I do love the idea some Mail readers have that if children were not on the internet they would be exercising outside in a healthy way and not sitting watching TV or listening to music all day as I did in the eighties when I was a kid.
How smug Ben is here. I don't need empirical evidence to understand that jumping out of a plane without a parachute is likely to kill me. By the very same inductive reasoning children who spend their lives holed up in front of a computer screen are unlikely to be spending much time social networking with real people.
@DJSpinoza He's a medical doctor, trained in psychiatry (applicable to this discussion) and now research fellow in epidemiology at LSHTM. So I'd probably class him as a scientist.
@dil2111 And since when did psychiatry become regarded as science? Much of what medics practice often has little scientific foundation e.g. cholesterol causes heart disease etc. Clinical science is woolly in the extreme when compared to biochemical sciences. Also the vast majority of medics have never serve little to zero time at the laboratory bench which gives them a pretty limited perspective.
@DJSpinoza As a medic myself, I agree some modern medicine done by doctors is not evidence based. That is unfortunate, but since humans are the practioners they are subject to the same sort of "myth believing" as other disciplines.
Clinical medicine evolves and changes (like any other science) in that the answer is reached gradually, not instantly. It doesn't claim otherwise.
For instance,
jama.ama-assn.org/content/suppl/2009/04/29/301.17.1819.DC1/JAMAclassics050609.pdf (see figure 1)
@dil2111 Link doesn't really work: Just Google "A comparison of results of meta-analyses of randomized control trials and recommendations of clinical experts. Treatments for myocardial infarction" by Antman EM et al and you'll find it.
@dil2111 There are thousands of really well designed studies out there related to, say cholesterol and CHD, millions spent on high quality, hi- tech research, lots of positive data, however if the initial assumption is WRONG - everything downstream is bullshit - that's the problem with 'evidence-based' research - epistemology 101. Young doctors not being made aware of the limitations of clinic research, they've been oversold this notion that more science is always the answer.
@DJSpinoza It is easy to medicine woolly since many things don't have a discrete answer (a particular receptor or mechanism as they do in the biochemical sciences), with each patient being different and difficult to generalise. Psychiatry in particular doesn't have a 100% sensitive/specific blood test or finding on a head MRI for a definitive diagnosis, but that doesn't mean scientific methods are not employed by those who work within it. If not, that is their shortcoming and not the discipline.
In fairness they both make decent arguments and without any evidence whatsoever - I might suggest moderate use is fine while both these individuals argue from an extreme perspective.
@DJSpinoza Your analogy is horrible. Jumping out of plane is fatal; you don't need evidence because you already have it. Proving that people who spend a lot of time on social networks become lonely (and consequently develop cancer) is far less obvious than that. Further, current evidence doesn't support your theory. And finally, the problem here is more about how Sigman ABUSES science to make people believe in stuff, which is just plain wrong and dumb.
I saw both Greenfield and Goldacre speak (separately, on different topics) at the British Science Festival, and Greenfield slagged off Goldacre in her talk on this topic!
I don't think the idea that internet can cause you harm is absurd, but Greenfield and Sigman and stereotype Mail readers don't seem to understand how people actually use internet and seem to say things are bad simply because they are not traditional. :-/
I think Sigmans got a fair point, Saying that young people staying in there rooms 5 - 6 hours a day on computers is a bad thing. No scientist should argue with that. I obviousbly don't know if it re wires the brain or not. Social media sites are on computer screens arent they? whats the difference in staring at a screen and at a social media site?
@chazswaz87 He says far more than that. He claims that it's scientifically proven that spending time on social networks leads to loneliness and that loneliness leads to cancer. Which, omg, isn't.
It's not good that children and even adults in third world or developing countries are able to speak with people in developed countries like America and Western Europe? This is bad for what reasons? If the research doesn't show that this is re-wiring the brain, then I can only think of one reason why people like Sigman would be conserned about this. They don't want people in the West to have contact with developing countries.
Goldacre claims Sigman ignores half of the evidence, but I notice Goldacre conveniently forgets the fact that social networks enable pedo-crabs to prey upon young children.
