Philip, I've always thought you must be quite thick-skinned to be running this blog. Your observations and criticisms challenge some of psychiatry's most solemn truths and you most certainly have legions of detractors in this profession.

That said, "Serious Scientist's" post (assuming it is sincere) embodies the insecurity and grandiosity characteristic of academic psychiatrists. Psychiatry is, for the most part, a pseudoscience characterized by empty theories of neural "underpinnings" of behavior, highly contrived medication trials designed to show just the degree of "efficacy" required to bring a drug to market, and the development of new categories of "abnormal" which will, sooner or later, pathologize each one of us (which propagates the psychiatrist/big pharma cycle).

Psychiatrists are the laughing stock of the academic medicine establishment, and Nemeroff and his colleagues must know this. Psychiatry can be a very interesting and rewarding field (and, indeed, a good psychiatrist can help a patient recover from the brink of despair), but there's so little scientific rigor in the field nowadays that academic psychiatrists have to resort to "science pimping" or, worse (in my opinion), small studies that have so little relevance to patient care that they come off as nothing more than mental masturbation by their authors.

When can we go back to listening to and helping patients, rather than seeing them as a justification for our bloated academic departments, as mere receptacles for our chemicals, or as stepping stones to our $1.9 million Miami mansion?

Serious Scientists,
You and all your peers belong in jail.
What about the serious psychiatrists that don't see their filed as an exact science, I must remind you of that because you are so, - hmmm... let me find a nice word, -... well, well, well... you are so... okay: let1's go with "full of yourself" that you forget this basic fact.
If in the sentence "sucking on lollypops (or worse", worse means "dick" it only shows how narrow mind you are about sex.
Maybe you need to search for a prostitute to know how to enjoy sex without the Victorian... blah blah blah...

Sorry friends but it was him who started. lol

Many times at FS we have written or read:
psychiatrists knows nothing about human condition
I believe we just had another prove here.
I wonder if this person even knows how to masturbate.
Oh Please! Let's be adult. Whenever I find a woman that says she has never done such a thing I believe she must be out of this planet.
Men can claim it and some women...
Oops...
I believe this is off-topic.

Sorry Philip!
I am reading a porno mag. It must be affecting my comments.
Wow! What a beautiful body this man here has. If you could see his derrière... OMG I will turn the pag...

I could not have said it better than SteveBMD. Psychiatry as science is a joke. Any psychiatrist who is not wrapped in self deception can admit this. Few can. Psychiatry as it exists now needs to die.

SteveBMD: All true no doubt but why do you feel that's relevant? Serious Scientist is probably some guy in his parent's basement... in Atlanta. Who has clearly mastered the art of striking a nerve with Philip.

I wonder who Serious Scientist thinks is qualified to comment on these topics. Do we have to have a degree in psychiatry from an approved university... except such people have a vested personal and financial stake in preserving the status quo. So, then, who gets to comment? Who decides who is in a position to comment?

None of us is a perfect commentator or a perfect observer. We all do our best. I think you are doing an excellent job, Phillip!

Also, it's the tax dollars of people like you and me who pay the salaries of academics like Nemeroff (and maybe even Serious Scientist, if that person isn't just a troll.) We also fund private psychiatry via medicare, medicaid, etc. Therefore, we all have a right to comment, in my opinion.

I want to clarify my above comment... even though Emory is a private university, its research is funded by government grants from the National Institutes of Health. Nemeroff received lots and lots of NIH funding, which makes what he did with our tax money all of our business!

Most scientific and medical research in US universities, whether public or private, is funded by the US government.

I will bet dollars to donuts that Serious Scientist is one of the group of Emory faculty members beholden to Nemeroff who signed that foolish letter defending him in the Wall Street Journal back in 2006. That was over the Cyberonics affair, which ended up costing him the editorship of an important journal. Go dig in this list and I think you will find SS.

Signatures of Wall Street Journal letter to Editor defending Nemeroff, 9/19/06

Boadie Dunlop, MD
Kerry Ressler, MD, PhD

Peter Ash, MD
Elisabeth Binder, MD, PhD
Rebekah Bradley, PhD
Douglas Bremner, MD
Frank Brown, MD
Michael Burke, MD
Linda Carpenter, MD
Linda Craighead, PhD
Shannon Croft, MD
Miles Crowder, MD
Joseph Cubells, MD, PhD
Michael Davis, PhD
Marina Demetrashvili, MD
Arden Dingle, MD
Barbara D’Orio, MD, MPA
Karen Drexler, MD
Erica Duncan, MD
Scott Firestone, MD
C. Frederick Gillespie, MD, PhD
Robert Golden, MD
Christine Heim, PhD
Ned Kalin, MD
Martin Keller, MD
Clinton Kilts, PhD
Becky Kinkead, PhD
Jeffrey Lieberman, MD
Andrew Miller, MD
E. Chris Muly, MD, PhD
Jeffrey Newport, MD, M.Div.
Mathew Norman, MD
Opal Ousley, PhD
Michael Owens, PhD
Giuseppe Pagnoni, PhD
David Purselle, MD
Donald Rainnie, PhD
Charles Raison, MD
Barbara Rothbaum, PhD
Mar Sanchez, MD
Thomas Schlaepfer, MD
Ann Schwartz, MD
Michael Thase, MD
Larry Tune, MD
B. Vidanagama, MD
Larry Young, PhD
Jay Weiss, PhD

SteveBMD nails it again, bravo!

