mind — the arguable father of modern science wasted many a year obsessing fruitlessly about alchemy. Yet his genius and contributions to modernity may be almost unparalleled — yet if all you knew about him was his fetish for alchemy, you probably wouldn’t take Isaac Newton very seriously.