"a conjecture and an opinion" it is. Sigman is just pulling the old "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" that anyone can pull every time to justify about anything. The brain of a child does change with age because the brain is developing, you wouldn't want to be 35 with the brain of a 4 years old.
@ormoluinhen Yeah, he has. Which is frustrating. However I don't imagine he'd let his own children spend hours on facebook. Being an academic he'd expect on-line edifying goodies for their brains. Yet, for some reason, acts like a child himself and ignores the fundamentals on this issue.
I don't think Ben Goldacre owned" Aric Sigman at all. To the contrary, Dr, Goldacre seemed emotional bordering on the truculent, repetitive and inarticulate by comparison. Adolescent but not in a good way.
@pinkinvisible I do not think there is an issue of "owning" in the popular internet vernacular.
Sigman could have distanced himself away from his research being used in the way it was; it was only when Goldacre repeated the claim that Sigman's research failed to consider a wealth of evidence arguing against his position that Sigman attempted a slight of hand and committed a number of emotional fallacies to get his point across. If we want to call a loser in the debate, Sigman was it.
I love doc Ben and the dig at Milton Keynes lol ( I lived there for years so I can say that) but he didn't come cross well here from his opening line, he was like a moody child. Tho interesting points like, what you don't know for sure make up :)
Hmm, didn't like Ben Goldacre in this. Aric Sigman seemed to have a perfectly reasonable position, and all Goldacre would do is sit an smirk back at him, like he was an idiot.
Sigman - "If young children spend hours alone every day, communicating solely through a screen, should we worry how it may affect their development?"
Goldacre - *smirk* smirk* "I'm almost embarrassed to be here discussing this"
If not chatting to other children face to face because you're communicating with children far away using technology is bad, does this mean that I have been damaged by the pen-friends I had in my childhood?
@BertFicuselastica No, - though if you had grown up and communicated almost exclusively by letter, having minimal face to face contact with another person - does it not seem unreasonable to imagine that it might have affected your development?
I saw an episode of 'Campion', a BBC detective series from the 90s, where the detective said that criminals were awfully violent these days: "I blame talking pictures." Plus ca change...
Contrary to some opinions here, I by no means consider Goldacre 'owned' Sigman. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with both parties on different points; however, I found Goldacre to be very arrogant, hardly being able to give Sigman the respect of reply, and wearing very patronising expressions. In contrast, Sigman was respectful, stuck to the point, and was very concise.
@acoustics4me5 you are just the kind of intellectually lazy sheep that Sigman prays for. Where you put good manners above factual reliable content. You'll even be more concerned that I called you an intellectually lazy sheep rather than actually concerned that you were wrong.
If I were being polite I'd say you were foolish but if you couldn't spot the contradictions in what Sigman said you're too stupid to deserve even that.
@billysue2 He is a psychiatrist. If you look on wikipedia it says so.
I even sent an email to "The Maudsley Hospital" and they have confirmed that he is infact a registered psychiatrist. The reason he calls himself a "medical doctor" is because he has a degree in medicine however his speciality is psychiatry.
He never mentions this because he knows deep down that psychiatry is a fraud and then people will call him a Quack.
@caketheory Psychiatry is not a fraud, it is a complex, intellectually demanding medical specialty aimed at treating mental illnesses. These can be, by their nature, very difficult to diagnose, because there is little to observe other than the patient's behaviour, and what they tell you. ECT has a controversial history, but is now administered with a great deal of care and control, and there is a large body of research indicating its success and safety.
@sxtyang You say theres a large body of research to indicate that ECT is successful but all Quacks use this arguement. Last time I looked on a web site for magic crystals it said "Crystal Healers assess the condition of the bio-magnetic field of a client before choosing appropriate crystals to help bring it back into balance and harmony. The evidence suggest that crystal healers are able to restore these imbalaces thus restoring health.
@caketheory Totally not the same thing. ECT research is published in peer-reviewed, internationally recognised and respected medical journals. It's offered in hospitals because it is a legitimate mode of treatment. It isn't what would fall broadly into the realm of 'alternative medicine'. I would go and dig up some papers for you but you can easily do it yourself. Whether you'd assimilate or consider the information you read with interest, I suspect not.