Psychiatry isn't so much the problem as are the people who inhabit the field and the conventional anti-wisdoms that dictate its mandate. In an ongoing bid to find legitimacy among scientific peers, they've (via the DSM) actually succeeded in creating 'diseases' and mental ailments that don't even exist, and exaggerating the ones that do; and big pharma has seized the opportunity to commodify and market mental illness, creating a co-dependent relationship (between psychiatry and drug capitalism) that, ironically, has all the hallmarks of true dysfunctionality and madness!

We all know of good psychiatrists who fight against the grain. Rather than throwing them and their profession out with the bathwater, we should support them and try and get the discipline back to basics and pragmatics, as Steve says - listening to and helping patients.

As for "Serious Scientists" - his/her comments to Philip really need no analysis or elaboration.

Just to start, from Bernard Carroll's list of names:

Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, Professor and Chairman, Department of Psychiatry, Columbia University, New York, NY; Psychiatrist in Chief, New York Presbyterian Hospital/Columbia University Medical Center, New York, NY

Disclosure: Jeffrey A. Lieberman, MD, has disclosed that he has received grants for clinical research or educational activities from AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, and Pfizer. He has served as an advisor or consultant to AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Johnson & Johnson, Novartis, and Pfizer. Dr. Lieberman has also disclosed that he holds a patent from Repligen.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/525641

Bernard,
Thank you for the list of the 45 psychiatrists who have signed the letter.

Anonymous,
It's good that they did disclose but I always think that it's funny because it seems that now they are nice people who did nothing more than receiving a couple of bucks from the pharmas.
-Professor and Chairman;
-Psychiatrist in Chief;
-...has disclosed that he has received grants for clinical research or educational activities;
these people have influence on other psychiatrists practice and even clinical trials.
They should be the most concerned to their jobs. Still...

"Serious Scientist" is probably Nemeroff himself!!! LOL. A whore defending a whore!

Serious Scientist I dare you to come out,use your real name, and really voice your stance and opinions. Otherwise get your own blog,write as long as you like about whatever you like, and quit dropping dog poo on other peoples doorsteps.

Well, one thing is certain anyone who refers to him/herself as a "serious scientist" has some "serious" narcissistic issues. Most likely Axis II and probably untreatable. But, we could try Abilify and see what happens.

Serious scientist. Thanks for the laugh.

I didn't know that you were in your mother's basement, Philip(?). You must get out more!

Or perhaps "Serious Scientist" is projecting his stuff onto you... How long has she had you locked in there, SS, and does she know you're playing on the Internet?

Matt

Matt,
Do you doubt that "SS is projecting his/her stuff onto Philip?
No need for "perhaps".
I want to know too SS.
Does your mother know you are sucking lollYpops (or worse) and playing on the Internet?

PS: use a spell checker from now on or start studying English.
Try the next spelling bee nearest to you.

Ana wrote:
"Do you doubt that "SS is projecting his/her stuff onto Philip?.."

LOL. Well, I like to try to check my facts... "Don't assume - it makes an ASS out of U and ME." That's what a background in Law and Financial Compliance does for you, I guess!

Matt

nothin' like a good old fashioned witch hunt. Someone's not willing to drink the paranoia and bitterness kool-aid served here daily - we must find him and silence him. It must be Nemeroff... or his minions... or otherwise part of the Vast Psychiatric Conspiracy.

Regardless - clear that Serious Scientist touched a nerve.

What defines one as a serious scientist? Is it data collection in a conceptually confused paradigm? Does simply the process of the work or the outcome define "serious scientist"? Is it both or neither?

It appears that this blog touches a nerve with captain caveman.

Bitterness?
I see everything here but bitterness!
Strange.

Matt,
:)

Dr. John,

What defines a serious scientists...
Hmmmm.... claiming that "everything is in perceptual research and there is no way to have right and accurate answers for most of the biological issues" could be a good start.

Hey, how come Philip gets all the lollipops???

I wonder what serious scientist concludes is "worse" than a lollipop.

Sherry,
I go with the worse without problems... lol
Kidding.

Stephany,
I wrote my version of worse at
Posted by Ana at January 7, 2010 04:16 AM

I just forgot to put the " and " at some phrases.