Three stories I heard on “NPR”:http://www.npr.org on the way to Daycare which made me want to drop myself off there and play for the day while sending my baby daughter off to the office instead:
* “This kid”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4048551 whose doctor and parents are reluctant to take her off the “Zoloft”:http://www.rxlist.com/cgi/generic/sertral.htm they suggested she start taking, even though she’s been asking to stop for a year. Some of the doctors quoted in the report are a bit frightening. “Oh, we don’t know when to take them off the stuff — some of my patients have been on them since they were seven and now they’re in their 20s,” or words to that effect. Mom and Dad insist they are just waiting for a “less stressful time” in their daughter’s life to stop her course of anti-depressants. But guess what? She’s a junior in high school, is looking at colleges, next year’s senior year and then it’s the transition to University and … you see how it goes. That’s the kind of parent I want to be! “Honey, the problem isn’t your shitty high school, it’s serotonin re-uptake malfunctions in your brain.”
* John Kerry is starting to “refer to himself in the third person”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4049569, like Bob Dole did in ’96. A sure sign of fatigue. Bush’s glib one-liners about Kerry are better than Kerry’s rebuttals. I’ve come to agree with “Matt”:http://yglesias.typepad.com/matthew/2004/09/expectations_ma.html that the debates are going to be a rough ride for Kerry.
* Perhaps saddest of all was hearing the father of “Sgt Ben Isenberg”:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4048547 of Oregon talk about his son’s death in Iraq. Sgt Isenberg was killed when his Humvee ran over a home-made mine. His father quietly explains how the war in Iraq is a “spiritual war” and that people “need to just dig into their Bible and read about it — it’s predicted, it’s predestined.” He says his son understood he had to go to Iraq because “our current President is a very devout Christian … [who] had the knowledge, and understood what was going on, and it’s far deeper than we as a people will every really know, because we don’t get the information that the President gets.” What can one say in the face of such belief? The President is simply unworthy of the trust these people have placed in him.
{ 35 comments }
JP 09.28.04 at 3:36 pm
Whoa – Kieran has a baby daughter? Where have I been?
Russell Arben Fox 09.28.04 at 3:38 pm
As appalled and angry as I get, at the failure of so many parents to show basic, practical, everyday concern for their children’s upbringing–being involved in their schoolwork, policing the media they are exposed to, taking exercise with them, giving them chores, etc.–it can’t compare to the frustration I feel at those parents who view their children’s needs, problems and decisions as issues which warrant drug-induced solutions. Obviously this is a senstive subject, and just as obviously anti-depressant drugs have done wonders to improve the lives of many. But still: anyone who claims that the parents in this NPR report, like thousands of other parents, aren’t motivated at least to a small degree by a (frankly, in my view, self-centered) concern for making their and their child’s life “easy” is fooling themselves. Such pharmacological solutions can deny responsibility, challenge, and experience. It is frightening to me (though not surprising, given how cash-strapped schools are and how much power and influence are on the side of wealthy drug companies and their political allies) how quick many teachers and school administrators are to recommend to parents anti-depressants and other drugs, thereby simply encouraging a lazy sensibility already rampant among a certain set of paranoid and overprotective American parents.
No doubt someone with reams of medical data will disagree with me. But in my experience as a parent, 4 times out of 5 the drugged-up kid you see doesn’t really need it; she just needs time and attention. Unhappiness and stress rarely lead to murderous and suicidal rampages. Sometimes they lead to growth.
Rant off.
Kieran Healy 09.28.04 at 3:41 pm
Whoa – Kieran has a baby daughter?
Yeah, that’s pretty much how I reacted as well.
jdsm 09.28.04 at 4:05 pm
I find it frightening and not a little unbelievable that a debate with Bush on any subject would be a rough ride. I can well imagine debating Bush on the subject of himself and feeling pretty confident.
Paul 09.28.04 at 4:28 pm
What can one say in the face of such belief?
Sunday morning I watched (on TV) John Hagee of the Cornerstone Church, San Antonio, preach to an audience of several hundred, at least, that Iraq was merely an amuse bouche* for the coming Rapture. According to Hagee, when the Rapture comes, the Raptured–and he specifically dis-included the ACLU–will find themselves wearing white gowns and one of 7 different kinds of crowns distinguishing the rank of each Heavenly n00bie. The audience looked perfectly normal and absolutely certain of what they were hearing. 21st century religious wars. How is that even possible?
(*Hagee didn’t, of course, use the phrase “amuse bouche.”)
harry 09.28.04 at 4:57 pm
What’s worse about Keiran’s drug story is that it made it sound as if the kid’s depression was triggered by a move from the city to the surburbs (not by her school). It sounded to me like parents refraining from taking responsibility for their own decisions. But that may be a bit hard-hearted.
