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Re:Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid by strogonoff on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @01:19PM (#33627881)
It is good to see awareness being raised that accidentally assumed philosophical positions, sometimes unwittingly through word choice, can bias and restrict our understanding of a problem, which to me is especially concerning in medicine.

For example, I was starting to doubt whether anyone realizes that they make a philosophical leap whenever they assume physiology/biology is the cause of what happens in our consciousness (or indeed causes consciousness to happen), but entry 29 reassured me not all hope is lost (emphasis mine):

> Nevertheless, conceptualizing biological functioning as inherently more “fundamental” than (that is, causally prior to) psychological functioning, such as cognitive and emotional functioning, is misleading (Miller, 1996). The relation between biological variables and other variables is virtually always bidirectional. For example, although the magnitude of the P300 event-related potential tends to be diminished among individuals with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) compared with other individuals (Costa et al., 2000), this finding does not necessarily mean that the P300 deficit precedes, let alone plays a causal role in, ASPD. It is at least equally plausible that the personality dispositions associated with ASPD, such as inattention, low motivation, and poor impulse control, contribute to smaller P300 magnitudes (Lilienfeld, 2014).

I believe the equal likelihood of reverse causality in this regard is severely underexplored in modern medicine.

Similarly appreciated the warning against accidentally assuming mind-body dualism (entry 40) and a fundamental point about natural sciences—that there is never definitive proof, only limited to various degrees models (entry 45).

Re:Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid by matheusmoreira on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @03:41PM (#33630214)
This uncertainty stems from the lack of rigorous proof. Medicine these days is all about statistics and correlation. It's "we gave drug A to people with B and we observed effects C occurring D% of the time". In way too many cases there is no exact model or understanding of how things actually work, just inferences from observed effects.
Re:Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid by wwtrv on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @03:59PM (#33630493)
That might still be preferable to coming up with theories explaining mechanisms we don't fully understand and then looking for data which might prove it. That might become especially problematic when scientists stake their entire careers on it. We might end up with situations similar the amyloid hypothesis which likely tuned out to be a dead end a huge waste time & resources.
Re:Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid by matheusmoreira on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @04:32PM (#33630974)
> coming up with theories explaining mechanisms we don't fully understand and then looking for data which might prove it

Also known as the scientific method.

Re:Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid by thyrsus on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @10:16PM (#33634496)
Equally, if not more, important to the scientific method is gathering data that might disprove it.
Re:Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid by ImaCake on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @06:37PM (#33632629)
This is a massive problem right across biology. When we talk about heritability people assume we mean causal genetics for some trait. What we actually mean is all the genetic variation that is causal and all the genetic variation that is correlated (by chance) with the trait. The latter are effectively instrumental variables that are predictive but not causal.
Re:Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid by abarker on Wednesday November 16, 2022 @07:16PM (#33633053)
The relation is virtually always bidirectional, and often forms complex, dynamic feedback loops. Simple causal analysis can fail in such situations.