@sxtyang I don't think you understand how corrupt the world actually is. When Thorazine was first introduced in the United States it was done in a huge marketing campaign conducted by the pharmaceutical company Smith Kline & French. The company president Francis Boyer launched the campaign himself on national television. They used lots of PR staff and rating scales to show the benefits of these drugs but it was all done by exagerating data and ever since its been full of fraud.
@caketheory The pharmaceutical industry makes awful, tragic mistakes and do not report on them to protect their profit. I come from the UK where drug marketing and advertising is illegal, so I won't be the first whistleblower because I don't get exposed to the campaigns. My point is secondary to ECT and drugs. It's about the whole discipline of psychiatry.
@caketheory Be careful of dismissing a valuable and important medical specialty as quackery. Otherwise you run the risk of alienating those patients who rely on it to feel healthy, and continuing to demonise psychiatry and mental illness, when really, it's analogous to a cardiologist treating the heart. If I have angina or heart failure, I'll be needing a cardiologist. If I ever develop a mental illness, I'll be needing a psychiatrist. How do you propose mental illness is treated otherwise?
@sxtyang I've never heard of a patient who relies on Psychiatry to feel healthy. In case you never knew psychiatry doesn't cure people because they don't even know what they're suppose to be curing.
A cardiologist on the other hand is a real doctor because they give you an objective test to find out if you need a medical intervention. Some people do need help like a "Bypass" and the cardiologist will CURE you. Psychiatry on the other hand doesn't.
@caketheory You didn't answer my question. How else do you propose mental illness is treated otherwise? It is because it is so difficult to diagnose, it is because mental illnesses often have little physical manifestation in the body, that it is so important, and so much is unknown. Psychiatrists are real doctors, they have chosen to pursue a field which is challenging and murky, and they fully well know that there is often no cure.
@sxtyang I would treat mental illness by going down the prevension avenue, in other words stop it from happening in the first place. I don't think its an illness, I think its a reaction to being placed in an impossible social situation. I would therefore make people realise how much we effect each other and make social change, like making society less stressful, creating more left wing institutions for people to be given jobs rather than going crazy trying to fit in etc etc.
@caketheory I'm sorry that you had severe mental illness and paranoid delusions, and you clearly feel let down by psychiatry, and you've your own right to feel the way you do. I just don't think you're justified in claiming that psychiatry is quackery based on your own personal experience of it. How have you recovered from your illness? If not from psychiatric intervention?
@sxtyang Dr Erick Turner conducted a study in the New England Journal of Medicine and found the effectivness of antidepressant drugs has been exagerated. He says psychiatric journals publish only positive clinical trials and supress the negative ones which were originally sent to the FDA. These psyciatric jouranls are "peer-reviewed, internationally recognised and respected medical journals."
Why should we believe what they say about ECT when we know they lie about other treatments?
I tend to be an isolated individual, socially also...But thanks to a few online games and some "social networking" sites I managed to make a few friends and actually met them. The unfortunate side to this is I ended up getting too close to a person and heartbroken, another hurdle to overcome.
actually it seems its more of a fear that their children will be so radically different from them that they make a case against it...not that they will be less intelligent or interactive
The most reactionary thing ever, first it was heresy, then technology, then bicycles, radio, cinema, TV, Rock and Roll, Drugs, MTV, Terrorism, and now Twitter...
As a psychology major, I can tell you that the brain is constantly being "re-wired" so this claim that social networking sites "rewire" the brain is rather silly; well of course it does, everything does!
Neuroplasticity is very prevalent.
What do you think happens when you become good at something? Ie. lowered reaction time for a particular task.
Something has to have changed to facilitate that decreased reaction time. And the mind is not something that changes without a change in the brain.
Just badass, in his facial expressions and delivery. Essentially in a nutshell:
"You only picked evidence to support your hypothesis; that's irresponsible, I'm going to expose you; I'm going to discredit you on my website, and I'm going to do it RIGHT after we're done this interview which I'm embarassed to even be appearing on. Shame on you, Sigman."
But to be fair, Dr. Sigman didn't do a bad job entirely either.
