Are you an owl or a lark?

Are you an Owl or a Lark?


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Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
I would have imagined (tho I don't know) that a lot of men who use prostitutes are married.

I can imagine this being the case - guys whose marriages are on the rocks, or who've recently got divorced, and are probably paying for a bit of intimacy and affection (even if it's ersatz affection) more than for the actual sex itself.

The other kind of case I can imagine is a young or young-ish guy with money who takes the reductive view that he can try and get into some woman's knickers by taking her to a fancy restaurant and then a swanky nightclub, splashing out on champagne, coke, whatever it takes...or just cut to the chase and simply find a woman who accepts cash for sex up front. I should think this kind of attitude is on the way out though, as more women get into well-paid professional roles, and I'm sure most of the women I know would hate to think of themselves as "gold-diggers". Then again, I'm not a hotshot banker or a Premiership footballer...
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
the constant dilemma of how to deal with beautiful people...

Standing over them, visibly drooling and panting while pawing your crotch through your trousers, is generally recognised as correct social etiquette in this situation.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
Standing over them, visibly drooling and panting while pawing your crotch through your trousers, is generally recognised as correct social etiquette in this situation.
:D

It's cool to meet people who are visibly beautiful but also down to earth and kind. It would be easy to get a warped and superior mindset if you were in that situation. Mind you, a girl I know in school was always one of the 'outsiders' because she was gangly and goofy looking as a child. In her mid-teens she started to look like a supermodel, I don't think she has gotten quite used to the change. (if she's even fully aware of it)
 

four_five_one

Infinition
This is completely OT @ Nomad: I think yr blog is Anodyne Lite, right? Anyway, I loved the 'Naturalistic Fallacy' post -- have linked it to some friends (i.e. ppl that say to me 'James, you're not really depressed, you just need to strip away the extra layers and get back to some pure ontological core').

They were pretty shocked. I explained that the brain is just another organ and whatever yr philosophical position regarding the 'mind/body' is: the 'mind' is at least instantiated physically. Some people still seem unable to accept this though...

But regards what you wrote about depression, I keep reading lately that serotonin has little to do with it, and SSRIS are more likely to work by promoting neurogenesis (which depression suppresses): http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/02/prozac.php - this explains why non-depressed people might feel 'much better' on anti-depressants too.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
This is completely OT @ Nomad: I think yr blog is Anodyne Lite, right? Anyway, I loved the 'Naturalistic Fallacy' post -- have linked it to some friends (i.e. ppl that say to me 'James, you're not really depressed, you just need to strip away the extra layers and get back to some pure ontological core').

They were pretty shocked. I explained that the brain is just another organ and whatever yr philosophical position regarding the 'mind/body' is: the 'mind' is at least instantiated physically. Some people still seem unable to accept this though...

But regards what you wrote about depression, I keep reading lately that serotonin has little to do with it, and SSRIS are more likely to work by promoting neurogenesis (which depression suppresses): http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2010/02/prozac.php - this explains why non-depressed people might feel 'much better' on anti-depressants too.

Yes, lengthy New York Times pieces aside, there's nothing fun about depression, and it's not an "ontological" problem. (Seems like the Times runs at least one really lame article per week about the "upside" of mental illness or autism or something once a week that's always supremely condescending...it's a fashionable, liberal opinion these days. Mental illness-- it's all relative, maaann. Designed to make their upper middle class readership feel good about its petty feelings of guilt and inadequacy, no doubt).

You're right that SSRIs really don't work by just "upping" serotonin levels, which is what most people think they do. It's really frustrating trying to explain how neurotransmitters work to people who, like journalists, insist on simplifying the process into a soundbite. If you have bipolar I or schizophrenia, you really shouldn't even be on SSRIs, since they can precipitate manic or psychotic episodes. The idea that all mentally ill people are just popping "uppers" that flood their brains with serotonin and give them an "easy answer" to their problems is just not true. Schizophrenics take anti-psychotics, which have very difficult side effects, and bipolar people usually take some combination of anti-convulsants, anti-psychotics, and anxiolytics. Not an easy answer-- believe me--unless you think kidney stones ripping through your urethra is "easy", and being 20 pounds underweight, and hair falling out, cavities in your teeth, and being unable to remember words and basic information, getting dizzy, constantly thirsty, nauseous, breakthrough migraines with aura, unable to focus, basically living in a fog. Still--better than the alternative. The next generation of anti-depressants work on both serotonin and norepinepherine channels.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Uck, that Newsweek article is ridiculous. It doesn't actually cite any numbers from any studies, just insists in passing that these numbers exist. It's flagrantly exaggerated BS.

