So why have I decided against it? Surely it would be good to have these starter packs, as then I can use it….

It’d be good for the drug company, certainly. The evidence is that when medications are available to hand out to patients, doctors are more likely to use those, even when there are other appropriate – and cheaper – options.

Sure, I might see myself as immune to the wiles of the pharmaceutical industry – but so does everyone, and we’re all wrong.

So it’s better that I don’t get the samples. If I want to use the medication I can see about asking the drug company to provide it pending PBS subsidy, I can entreat our pharmacy to provide it, the patient can pay (as much as my socialistliberalhumanistpinkoswine self hates that idea) … 

… or I can use another medication, or non-pharmacological treatment.

Via Ben Goldacre I’ve read this morning about the copyright owners of the Folstein Mini Mental State Examination, and their efforts to extract money for its use (which in one sense is fair, but they’ve ignored their copyright for the last thirty years, during which the test has become ubiquitous and pretty much indispensable), and, it seems, to get rid of an open-access alternative developed and validated at Harvard.

Dick move, PAR. Totes dick move.

As the NEJM said:

For clinicians, the risk of infringement is real. Photocopying or downloading the MMSE probably constitutes infringement; those who publish the MMSE on a Web site or pocket card could incur more severe penalties for distribution. Even more chilling is the “takedown” of the Sweet 16, apparently under threat of legal action from PAR (although PAR has not commented publicly). Are the creators of any new cognitive test that includes orientation questions or requires a patient to recall three items subject to action by PAR? However disputable the legal niceties, few physicians or institutions would want to have to argue their case in court.

So … If we ask someone where they are, and to remember a few things, we’re infringing copyright? And a screening tool that does so must be pulled down and kept away from use? I guess if it might impede money-making then that’s only right and proper….

You know, I think the Mind Hacks blog said it best:

Cashing-in on a simple and now, clinically essential, bedside test that you’ve ignored for three decades makes you seem, at best, greedy.

Taking down open-access equivalents because they also ask people the location and date and to remember a handful of words and numbers makes you a seem like a cock and a danger to clinical progress.

Yep.

Cocks.

So as I said: self-publishing … I feel like photocopying thousands of copies, and just handing them out on street corners, and leaving them in letterboxes, and giving it to everyone.

Maybe I’ll post PAR a bunch of IOUs…

And a photo of my middle finger.

According to Dr McFerran, teenagers who listen to heavy metal might be placing themselves at risk for depression, anxiety, and suicide:

“Examples of this are when someone listens to the same song or album of heavy metal music over and over again and doesn’t listen to anything else. They do this to isolate themselves or escape from reality.

“If this behavior continues over a period of time then it might indicate that this young person is suffering from depression or anxiety, and at worst, might suggest suicidal tendencies.”

Ummm… Haven’t we been here before?

Oh noes! The metal brootalz! Won’t someone think of the children?!

Ok, having convincingly declared my bias…

In none of the “articles” about this (all of which – other than the above-linked from Guitar World – are essentially reprinting the press release, so I won’t even bother linking to them) is there any link to, or even mention of, a paper – published, in press, or even submitted. So, in similar fashion to the moronic “study” about caffeine-induced hallucinations that, incidentally, also came from a university in Melbourne, I cannot look at the actual methods, results, or analysis engaged in by Dr McFerran.

The lack of logic, and the alarmist tone, displayed in the press release however, do not give me cause to think the study would be particularly rigorous, or itself logical.

“The mp3 revolution means that young people are accessing music more than ever before and it’s not uncommon for some to listen to music for seven or eight hours a day,” she said.

… She said. She did. She said.

Let’s deconstruct this and see if it means anything. “Not uncommon” for “some”… to me is saying that “some” people (however many that is) but not others, will “not uncommon”ly (however often that is) listen to music for 7-8 hours a day. It doesn’t tell me who make up that “some”, or what music they’re listening to, or why, or the context … Or indeed anything useful.

And really, what it is designed to say, is not what I take from it; what it is meant to do is create the image of the children (“won’t someone please think of the children?!”) spending too much time listening to music (which is after all the devil’s pastime – unless it’s whatever music Dr McFerran is keen on in the Melbourne Conservatory of Music.

Probably not the metal brootalz.

“Most young people listen to a range of music in positive ways; to block out crowds, to lift their mood or to give them energy when exercising, but young people at risk of depression are more likely to be listening to music, particularly heavy metal music, in a negative way.”

So … Hang on. Back up the metal-bashing bus just a minute.

You’ve just suggested, have you not, that the arrow of causation is the other way? That depressed/anxious/suicidal kids might listen to metal more than do the non-depressed/anxious/suicidal kids? … not that the heavy metal is what’s making them depressed, anxious, and suicidal. They are perhaps seeking solace, support, expression, whatever, in that music.

But that’s a bad thing if it’s heavy metal.

Because, y’know … the brootalz.

