I wish you could all have heard Kenneth Kendler's address to AADPRT this morning on this topic*. Most of your program directors did--so make sure you ask them about it!
*("Hard reductionist" neuroscience vs. Cartesian dualism--not Nasrallah's sartorial tastes...🙄.)
Kendler is a different kettle of fish. He approaches the subject matter like the philosopher he is rather like a Jesuit priest discussing theology.
Here is a quotation.
"There is a deep tension between the basic scholarly approach – to carefully and self-critically seek to understand – that we theoretically value in academic psychiatry
and the self-promotional, entrepreneurial style that is actually often more rewarded. We are at risk of confusing our goals (to produce knowledge) and the means to those goals (to obtain research funding). Sometimes the means appear to be more important than the goals."
Nassrallah might take note of these wise words.
Here Kendler again.
"We are currently at some risk of becoming mindless. We have the challenge of integrating the advances that will be coming our way from genetics, imaging and molecular and systems neuroscience without losing our way as an integrative discipline. Although my ‘day job' is studying genetic risk factors for psychiatric illness, it is clear that the environment is very important for most disorders and
some of the critical aetiological factors in disease are tied up in deeply human processes such as meaning.
There is a mind at work here and below we see the contrast between the self publicist and the measured humble approach to his own work.
"Problems of multiple testing continue to dog our field and
lead to overzealous claims about ‘genes for' various disorders."
No hubris here.
The fact is that modern mathematical wizardry has enabled the finding of statistical significance in factors which themselves are entirely irrelevant. Study on but at least he seems to be owning up to this.
Just for balance. Mind champion Chalmers dresses like a hippie because, well he is a bit of a hippy.
Dennet dresses like a likable boring old white guy who has spent a lot of time in the lab, mainly because he is a boring old white guy who has spent a lot of time in a lab....
Nassrallah looks like a cheap sales person because he is a cheap sales person.