He covered the whole "My essay wasn't about social networking" - "It had social networking in the title!" bit surprisingly well, by clarifying that he meant it in a different context, and that last study about screen-media sounded like it had potential.
Having said that, Ben Goldacre (to me) still came out on top.
Much better than those homeopathy BS debates. It's like arguing at a wall. A very retarded wall.
@Joe22c Of course it's true that the brain is constantly being "rewired", the point at issue is the potential beneficial / detrimental nature of that rewiring, when a child spends a large portion of their time looking at a screen. I must say Aric Sigman's position seemed perfectly reasonable to me, and Ben Goldacre's facetious dismissals wholly uncalled for.
Mallard, there's a distinct difference between adopting a position that "seems reasonable" and asserting a position as though it were supported by the preponderance of scientific literature.
.
For instance, Cognitive Dissonance is fairly robust in the scientific literature, but at first glance it would not seem "reasonable" by any standard at the time of 'discovery'.
@vjohn82 Everything you learn, experience, see, remember involves some rewiring of the brain. How else do you imagine it stores memories, learns skills? It's constantly adapting itself.
@mallardvasey You're talking about something completely different. "Rewiring" suggests that there is a complete overhaul of the system - certainly that is what the term implies. The basis of learning is found within the idea of Synaptic Plasticity - completely different. It's too complex to discuss here of course.
I note your failure to provide the evidence sir. I will propose a reason why: there is none.
@vjohn82 On the contrary, rewiring does not imply anything as dramatic as an overhaul. Gradual adaption, over years of exposure to certain behaviour / stimulus, will affect an individual's thought processes in ways not directly linked to that behaviour. For example, a chess grand master's thought processes will end up molded by his obsession with the game. It seems patently plausible to me, but I don't have any double-blind studies to cite, so obviously it doesn't occur at all.
@mallardvasey Well there's the debate right there and the crux of the issue; there is no viable research whatsoever which verifies Sigman's claims, or that of any other person inc. you, suggesting the brain rewires itself upon consistent exposure to social networking. Whether something seems plausible or not is a logical fallacy when it comes to evidence based research.
@vjohn82 I agree with you - but Sigman isn't claiming to have study results and proof of an effect. All he is saying is that it would be worthwhile to investigate further, because given what we know about the brain, it is plausible that there could be an effect. He is using his prior knowledge of the brain's behaviour to suggest an interesting line of investigation. He is not claiming to have completed the investigation. Can you see the difference?
@mallardvasey No, he is letting his personal bias get in the way of his scientific work. There is no other explanation for him ignoring all positive and neutral evidence. Just because something is 'plausible', it doesn't mean that you can assume it's true! He is not claiming to have completed the investigation, you're right. All that does is make it more alarming that he's ready to make conclusions.
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The problem here is that Goldacre is not a scientist, he's a trick-cyclist. Ive never heard him bring the same level of scorn down on his psychiatric friends from Kings College Road, and their very controversial construct CFS/ME. This has become a dustbin diagnosis for lazy and/or incompetent GPs.
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Ben Goldacre is a Psychiatrist.
Psychiatry has no biological test for any mental illness. All they do is give you an interview and then label you with a BRAIN DISEASE. BEWARE Goldacre is a QUACK.
Psychiatatic medicence like all medecince is based on peer reviwed evidnece, as are their treatments. Are you going to deny that their patients have a deasies or is it perfectly healfy to have paraniod delusions. the fact that chemical imbalances in the brain, when treated by physcaitric drugs reduce instances of parnoid delusion proves you are wrong. whether or not there is a biological test for mental illness (their is) is irelvant, a mental illness would logical manifest in behaviour.
The reason people with paranoid delusions improve with medication (in the short term) is because antipsychotics are SEDATIVES. As Dr Joanna Moncreiff points out in her book "the myth of the chemical cure", the drugs merely sedate the person rather than fix a so called "chemical imbalance".
I've had severe mental illness myself as well as paranoid delusions and it doesn't mean a disease was the cause.
Psychiatrists' papers are peer reviewed by other psychiatrists. Richard Horton the editor of The Lancet wrote, "But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong." It is not actually unethical for a psychiatrist to peer review his own work, if he considers himself to be the world's leading expert, or to peer review papers from other specialties.
