[Noisebridge-discuss] Some interesting thoughts on "benevolent sexism"

[John Ellis]

I could write a paper on why 80% of psychiatrists lack the
medical/neurophysical knowledge and understanding to be allowed to practice
"medicine". Originally, psychiatry split of from neurology as a specialty,
way before modern technology provided a cognitive neurologist a better
understanding of the brain "condition" than any psychiatrist could.

There is a small percentage of psychiatrists who get into neurodiagnostics
because of their lack of profit or success in regular psychiatry.  The goal
of neurodiagnostics is to improve treatment. I'm not sure Amens' techniques
provide treatment options that a usual psychiatrist finds by
trial-and-error and dumb luck.

-John

On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 4:10 AM, Gavin Knight <gnnrok at gmail.com> wrote:

> Thanks,
>
> tldr- wish I could remove Amen from pop-culture and put him back to being
> judged by his peers. He is grossly misinforming people and justifying
> psychological weaknesses as permanent handicaps based on inconclusive data.
>
>
> Yea I educated myself about him through the course of thinking about this
> issue. It highly frustrates me how he profits off of diagnosing
> psychological illness etc off of questionable data. I'm supposing through
> all of the research he has done there might be some*(sarcastic tone)* insight
> to whatever differences but yea I'm probably preaching to the choir here.
>
> My point being is Amen, gives uneducated or uninformed people
> justification for stereotyping the sexes with modern phrenology. I'm
> picturing parents watching his shit on television and saying to their kid,
> see Sally that's why you aren't very good at directions, it's your brain.
>
>
> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 12:30 AM, John Ellis <neurofog at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi Gavin,
>>
>> I'm somewhat familiar with Dr Amen's work, and he likes to overanalyze
>> what amounts to pretty pictures for various patients, without providing
>> clinically useful guidance. And thats putting it politely. Other doctors
>> who do SPECT scans (Dr Amen uses SPECT) and specialized forms of qEEG
>> analysis get better results. Dr Amen seems to generate profit, more than
>> results.
>>
>> I've stayed on the sidelines of this debate, but I will say that there is
>> no strong credible research that suggests women are neurophysically better
>> or worse any particular skillset than men. eg. There were female shuttle
>> pilots, and male shuttle pilots, both performed exceptionally well.
>>
>> Just because a men and women have neurophysical differences, and may
>> process information differently does't mean men or women
>> are inherently better or worse at a skill. It takes practice to be
>> proficient at something.
>>
>> -John
>>
>>
>>
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