Tom Doyle 09.28.04 at 5:11 pm
“No doubt someone with reams of medical data will disagree with me. But in my experience as a parent, 4 times out of 5 the drugged-up kid you see doesn’t really need it; she just needs time and attention. Unhappiness and stress rarely lead to murderous and suicidal rampages. Sometimes they lead to growth.”
In my view, the reasoning above is an example of the following fallacy:
Slothful Induction
Definition:
The proper conclusion of an inductive argument is denied
despite the evidence to the contrary.
Examples:
(i) Hugo has had twelve accidents n the last six months, yet
he insists that it is just a coincidence and not his fault.
(Inductively, the evidence is overwhelming that it is his fault.
This example borrowed from Barker, p. 189)
(ii) Poll after poll shows that the N.D.P will win fewer than
ten seats in Parliament. Yet the party leader insists that the
party is doing much better than the polls suggest. (The N.D.P.
in fact got nine seats.)
Proof: [how to refute the fallacious argument]
About all you can do in such a case is to point to the strength
of the inference.
http://www.datanation.com/fallacies/sloth.htm
Kieran Healy 09.28.04 at 5:19 pm
Hugo has had twelve accidents n the last six months, yet
he insists that it is just a coincidence and not his fault.
(Inductively, the evidence is overwhelming that it is his fault.
This example borrowed from Barker, p. 189)
I dunno. What if Hugo is working in a meat packing plant?
Matt Weiner 09.28.04 at 5:25 pm
Or if Hugo’s parents won’t take him off a drug whose side effects include incontinence?
TomF 09.28.04 at 5:49 pm
His father quietly explains how the war in Iraq is a “spiritual war†and that people “need to just dig into their Bible and read about it — it’s predicted, it’s predestined.â€
Last time I checked, Christianity wasn’t a suicide cult.
seanb 09.28.04 at 5:53 pm
His father quietly explains how the war in Iraq is a “spiritual war†and that people “need to just dig into their Bible and read about it — it’s predicted, it’s predestined.â€
I was amazed to hear him react this way too, and a little frightened. Somehow people belive that this war will lead to peace.
Another Damned Medievalist 09.28.04 at 6:24 pm
Somehow people belive that this war will lead to peace.
Er …. no. My impression when I listened to this was that this war was a step on the way to Armageddon. Enter Apocalypse, stage right. YOu know, these seemed like such nice people, and yet, it struck me again how much we Americans allow religious ideology to act as a substitute for a decent background in history and politics. It also struck me that there seems to be a real inconsistency between OT interpretation (creation with no allegory, thus no evolution) vs. a blithe willingness to interpret the NT (generally Revelations) as a direct allegory to our own times.
On the Zoloft story: Damn! All of what people alredy said, plus Damn! again. What are people thinking? Is it any surprise that behavior problems (or problematic behavior) is on the rise when we’ve just about removed all art and music (and PE, for that matter — another perfectly healthy outlet for self expression) from our schools? What would happen if we took the huge amounts of money spent drugging our children and instead spent it on schools — bringing back education in the arts, home ec, shop, PE, etc., as well as smaller class sizes and more teacher-time per child?
Keith Ellis 09.28.04 at 6:55 pm
In my day, parents were completely oblivious to how their decisions, bad or otherwise, affected their children’s emotional lives; and walking to school, uphill, both directions, metaphorically speaking, was how we angst-ridden and angry teens navigated our way to adulthood. Clearly, these are crappy parents. The world is going to hell in a handbasket, I tells ya’.
Tom Doyle 09.28.04 at 7:05 pm
“YOu know, these seemed like such nice people, and yet, it struck me again how much we Americans allow religious ideology to act as a substitute for a decent background in history and politics.”
Don’t your Zoloft comments subordinate science to ideology?
djw 09.28.04 at 7:12 pm
What disturbed me about the Zoloft story was the apparent complete lack of scientific or clinical ideas about when and how to take teens off SRIs. I know better than to demonize these drugs because I know the tremendous good they can do for people, but isn’t that something that should be looked into a bit more carefully?
abb1 09.28.04 at 7:22 pm
He says his son understood he had to go to Iraq because “our current President is a very devout Christian … [who] had the knowledge, and understood what was going on, and it’s far deeper than we as a people will every really know, because we don’t get the information that the President gets.â€
I thought human cloning was banned in the US. And yet the Brave New World has, apparently, arrived. What gives?
Matt Weiner 09.28.04 at 7:54 pm
Don’t your Zoloft comments subordinate science to ideology?