You absolutely have no idea what you are talking about,
Chemical imbalance can happen to anyone, psychiatrists take people and make it a disease, instead of solving this and curing people, this is the most nasty field i have ever witnessed.
The medications themselves doesn't cause any chemical balance, the brain overrides them and there is damage, the best way to treat psychiatric problems would be via nutrition, lifestyle and andocrine system that is cannabinoids..
Imbalance is sometime due to poison, hormonal problems, stress, substance abuse - including nictotine, trauma etc etc, by cutting the brain circuits with a Dophamine blocker or Histamine or Serotonine or whatever you just play a nasty game where the brain cells are damaged and you create more problems, which could have been prevented with better help than this drug treatment.
In Goldacre's point of view, an observation made by an expert is a mare "conjecture". Fair enough, but Greenfield made a comment based on her observation on this issue, from her numerous years of studies and experties. I personally think her opinion deserved a little more respect.
I do often enjoy reading Goldacre's columns but in this particular instance I think you behaved rather immaturely.
Psychological problems like ADD and depression are increasing worldwide, as well as physical problems like obesity. Is it a coincidence that we're also becoming evermore sedentary and dependent on computers to do our routine stuff? Sigman is absolutely right, and as we study the effects of social networking sites more closely, more people will agree with him.
I agree with you on physical problems such as obesity, but I'm not quite convinced about psychological problems. Firstly conditions such as depression were less recognised in past and so the increase in diagnosis might simply reflect that people are more likely to refer to GP for such conditions in modern society.
Psychiatric diagnoses are on the increase because we now have better diagnostic tools, and a better understanding of disorders. Moreover, people are more aware of mental disorders, leading to more of them seeking treatment, and often rightly so. An increase in diagnosis does not even suggest an increase in occurrences, and even if it did, it's merely coinciding with the increasing use of computers tells us nothing of a causal relationship. Go learn some science.
I never asked you why psychiatric diagnosis are on the increase.
I said "psychiatry has no biological test for any mental illness", so they have no right to treat people for a biological illness. I did a video explaining it called "psychiatry how they make a diagnosis".
Fine, ignore reality all you want, but more and more studies are showing that technoculture leads to depression and alienation, not to mention loss of cognitive abilities. In Japan there's something called hikkimori: self-isolation, where people stay in their rooms for years looking at screens. Look it up. This kind of "lifestyle" is spreading everywhere, and no one has the balls to say technology is the problem.
That is a really bad news, Psychiatry involves medications that usually do more harm than good,
you can diagnose anyone with anything,
this is an arbitrary field.
society will be better off with cutting on sugars eating natural food and working on yourself
via sports/memory enhance techniques, meditation and many other fields who can help without drugging people with bad evil and addictive drugs with tons of side effects.
I good book to read is "Freakonomics", it helps to put the statistics professionals use into context and how they are used to support their arguments. One statistic in the USA stared that that " the number of books in a childs home directly influenced the childs performance in school" Read the book to find out if or how it did.
this is just anecdotal but i have become a much MUCH more sociable and confident in my self and social situations since i started using social networking. i can see how people can get to involved in this scene and become reclusive but they are the kind of people who have some other underlying problem.
i agree wholly with Ben Goldachre and his approach and would recommend his books
not a good idea to publish a one-sided 'provocative' article, and he gets grilled for it, but surely its unfair to dismiss his concerns just because 'hard evidence' isn't out yet. its worth following it up, just like concerns about smoking proved to be right before there was hard evidence to show they caused cancer etc. the stakes are potentially high and unknown, he shouldn't be ridiculed for it.
It's odd Sigmund travels the world asking adults what children are doing on social networking sites. Why can't he ask the children themselves? I thought we'd got past the situation where children (along with non white, non male ect.) are treated as muted groups. It's simple if: If you want to know how it affects them. Ask them.
I went to a film festival in the US (I'm english and from Manchester) last week and now can keep in contact with all the filmmakers I met. Brilliant. But when kids are using these website to speak to their bestfriend up the street instead of just knocking on for them and having real life conversations - that is where it is getting scary and bad for this new generation.
