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The psychology of healthcare reform

Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

CNET News - By Adam Richardson - Nov. 13 (Opinion) - The House has passed the first comprehensive reform package of the health insurance industry in decades, which is now up for debate in the Senate. This is a highly complex issue, but there are some quite basic reasons why it's so difficult to accomplish significant reform, and in part these have to do with psychological responses to change and uncertainty.

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Michael Specter Fires Bullets of Data at Cozy Antiscience in ‘Denialism'

Mon, 09 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Janet Maslin - Nov. 09 (Review) - The term “denialism,” used by Mr. Specter as an all-purpose, pop-sci buzzword, is defined by him as what happens “when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie.” In this hotly argued yet data-filled diatribe, Mr. Specter skips past some of the easiest realms of science baiting (i.e., evolution) to address more current issues, from the ethical questions raised by genome research to the furiously fought debate over the safety of childhood vaccinations.

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Malcolm Gladwell, Eclectic Detective

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Steven Pinker - Nov. 07 (Opinion) - Have you ever wondered why there are so many kinds of mustard but only one kind of ketchup? Or what Cézanne did before painting his first significant works in his 50s? Have you hungered for the story behind the Veg-O-Matic, star of the frenetic late-night TV ads? Or wanted to know where Led Zeppelin got the riff in “Whole Lotta Love”? Neither had I, until I began this collection by the indefatigably curious journalist Malcolm Gladwell. The familiar jacket design, with its tiny graphic on a spare background, reminds us that Gladwell has become a brand. He is the author of the mega-best sellers “The Tipping Point,” “Blink” and “Outliers”; a popular speaker on the Dilbert circuit; and a prolific contributor to The New Yorker, where the 19 articles in “What the Dog Saw” were originally published. This volume includes prequels to those books and other examples of Gladwell’s stock in trade: counterintuitive findings from little-known experts.

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Happy Days

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

New York Times - By Hanna Rosin - Nov. 05 (Review) - I must confess, I have waited my whole life for someone to write a book like “Bright-Sided.” When I was a young child, my family moved to the United States from Israel, where churlishness is a point of pride. As I walked around wearing what I considered a neutral expression, strangers would often shout, “What’s the matter, honey? Smile!” as if visible cheerfulness were some kind of requirement for citizenship. Now, in Barbara Ehrenreich’s deeply satisfying book, I finally have a moral defense for my apparent scowl. All the background noise of America — motivational speakers, positive prayer, the new Journal of Happiness Studies — these are not the markers of happy, well-adjusted psyches uncorrupted by irony, as I have always been led to believe. Instead, Ehrenreich argues convincingly that they are the symptoms of a noxious virus infecting all corners of American life that goes by the name “positive thinking.” What started as a 19th-century response to dour Calvinism has, over the years, turned equally oppressive, Ehrenreich writes. Stacks of best sellers equate corporate success with a positive attitude. Flimsy medical research claims that cheerfulness can improve the immune system. In a growing number of American churches, confessions of poverty or distress amount to heresy. America’s can-do optimism has hardened into a suffocating culture of positivity that bears little relation to genuine hope or happiness.

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The iconoclastic wisdom of David Nutt

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By Dorothy Rowe - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - In the late 19th century the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin described depression as a long-term illness that returned frequently and would become chronic – a definition that was accepted by British psychiatrists. And when the first antidepressants were created in the 60s, psychiatrists were delighted that they now had what seemed to be a cure for depression. However, it soon became clear to depressed people – and to many of us working in the psychiatric system – that antidepressants did not prevent recurrence and chronicity. Psychiatrists did not wish to admit this, because the only other treatment that we had for depression was ECT (electroconvulsive therapy). The pharmaceutical companies then advised psychiatrists to prescribe antidepressants as prophylactics that would stop the person getting depressed again. The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Revision Fourth Edition) contains the diagnosis "Major Depressive Disorder in Full Remission". Once depressed, always depressed, no matter how well you feel.

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Climate Change Deniers Are Not Skeptics - They're Suckers

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800

The Guardian - By George Monbiot - Nov. 03 (Opinion) - My fiercest opponents on global warming tend to be in their 60s and 70s. This offers a fascinating, if chilling, insight into human psychology There is no point in denying it: we're losing. Climate change denial is spreading like a contagious disease. It exists in a sphere that cannot be reached by evidence or reasoned argument; any attempt to draw attention to scientific findings is greeted with furious invective. This sphere is expanding with astonishing speed. A survey last month by the Pew Research Centre suggests that the proportion of Americans who believe there is solid evidence that the world has been warming over the last few decades has fallen from 71% to 57% in just 18 months.

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Michael Specter’s new book ‘Denialism’ misses its targets

Sat, 31 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Grist - By Tom Philpott - Oct. 31 (Review) - Like the great institutions of European Christianity, modern science has amassed tremendous power—and not always lived up to its founding creeds. Science needs a Gibbon—someone who appreciates its intellectual grandeur and potential, but who also can train a cold eye on the “inevitable mixture of error and corruption” that has accompanied its tenure since the Enlightenment. That Gibbon is not Michael Specter, a New Yorker staff writer and author of the new book Denialism: How Irrational Thinking Hinders Scientific Progress, Harms the Planet, and Threatens Our Lives. His book purports to defend science from its philistine critics—people who, in Specter’s view, reflexively deny the validity of the scientific process. In his intro, Specter sets up the defining focus of the book. He contrasts the “rigorous and open-minded skepticism of science” with “the inflexible certainty of ideological commitment” (i.e., “denialism”). Already, we’re on thin intellectual ice; Specter evidently believes in a pure science, one that exists completely apart from ideology. In Gibbon’s phrasing, he’s defending a science as “she descended from Heaven [read: the Enlightenment], arrayed in her native purity.”

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