Just because anti-depressants were overprescribed to people who probably didn't need them over the past decade or so doesn't mean that there's nobody who needs them.

Anti-depressants don't "work" any better than placebo in people who don't have MDD-- that is, people who are just experiencing a minor episode of depression related to life events. They do, however, work wonderfully, and much better than placebo, for people who actually have a brain disorder called MDD.

It's funny, but laypeople have this really strange inability to make these types of distinctions.(Just like they can't make a distinction between depressive disorders and other mood disorders.) Journalists are the worst about it.Journalists think that *one* study can topple an entire body of research. But it can't, unless its findings can be replicated. Over and over and over.

I'd like to see this "study" of Kirsch's that's supposedly going to contradict every other study that exists...oh please! Let's see it stand up to peer review first!

Journalists' idea of how science works is so fucked.
 
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grizzleb

Well-known member
Uck, that Newsweek article is ridiculous. It doesn't actually cite any numbers from any studies, just insists in passing that these numbers exist. It's flagrantly exaggerated BS.

Just because anti-depressants were overprescribed to people who probably didn't need them over the past decade or so doesn't mean that there's nobody who needs them.

Anti-depressants don't "work" any better than placebo in people who don't have MDD-- that is, people who are just experiencing a minor episode of depression related to life events. They do, however, work wonderfully, and much better than placebo, for people who actually have a brain disorder called MDD.

It's funny, but laypeople have this really strange inability to make these types of distinctions.(Just like they can't make a distinction between depressive disorders and other mood disorders.) Journalists are the worst about it.Journalists think that *one* study can topple an entire body of research. But it can't, unless its findings can be replicated. Over and over and over.

I'd like to see this "study" of Kirsch's that's supposedly going to contradict every other study that exists...oh please! Let's see it stand up to peer review first!

Journalists' idea of how science works is so fucked.

It's an easy way to sell newspapers and magazines though isn't it? Just make some spurious groundbreaking claims about this that or the other = sales. New Scientist is the worst for presenting some findings of a study as fact. They also think that the public can't handle being spoken to like an adult so they just fire out vague easy answers that only serve to confuse.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
It's an easy way to sell newspapers and magazines though isn't it? Just make some spurious groundbreaking claims about this that or the other = sales. New Scientist is the worst for presenting some findings of a study as fact.

And of course, it's "groundbreaking news" with some faux-populism to it. We don't need no stinkin anti-depressants.

Well, yeah, it's unlikely that you do, you dumb fucks! Since something like ~5% of the population has MDD, possibly less.

It's a new Dark Age.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
Journalists' idea of how science works is so fucked.

Nomad, I'm sure you're aware of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog (and fairly regular Guardian column, and book...) but just in case you aren't, you should check him out. He's a kind of crusading figure against terrible science (particularly medical/clinical) journalism - I expect he was walking around with a smile a foot wide just recently after the doctor who kicked off that whole spurious MMR/autism scare was officially disgraced and his 'findings' debunked - Goldacre was one of the first people to draw any serious attention to the flaws in the guy's methodology.

On the subject of psychiatric medicine, it might be good idea to have some pills with a name ending in -zepam handy if you check out Goldacre's blog - the current article is on a woman who was, er, cured of cancer by homeopathy... :mad:
 
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nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Nomad, I'm sure you're aware of Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog (and fairly regular Guardian column, and book...) but just in case you aren't, you should check him out. He's a kind of crusading figure against terrible science (particularly medical/clinical) journalism - I expect he was walking around with a smile a foot wide just recently after the doctor who kicked off that whole spurious MMR/autism scare was officially disgraced and his 'findings' debunked - Goldacre was one of the first people to draw any serious attention to the flaws in the guy's methodology.

