Visionary or Voodoo? - Page 14


In addition, he says, researchers study "pure" cases--people with one supposed diagnosis without the confounding variables of comorbid conditions (i.e., drug addiction along with their depression, AD/HD symptoms along with their anxiety). This approach simply doesn't reflect the complexity, variability, and individuality of real people and real patients.

Finally, researchers compare people with a DSM diagnosis to presumed "normals," but Amen doubts that there's such an entity as a "normal" brain. Recruiting people for a database of normals, his office screened 1,500 people and found only 72, who met the criteria for "normal"--no signs of head injury, no history of substance abuse, no psychiatric illness, and no first-degree relative with a psychiatric illness. "'Normal' is a myth," he says flatly.

Whatever the specifics of his critics' objections to Amen's work, it's hard not to suspect that underlying the intensity of their response is their objection to Amen himself--his persona, his style, his modus operandi. Most scientists lead comparatively monastic, inconspicuous lives (though not necessarily impecunious--many act as paid consultants to pharmaceutical and medical-device companies). Even those few who achieve eminence do so largely within the circumscribed universe of their peers. How many people can name a recent Nobel laureate in any scientific field? They have their own worldview, and what they consider Amen's heavy-handed promotion of high-tech gimmickry is as far from it as earth is from Pluto.

"The nature of science is agnosticism," says Helen Mayberg in a passionate defense of the way researchers do things. "Our job is to ask questions, measure data, continue doing the research until we find out what's real, what isn't. I've devoted my entire professional life to using imagery to understand depression, and the more progress I make, the more complicated it gets. As a clinical neurologist, I see patients die all the time. I don't have to have anybody tell me how much people suffer. But no matter how much, as a doctor, I want some idea for a promising new treatment to be true, as a scientist, I have to remain an agnostic. We all know the system isn't as good as it should be, but it's the best we've got. We get accused of living in ivory towers, but we do what researchers do--we can't leapfrog over the process."

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