As far as I can tell, no. ADM is noting that behavior problems rose when schools cut back on art/music/PE. According to your canons of inference, it’s not likely that that’s a coincidence. As a friend in college said, “When 40% of the class has been diagnosed with ADD, maybe it’s a social problem rather than a personal one.”
There may be some research that casts doubt on ADM’s thesis, but nobody’s brought it up here.
desesperanto 09.28.04 at 8:04 pm
What can one say in the face of such belief?
people get teh government they deserve?
Shai 09.28.04 at 8:24 pm
and although there are mixed results, meta analysis has shown the ssri class is marginally effective, or not at all, over and above placebo, at least in the adolescent cohort. (I read about it in science and nature anyway)
coupled with massive over- and -mis prescriptions by GP doctors who aren’t exactly qualified to make mental health determinations means it’s pretty easy to get a (free) 6 month supply, even if he or she isn’t one of those idiots who hand out inhaler and antibiotics prescriptions like they’re candy.
Shelby 09.28.04 at 9:08 pm
The President is simply unworthy of the trust these people have placed in him.
Any president is unworthy of the level of trust you describe. The scary thing about Isenberg’s comments is their utter incomprehension of political structure, their cession of all critical thought. This isn’t a Bush problem, this is a voter problem.
ruralsaturday 09.28.04 at 9:14 pm
There are probably more traits in common that go unremarked-on among the ADD/SRI “cohort”. I’m guessing intelligence, skepticism, inchoate hunger for the uncontrolled and new…
Swirling in all this near-random info is the odd thing, when you think about it, that government decree removes children from most homes for most of the day and then inoculates them with “facts” that are only commonly accepted because the community itself was inoculated with them in childhood. (…a brief aside to salute the valiant minorities working to enlighten that process…and a passing mention of the equally interesting, economic-necessity-driven granting of commercial corporate access to that captive audience of children) Then, in that context, the behaviorally unfit and unwilling are drugged into submission, strike that, the brain-chemistry-challenged are chemically readjusted back into the flock, the herd, whatever.
Some of us were saying watch out for those fundamentalists back when the more comfortable intellectuals were content with sneering and ridicule, because who would take that nonsense seriously?
Well lo and behold.
It doesn’t matter you know, about the morality of it, they will write their own morality to fit their situation, the way people always have. It was a life and death struggle, from the get, it never was anything less, or more. Nonsense, especially “spiritual” nonsense, is like Zoloft that way, it adjusts the working mind, erases anxiety, allows the subject to ignore unpleasant truth, and promotes the acceptance of consensus reality.
“Our God is a mighty God!”
It doesn’t matter whether He contradicts Himself, or any of those trivial “logical” complaints. Bush is a great example of what I mean. He’s deluded, hypocritical, rivaling Vlad the Impaler for heartless cruelty and blood-guilt, and he runs the world, literally runs the world; inasmuch as any public figure could, he does.
It doesn’t matter that he’s bizarrely disconnected from his actions and their consequences in a moral sense, he does the work of the spirit. The spirit doesn’t care about right and wrong anymore than a virus does, or a termite hive. It doesn’t matter, and it never did.
It only matters that He wins.
Arthur D. Hlavaty 09.28.04 at 9:30 pm
Kerry is getting tired? Where is Dr. Max Jacobson when we need him?
Another Damned Medievalist 09.28.04 at 10:10 pm
Thanks, Matt —
Tom, what Matt said. I wasn’t really that explicit, though. Also, I was speaking as a parent and as a teaching person and also as someone who has done a lot of reading on SSRIs and how much research seems to have been either bypassed or ignored in bringing them to market.
paperwight 09.28.04 at 11:16 pm
people get the government they deserve?
And if the Rapture fundies were the only ones who got that government, that would be fine, leaving aside the pesky problem of nuclear weapons in the hands of religious fanatics who look forward to Armageddon and think I’m a lesser species because I don’t.
However, I and a lot of others are also getting the government that the Rapture fundies deserve.
Emocrat 09.29.04 at 1:17 am
I’ve stopped listening to NPR all together now. That’s after 30 years of listening, and giving, to it. Your post only reminded me why I chose to do so.
The Zoloft story is just depressing, if not maddening (I’m lucky I had better parents than that!) The Kerry story is INTENDED to depress Democrats. The Fundie piece…well, perhaps that’s ol’ Mr. Ahmanson’s influence further flexing it’s muscles.
So, after a few years of routinely feeling increasingly insulted, depressed and outraged AT NPR’S ever worsening “reportage,” I’ve gone cold turkey, and no longer need the Zoloft!