On the subject of psychiatric medicine, it might be good idea to have some pills with a name ending in -zepam handy if you check out Goldacre's blog - the current article is on a woman who was, er, cured of cancer by homeopathy... :mad:

Thanks...I've heard of it, and I think read a couple of linked articles before, but I always forgot to save it...

It's getting more difficult all the time, but it's nice to see there are bloggers out there who are trying to stop the spread of false information through science journalism.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Journalists' idea of how science works is so fucked.

well I dunno, at least as such a blanket condemnation. I don't think most non-scientists really have any idea "how science works", especially in a country like the U.S. where pre-college instruction in the sciences (& math) is generally atrocious. I certainly had very little idea about it until I got involved with research. as dude says, journalists are trying to find a hook for a story; even without the dense technical jargon & necessarily dry tone of a peer-reviewed journal article, it's pretty difficult, I think, to really express what scientific findings "mean" to laypeople in an accurate way. It's like trying to explain how a carburetor works to someone who's never heard of cars or internal combustion. plus I imagine many people have the wildest misconceptions of what science entails, like it's all CSI or something. xkcd has done more than a few strips on this theme.

I mean, I'm not denying there's a lot of terrible media coverage of science, because there is. but there are some exceptions; Scientific American & all the popular science magazines of that ilk (which, admittedly, are targeting at least a semi-educated audience). The NYT's Tuesday Science section is usually pretty good. I think generally the social sciences come off considerably worse than the physical sciences in news coverage which isn't surprising as they do studies on variables that are so much harder to quantify, e.g. the data is much "softer" & thus open to more interpretation. there was a pretty decent article in the NYT mag recently on antidepressents & anxiolytics. it took a more general view - usually a good call when writing about science, rather than focusing on 1 particular study - discussed general trends in drug prescription since the 50s & differing views within on psychiatry on the biological function of mental illness. unfortunately I can't find it on the web.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
I mean, I'm not denying there's a lot of terrible media coverage of science, because there is. but there are some exceptions; Scientific American & all the popular science magazines of that ilk (which, admittedly, are targeting at least a semi-educated audience). The NYT's Tuesday Science section is usually pretty good. I think generally the social sciences come off considerably worse than the physical sciences in news coverage which isn't surprising as they do studies on variables that are so much harder to quantify, e.g. the data is much "softer" & thus open to more interpretation. there was a pretty decent article in the NYT mag recently on antidepressents & anxiolytics. it took a more general view - usually a good call when writing about science, rather than focusing on 1 particular study - discussed general trends in drug prescription since the 50s & differing views within on psychiatry on the biological function of mental illness. unfortunately I can't find it on the web.
Hmm. I picked up a Scientific American one time (fuck knows why it was in an asian cornershop next to NUTS) an it was fully of the sensationalist and presumtive language that's just been described.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
well I dunno, at least as such a blanket condemnation. I don't think most non-scientists really have any idea "how science works", especially in a country like the U.S. where pre-college instruction in the sciences (& math) is generally atrocious. I certainly had very little idea about it until I got involved with research. as dude says, journalists are trying to find a hook for a story; even without the dense technical jargon & necessarily dry tone of a peer-reviewed journal article, it's pretty difficult, I think, to really express what scientific findings "mean" to laypeople in an accurate way. It's like trying to explain how a carburetor works to someone who's never heard of cars or internal combustion. plus I imagine many people have the wildest misconceptions of what science entails, like it's all CSI or something. xkcd has done more than a few strips on this theme.

I mean, I'm not denying there's a lot of terrible media coverage of science, because there is. but there are some exceptions; Scientific American & all the popular science magazines of that ilk (which, admittedly, are targeting at least a semi-educated audience). The NYT's Tuesday Science section is usually pretty good. I think generally the social sciences come off considerably worse than the physical sciences in news coverage which isn't surprising as they do studies on variables that are so much harder to quantify, e.g. the data is much "softer" & thus open to more interpretation. there was a pretty decent article in the NYT mag recently on antidepressents & anxiolytics. it took a more general view - usually a good call when writing about science, rather than focusing on 1 particular study - discussed general trends in drug prescription since the 50s & differing views within on psychiatry on the biological function of mental illness. unfortunately I can't find it on the web.