Of course a lot of things damage attention, but its clearly obvious that one of those things is prolonged hours of internet usage and communicatio. Who cares if other things affecting this too. Why would we ignore one cause just because others exist? That seems ridiculous to me. In all honesty - I think the internet is an amazing resource and internet social websites and a great way to keep in contact with people in different countries.
I completely agree with Aric Sigman - Social networking websites of course have their benefits but his argument is that kids are spending too much time on these sites and I'm sorry but kids face to face communication skills have already been affected - adults now accustomed to these website are as well and I think it's a serious issue that needs to be taken seriously. I don't want my 11 year old nephew suffering from depression when older because he doesn't know how to communicate face to face.
as much as i love Ben Goldacre and lap up most of his comments - for once i thought he was really unfair here. Sigman has an enormously valid point that we spend more time infront of screens and less socializing - i'm currently writing a comment to be read by people i'll never meet!
Goldacre misrepresented Sigman's work as Daily Mail Bandwagon stirring when really the both of them have very fair points - Sigman acknowledges that his paper was not an analytical study! He knows its biased!
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So environmental factors totally explain crime, drug addiction and anti-social activity, but environmental factors (hours and hours of social networking) don't have any influence on anything. In other words environmental factors only affect issues that liberals say they affect. Goldacre will do anything to get his mug on TV.
I read the Daily Mail and they were far more succinct than Goldacre tries to suggest: Social networking sites are the creation of gay foreigners that dont even believe in Jesus and since Princess Diana died we have no longer been protected from there influence. That just about sums it up.
this guy in the suit is right, just like a tv can influence and affect us so can junk like facebook affect our actions in a good or bad way but mostly badly, because people would rather keep in touch over the pc rather than meeting each other.
i dont think its a screen that can make you thick, but whats being presentedand watched. i.e facebook, or an e book, factual video or a film like spiderman.
This is quite funny, Greenfield is an idiot if she thinks we should be spending money on ridiculously pedantic, worthless research when we could be looking at something that we might actually benefit from, like improving altruistic qualities in young adults and finding why no-one seems to have a comprehensive set of morals these days.
You're wrong, Greenfield knows her shit and as a neuroscientist is quite rightly interested in funding for studies on the physical properties of the brain, not on social experiments, space rockets, nanotechnology or anything outside her field.
Hooray for Goldacre! He is officially my hero now.
And by the way Sigman i have a friend in Canada who i've never met but e-mail everyday and she now knows me better than half my 'real' friends. I'd call her a friend.
And yes, what a great way to waste time and money putting research into a claim made by 'not so much a paper but an idiots guide issued in bitesize daily instalments'- quoting from Guardian journalist Charlie Brooker.
i don't think sigman saying anything wrong, nor is ben. I read another article related to sigman's research saying how there are around 200 genes in our body that are affected by "real social interaction", and that we are not really gaining social skills through the net because there is no way we can see the facial and body expression also physical interaction. He is not saying facebook is bad but be considerate since the young mind is still devoloping common sense and how life works.
Although he doesn't explain properly. Like social networking is a term commonly used in online communities. lol i found it quite amusing that i understood what he was trying to say even though he was going around in circles XD
Reminds me of the stereotype of asians being genetically smarter than whites or blacks because of their higher than average scholastic accomplishments. As it turned out, it was a stronger supportive family unit, including older siblings. I wonder if the negative outcomes being claimed relating to TV, texting, Internet, gaming, and mobile phones might be related to the same thing....
He should have rebutted Sigman's claim it's bad for children from different countries to talk to each other via the internet, as they'll never meet in real life. The internet has opened up many possibilities, greater global interaction and communication being one of them. Surely we should encourage children to explore other cultures in the relatively safe realm of social network sites, BECAUSE they would never get the chance to meet such a diverse mix of people in real life.
Exactly! The global social interaction can make people from different cultures understand each other and prevent cultural clashes - maybe even promote democracy, freedom and prevent wars, when people could discuss political issues over the internet without government propaganda bias. I think this could be considered as a major advantage.
ive spent my whole life researching this.If you actually have shaken hands with someone and become "real"and then they do you wrong what good is that?But raising a child on the internet or using the internet as a third parent goes against any and all common sence.
