The Naysayers

Jane Jacobs called them squelchers: People in powerful positions who say no to new ideas. The effect of such people is that problems remain unsolved.

What about scientists? On the face of it, research is about discovering new ideas. If you’re a non-scientist, you might even think that is the whole point of research. Certainly that is why it is supported with tax dollars — taxpayers hope research will improve health, for example. But quite a few researchers don’t see it that way.

In London, a group called Business in the Community is creating “ toolkits” to help companies improve employee health. One toolkit is about emotional resilience. An early draft of that toolkit contained this passage:

Heart attacks and other ischemic cardiovascular diseases can be created by stressful office dynamics that come from the top. Even one year of working under a manager with poor leadership skills can raise the risk of acute myocardial infarction, unstable angina, cardiac death, or ischemic heart disease death by a significant 24%, while four years under the same stressful conditions produces a 39% elevated risk of ischemic heart disease events.

The data are from Nyberg A, et al., “Managerial leadership and ischaemic heart disease among employees: the Swedish WOLF study” Occup Environ Med 2008. At a meeting to discuss this toolkit, attended by representatives of large companies and a few academics, the academics objected to this passage. The study was methodologically flawed, they said. “But what if it’s true?” the non-academics said. The passage was removed.

On The Larry King Show a few years ago I heard a prominent woman psychiatrist (Nancy Andreassen or Kay Jamison) say that it was a good time, if there ever was one, to have a mental illness because it was a golden age of psychiatric research. Researchers, she said, were making one breakthrough after another. Nobody asked her, why, if that was so, was bipolar disorder still being treated with lithium? That’s 50 years old. Why hasn’t research come up with something better? Two psychiatric researchers believe it is because research proposals to test new treatments are turned down due to what the critics call inadequate methodological purity. For example, you’re supposed to do such studies with patients who have only bipolar disorder, although comorbidity is common.

This is the behavior produced by what academics (admiringly!) call “critical thinking”: ignoring what is valuable or promising in a rush to point out what is imperfect.

Something is better than nothing.