Or perhaps it’s just a spurious association. I wonder, how did Dr McFerran arrive at her startling conclusions? Why, by:

“…conducting in-depth interviews with 50 young people aged between 13 and 18, along with a national survey of 1000 young people”

Well hold the phone. That’ll do it for me. Especially without any substantive details (who they selected, how they selected, how they controlled, what they asked…); they might just spoil a good story.

You know, I’m almost surprised there was no mention of satanism and back-masked messages.

I hate, hate, hate this sort of crap: putting out melodramatic press releases with no data, no mention of evidence to back up the sensationalist claims made – and then dutiful churnalists just regurgitate it without a scrap of critical thought.

So. Unless Dr McFerran does produce a good-quality peer-reviewed paper that shows solid evidence to back up what she says, I say: enjoy your metal brootalz. \m/

Crazydelusionalinsanelooneymadman!!!!11!11!eleven!

It was bad enough when people (even PZ Myers, who ought to know better, being a level 20 sceptic with a +10 amulet of rationality) pronounced Breivik “delusional and insane” and a “lunatic” – without any good evidence that is the case. It is both a symptom and cause of the stigma and discrimination the psychiatrically ill face every day, that whenever someone does something appalling that (by its appalling nature) is beyond the comprehension of the rest of us, people start saying “he must be crazy” and variations.

Now, while I am not saying he is definitely not psychiatrically ill, I am saying there is nothing so far evident in his actions or his “manifesto” that really indicates him to be so. He might yet turn out to be psychotic, but at this point we have no evidence to say so.

Particularly, there is no apparent formal thought disorder in what I’ve read of his manifesto. Thought disorder is generally more apparent in writing than speech, and given that English is apparently his second language, any thought disorder ought to be screamingly apparent in his written English. So I think we can say he’s probably not thought disordered.

Is he deluded? Nothing in what he’s written indicates clearly that to be the case. They’re awful ideas, yes, but seriously, if they – by their content, which is all we have to go on – are delusions, then the US Tea Party are all deluded …

… ‘k … Moving on …

Is he hallucinated? I’ve seen no mention of anything to suggest so. No communication from God or Satan or anyone else for example, which you might expect if this were psychotically-driven.

Is he insane? That’s perhaps easier to make an armchair comment on. Most definitions of insanity (a legal term, not a psychiatric one any more) are based on the McNaughton rules, which basically require that the person, to be found insane, be unable – through mental illness, sometimes mental retardation – to understand the nature or moral wrongfulness of their actions. It appears pretty clear that Breivik knew exactly the nature of his actions. Moral wrongfulness? Ok, that’s arguable, but unless his moral compass is askew because of psychosis, it doesn’t make him legally insane; a psychopathic nationalistic hate-filled horror yes … but not insane.

Just a psychopathic nationalistic hate-filled horror.

DOUBLETHINK

Anyway … Then we get the doublethink starting, and while the “crazy” talk bugs me deeply on a professional level, it’s this doublethink that really boggles my mind. I mean really, how do these people walk without falling down?

A good piece in Salon captures a lot of the idiocy. Even though Breivik explicitly espoused the nationalistic, racist, white-supremacist, anti-Islam sentiments of the far right, they have divined, using their amazing powers of divination, that in fact the “problems” that created him and caused this tragedy were… wait for it … Multiculturalism and Islam and such. Even abortion, would you believe?

And people are saying Breivik’s insane?

George Orwell invented a term for this amazing capacity to believe totally contradictory things (such as Glenn Beck saying that a youth politics camp “sounds a little like the Hitler Youth” – despite running a political youth camp himself: DOUBLETHINK – and that’s exactly what these rightwing whackos are displaying: super-Orwellian degrees of doublethink.

Scary as hell. Orwell had it sussed, ladies and germs. This is, indeed, the world of 1984.

Update: Andrew Bolt has actually managed to cram in both of these positions in one post for the Herald-Sun. Wow.

Unfortunately, in order to do so, they chose to use a fairly egregious caricature of a psychiatrically ill person – and conflates that with fringe conspiracy theorists … and with regular people with concerns about privacy.

Here’s the video:

So what do we have here? The stereotypical tinfoil hat of the conspiracy “nut-job”; a surveillance camera; a computer displaying green text on black screen (clearly a hardcore computer geek matrix paranoiac); the caricature talking about revealing his “true identity” to “you people” and asking “who are you working for?” so he’s pretty paranoid, right?

They are clearly conflating serious psychiatric illness, with conspiracy theorists – which is superficial, insulting, and wrong – and laughing at both groups. This is no more evident than at the end when the caricature is about to infiltrate a party, disguised. He goes to the wardrobe and pulls out a dress, while the soundtrack throws up a mocking waah waah waah waaaaaaaah.

For shame. This is absolutely stupid, childish, and insulting. Could the Australian Bureau of Statistics not find a way to reassure people about privacy concerns without giving the psychiatrically ill a virtual punch in the face?

Yuck.

Update: CensusAustralia appear to have removed the video or made it private:

Updated update: new linky added already.