Common sense is not a reliable means of decision making. That's demonstrably true by experimentation and it's why we've spent several hundred years developing the modern scientific method. Sigman is making an assertion without showing the full balance of evidence and no amount of common sense makes that right.
And they will spend hundreds of years more changing it and developing it.Your right he is making an assertion without evidence.Because this will be debated for several hundreds of years.
Public debate is not how scientific knowledge progresses. Were Sigman proposing a scientific hypothesis to be tested then we'd have no issue, but he's making a specific claim to the public that will cause some to modify their behaviour. We can't expect people to accept advice without evidence that it is good advice. Andrew Wakefield did it with MMR and caused great public harm in the process. Presenting an hypothesis as fact to the public is not responsible.
Goldacre is the one who is talking rubbish if you pay attention!
I had no idea he was such a creep from his Guardian column.
EmileNolde 6 days ago
Paxo just doesn't give a shit about this topic...
DKukiewicz 3 weeks ago
I do love the idea some Mail readers have that if children were not on the internet they would be exercising outside in a healthy way and not sitting watching TV or listening to music all day as I did in the eighties when I was a kid.
jonboyjon1976 1 month ago
Did anyone else hear the guy say "I don't know and I haven't done research" and then continue with the bullshit he's spewing??
FunkyMonkeyJunkie302 1 month ago 2
@DontHassleTheHoff121 I was almost certain I misheard that... how stupid can one person honestly be??
FunkyMonkeyJunkie302 1 month ago
does anyone else notice he says 'just under half of 18-17 year olds'? That's disgraceful!
waahify 1 month ago
Sigman completely missed the point...
WeepingPrince 2 months ago
Ben Goldacre - FUCK YEAH!!
0mniaV1nc1t 3 months ago
I love how pissed off Paxman is about having to breathe to maintain his life
12345l6789 3 months ago
"Just leave there for a while?" What a bastard.
Oncus2 4 months ago
Won't somebody please think of the children?!
DeadlyGrim 4 months ago
I'm not quite sure as to who, out of the three, is the more infuriating, condescending, patronising, smug, irritating twat. Ah! Got it! They all are!
neighbour666 6 months ago
How smug Ben is here. I don't need empirical evidence to understand that jumping out of a plane without a parachute is likely to kill me. By the very same inductive reasoning children who spend their lives holed up in front of a computer screen are unlikely to be spending much time social networking with real people.
DJSpinoza 6 months ago
By the way how many of you people, including Ben, are actually scientists?
DJSpinoza 6 months ago
@DJSpinoza He's a medical doctor, trained in psychiatry (applicable to this discussion) and now research fellow in epidemiology at LSHTM. So I'd probably class him as a scientist.
dil2111 4 months ago
@dil2111 And since when did psychiatry become regarded as science? Much of what medics practice often has little scientific foundation e.g. cholesterol causes heart disease etc. Clinical science is woolly in the extreme when compared to biochemical sciences. Also the vast majority of medics have never serve little to zero time at the laboratory bench which gives them a pretty limited perspective.
DJSpinoza 4 months ago
@DJSpinoza As a medic myself, I agree some modern medicine done by doctors is not evidence based. That is unfortunate, but since humans are the practioners they are subject to the same sort of "myth believing" as other disciplines.
Clinical medicine evolves and changes (like any other science) in that the answer is reached gradually, not instantly. It doesn't claim otherwise.
For instance,
jama.ama-assn.org/content/suppl/2009/04/29/301.17.1819.DC1/JAMAclassics050609.pdf (see figure 1)
dil2111 4 months ago
@dil2111 Link doesn't really work: Just Google "A comparison of results of meta-analyses of randomized control trials and recommendations of clinical experts. Treatments for myocardial infarction" by Antman EM et al and you'll find it.
dil2111 4 months ago
@dil2111 There are thousands of really well designed studies out there related to, say cholesterol and CHD, millions spent on high quality, hi- tech research, lots of positive data, however if the initial assumption is WRONG - everything downstream is bullshit - that's the problem with 'evidence-based' research - epistemology 101. Young doctors not being made aware of the limitations of clinic research, they've been oversold this notion that more science is always the answer.
