Psychological and Psychiatric Terms to Avoid

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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