NOW Im paying attenion | The Compost Bin | Forums

Alright, now I'm pissed off.

Shame on Daniel Amen, shame on the TEDx talk organizers, and shame on PBS too!!

Here's the thing. I was under the impression after viewing the TED talk video that this was a man of science. He says he is a clinical psychiatrist and has done 83,000 brain scans. What he does not say is that all of it has been private and he has completely skipped all the steps that would make any of it valid science! Instead, he's just going straight to the public, the vast majority of whom do not know any better. He has a good pitch, I'll give him that. I liked his argument of looking at the brain with instrumentation.

Here's the thing; SPECT, the imaging technology he uses has largely been replaced by PET and MRI, and is only still used on a limited scope. I was not familiar with SPECT and did not realize it's age or limitations.

I said that I had initially not paid attention and written it off as gimmickry. Well now I am paying attention and this huckster is selling lies.

Grrr.

I was suspicious of all the selling, but without the facts beforehand, his sales pitch is better than average and piqued my interest. But I tend to be skeptical, and I deeply respect the scientific process, so in effect, by getting me to "pay attention", I wanted to look further into the man and his claims.

That is from a lengthy and very damning article published by the Washington Post Magazine (WPM) titled "Daniel Amen is the most popular psychiatrist in America. To most researchers and scientists, that’s a very bad thing." You can read the article here: http://www.washingto.....story.html

It's a very long article, but before giving Amen's work another shred of consideration, it is a must read. In the article, another article critical of Amen published in Salon is mentioned. It discusses how PBS has been airing what are essentially infomercials for Amen during fundraisers. PBS admits to not vetting the science claims by the program(s).

While the funds raised for PBS have been significant, and while I love PBS and know such funds are necessary, it is a very unfortunate selling out. You'll note that I imply that PBS has aired multiple Amen produced infomercials. According to the WPM article this is true, but in the Salon article you will notice only 1 infomercial is mentioned. The reason for this is that the Salon article was written 4 years earlier than the WPM article. Here is the link to the Salon article: http://www.salon.com.....niel_amen/