I always read the NYT pieces, which is why I shouldn't really feel superior about myself. I read the whole damn thing, usually. For every decent "history" type of piece (I remember they had a really good one on Jung a while back) they publish, there are about 10 really stupid like Simon Baron-Cohen pieces that are purely speculative but that are dressed up as Dropping Some Science on Y'All.

Although, I really do sympathize with the writers...when I was writing biomedical grants, it was always really tough, trying to walk that line between getting the science accurate and precise, and just boiling very complex areas of research down to a few sentences that make a really good sell. In fact, when writing grants to the pharmaceutical companies, they preferred the big broad brushstroke type writing-- because, unsurprisingly, it's easier to fit all kinds of treatment rubrics under broader metaphors.

Yes, Big Pharma is disgusting for taking advantage of a loophole in medical ethics--the fact that GPs are still allowed to diagnose and treat mental illness, despite a sore lack of training in those areas-- in order to push Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil on a generation of people who largely didn't need any of those things. But the idea that anti-depressants don't actually *work* better than placebo for mental illness is not something that follows logically from this, and the journalists are writing as if it does.
 

nomadthethird

more issues than Time mag
Speaking of enjoyably bad science:

I can admit that I watch Mythbusters sometimes when I'm in a house that has a TV.

And that show is about as scientific as... Peewee's Playhouse.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Hmm. I picked up a Scientific American one time (fuck knows why it was in an asian cornershop next to NUTS) an it was fully of the sensationalist and presumtive language that's just been described.

um, are you sure we're talking about the same thing? perhaps you should describe what you mean by "sensationalist & presumptive language". of course, it's a magazine, they don't use the same language as you'd find in a peer-reviewed journal article. the entire point is that they're getting science across to a popular audience w/some modicum of intelligence. every article, for example, cites peer-reviewed journal articles for people more interested in the topic. and it almost never, to my knowledge, "sensationalizes" scientific discoveries.

no offense, but I have the feeling you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
um, are you sure we're talking about the same thing? perhaps you should describe what you mean by "sensationalist & presumptive language". of course, it's a magazine, they don't use the same language as you'd find in a peer-reviewed journal article. the entire point is that they're getting science across to a popular audience w/some modicum of intelligence. every article, for example, cites peer-reviewed journal articles for people more interested in the topic. and it almost never, to my knowledge, "sensationalizes" scientific discoveries.

no offense, but I have the feeling you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
It was the 'brain' magazine, so maybe it's run by different people. Yeah of course they have to popularise it. What I mean is that they would make a claim that x and x means that this is the case, when it only suggests something, and there could be other possibilities. Of course, I never said that it was the same thing as a peer-reviewed journal, I guess I just have a dislike for science journalism generally I suppose. I don't know what the hell I'm talking about? Jeez, it's a magazine.
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
Yes, Big Pharma is disgusting for taking advantage of a loophole in medical ethics--the fact that GPs are still allowed to diagnose and treat mental illness, despite a sore lack of training in those areas-- in order to push Prozac and Zoloft and Paxil on a generation of people who largely didn't need any of those things. But the idea that anti-depressants don't actually *work* better than placebo for mental illness is not something that follows logically from this, and the journalists are writing as if it does.

would never deny there have been some journalistic distortions, to various ends. just staying it's possible to write intelligently on the topic in a popular, non-peer reviewed format.

interestingly, as re: the GPs dishing out psychotropics, my mom (a psychologist) tells me that some psychologists in the U.S. are pushing for the right to prescribe drugs for just that reason. there's a petty furious debate over it right now among psychologists, she tells me - i.e. Dissensus style shite-flinging on list servs & the like. psychiatrists, of course, are totally incensed, as it would be a backdoor onto their turf w/o having to actually go to med school (though, tbc, any psychologist who wanted to prescribe would have to do some kind of training, be licensed, etc.)
 

padraig (u.s.)

a monkey that will go ape
I don't know what the hell I'm talking about?

it kinda bespeaks a lack of familiarity with the peer-reviewed journal format & how wildly different that is from writing intended for a popular audience. personally I think anything that manages to interest people in science and maintain at least a bit of respectability in the process is to be applauded, which is why I'm generally a big fan of well-regarded popular science magazines.

you are, of course, free to keep your "dislike for science journalism".
 

grizzleb

Well-known member
Surely I can criticise science magazines without making a living in, or being involved in academic science???
 
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