Do Critics of Biological Psychiatry Have an Alternative to a Life of “Whack-A-Mole”?

Economic Manuscripts: Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy

stablishment psychiatry has recently switched the biological cause of mental illness from a “chemical imbalance” to a “brain circuitry defect.” There is no more important institution in establishment psychiatry than the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), and in 2022, psychiatrist Thomas Insel, NIMH director from 2002-2015, stated in his book Healing, “The idea of mental illness as a ‘chemical imbalance’ has now given way to mental illnesses as ‘connectional’ or brain circuit disorders.”

Do Critics of Biological Psychiatry Have an Alternative to a Life of “Whack-A-Mole”?

Alzheimer’s latest drug and science journalism’s memory problem

In July, the medical community was rocked by a disappointing reminder of science’s weakest link: the humans doing the work. The journal Science had shared that its six-month investigation supported the findings of whistleblower Matthew Schrag, who first noted altered images in a high-impact paper on Alzheimer’s, published in Nature in 2006. That paper is still flagged on Nature as under review, but the damage has already been done. Alzheimer’s drugs for the last decade and a half have been developed around claims without as much evidence as initially believed—which might also explain why they haven’t been working, leading people to pour false hope into useless and often expensive treatment plans for declining loved ones.

Alzheimer’s latest drug and science journalism’s memory problem