JPed 09.29.04 at 1:37 am
Dude, no need to worry. Let’s just take up a collection and buy Kerry some Red Bull (I would link to it, but it has really annoying audio I can’t turn off)! And on the other point, I think medicating yourself for head problems is completely stupi…. DOH!
bleachersnot 09.29.04 at 4:26 am
‘people get the government they deserve?’
we’ll be finding that out again very soon wont we?
John Isbell 09.29.04 at 4:36 am
I too think the Kerry story is meant to sucker listeners.
anon 09.29.04 at 5:24 am
Wait until you have a young teenager writing stories about suicide and self-mutilation, and see if you don’t try just about anything that might work to make your child better, starting with therapy and ending with anti-depressants. And one year later, my teenager was happy and well.
Shai 09.29.04 at 6:06 am
“Wait until you have a young teenager writing stories about suicide and self-mutilation”
[…]
“And one year later, my teenager was happy and well.”
post hoc ergo prompter hoc. i agree with the sentiment, tho im not sure the risk/benefit analysis would work out with current information. i don’t know, which is why it’s important to consult an expert about the side effect and outcome stats for similar patients against the potential positive effect.
Jay Conner 09.29.04 at 6:58 am
It is becoming increasingly apparent to me that all 5 of my grandchildren will probably be educated in private schools. I am a believer in public education, and tried really hard to put my children there, but after a while we realized that it just wasn’t working, and sort of eased out of it. Parents who are really concerned, like my children now that they are parents, would rather put their time, energy and money into real schools, with art, music, PE and libraries than fight the uphill battle with the public schools.
Tom Doyle 09.29.04 at 7:21 am
With all due respect to those quoted below:
“Wait until you have a young teenager writing stories about suicide and self-mutilation, and see if you don’t try just about anything that might work to make your child better, starting with therapy and ending with anti-depressants. And one year later, my teenager was happy and well.
“post hoc ergo propter hoc. i agree with the sentiment, tho im not sure the risk/benefit analysis would work out with current information.”
In my opinion, the argument above (in italics) isn’t based on the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy. The arguments below, almost entirely, are so based:
“On the Zoloft story: Damn! All of what people alredy said, plus Damn! again. What are people thinking? Is it any surprise that behavior problems (or problematic behavior) is on the rise when we’ve just about removed all art and music (and PE, for that matter — another perfectly healthy outlet for self expression) from our schools? What would happen if we took the huge amounts of money spent drugging our children and instead spent it on schools — bringing back education in the arts, home ec, shop, PE, etc., as well as smaller class sizes and more teacher-time per child?”
“ADM is noting that behavior problems rose when schools cut back on art/music/PE. According to your canons of inference, it’s not likely that that’s a coincidence. As a friend in college said, “When 40% of the class has been diagnosed with ADD, maybe it’s a social problem rather than a personal one. There may be some research that casts doubt on ADM’s thesis, but nobody’s brought it up here.”
————-
“i don’t know, which is why it’s important to consult an expert about the side effect and outcome stats for similar patients against the potential positive effect.”
I agree, and I don’t read anon’s post as arguing to the contrary. The following statement, however, appears to dismiss in advance any expert judgement, in favor of personal, lay observation and opinion:
“No doubt someone with reams of medical data will disagree with me. But in my experience as a parent, 4 times out of 5 the drugged-up kid you see doesn’t really need it; she just needs time and attention. Unhappiness and stress rarely lead to murderous and suicidal rampages. Sometimes they lead to growth.â€
maurinsky 09.29.04 at 5:17 pm
My kids go to public school, and they have PE and art and music. But I live in CT (that’s Connecticut, not Crooked Timber), where thus far we have managed to stave off the anti-civilization crowd who would rather have $15 bucks more a week in their paycheck than have a high quality public school, with well-paid and mostly really terrific teachers.
Tom Doyle 09.29.04 at 5:57 pm
I live in CT
Landsman!
Matt Weiner 09.30.04 at 3:03 pm
Tom, with all due respect, you’ll get more of a hearing if you begin by actually presenting arguments rather than offering one-liners accusing people of committing fallacies. Your comment in response to ADM was extremely rude, and you didn’t supply a jot of evidence in support of it.
In fact, what it seemed to do was imply that the connection between changes in school funding and behavior problems isn’t even worth studying, which is every bit as fallacious as anything anyone else has said on the board. Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a fallacy, but it doesn’t mean that correlations aren’t worth looking into.
Now, maybe someone has debunked the correlation, but I certainly don’t learn that from anything you say. Still, if you’re interested in discussion, you could start by being less condescending.
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