DJSpinoza 4 months ago
@DJSpinoza It is easy to medicine woolly since many things don't have a discrete answer (a particular receptor or mechanism as they do in the biochemical sciences), with each patient being different and difficult to generalise. Psychiatry in particular doesn't have a 100% sensitive/specific blood test or finding on a head MRI for a definitive diagnosis, but that doesn't mean scientific methods are not employed by those who work within it. If not, that is their shortcoming and not the discipline.
dil2111 4 months ago
In fairness they both make decent arguments and without any evidence whatsoever - I might suggest moderate use is fine while both these individuals argue from an extreme perspective.
DJSpinoza 4 months ago
@DJSpinoza Your analogy is horrible. Jumping out of plane is fatal; you don't need evidence because you already have it. Proving that people who spend a lot of time on social networks become lonely (and consequently develop cancer) is far less obvious than that. Further, current evidence doesn't support your theory. And finally, the problem here is more about how Sigman ABUSES science to make people believe in stuff, which is just plain wrong and dumb.
mrjedidja 4 months ago
isn't it wonderful just how calm Ben Goldacre stays... and rightly so!
toniroxxxxx 7 months ago
"Children will spend hours and hours talking to people from other countries who they'll never meet"
Heaven forbid children of Britain will start to learn a little culture
kmm559 8 months ago
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As wonderful as this whole video is, my very favourite part has to be 3:21 - 3:24.
jaffacakesarenice 8 months ago
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jaffacakesarenice 8 months ago
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jaffacakesarenice 8 months ago
I saw both Greenfield and Goldacre speak (separately, on different topics) at the British Science Festival, and Greenfield slagged off Goldacre in her talk on this topic!
I don't think the idea that internet can cause you harm is absurd, but Greenfield and Sigman and stereotype Mail readers don't seem to understand how people actually use internet and seem to say things are bad simply because they are not traditional. :-/
Ben Goldacre ftw.
Squitchtweak 11 months ago 9
I think Sigmans got a fair point, Saying that young people staying in there rooms 5 - 6 hours a day on computers is a bad thing. No scientist should argue with that. I obviousbly don't know if it re wires the brain or not. Social media sites are on computer screens arent they? whats the difference in staring at a screen and at a social media site?
chazswaz87 11 months ago 2
@chazswaz87 He says far more than that. He claims that it's scientifically proven that spending time on social networks leads to loneliness and that loneliness leads to cancer. Which, omg, isn't.
mrjedidja 9 months ago
It's not good that children and even adults in third world or developing countries are able to speak with people in developed countries like America and Western Europe? This is bad for what reasons? If the research doesn't show that this is re-wiring the brain, then I can only think of one reason why people like Sigman would be conserned about this. They don't want people in the West to have contact with developing countries.
ThroneofEden 1 year ago
I've me a lot of people in person I would not want to call a friend.
Maxdwolf 1 year ago
I've never shaken hands with some of my best friends.
Skipissatan 1 year ago
@DontHassleTheHoff121
Goldacre claims Sigman ignores half of the evidence, but I notice Goldacre conveniently forgets the fact that social networks enable pedo-crabs to prey upon young children.
rulesandwisdom 1 year ago
@rulesandwisdom That wasn't the point under discussion. The debate was focused on the putative effect of social media use on people's neurobiology.
mitchellhodgemeyer 1 year ago
@mitchellhodgemeyer Sorry, you've misunderstood my comment. I was replying to a joke with a joke :)
Search "brass eye crabs" if you're interested.
rulesandwisdom 1 year ago
@mitchellhodgemeyer
What's that sound? Oh, it's you missing the point quite hilariously.
Pepotamo1985 11 months ago
Ben Goldcare is just a clever man with charisma that's generated a little bit of arrogance. He is not being honest with himself or his 'followers'.
samuel45 1 year ago
Emotional logical fallacies by a research Psychologist? Surely not...
vjohn82 1 year ago
"a conjecture and an opinion" it is. Sigman is just pulling the old "THINK OF THE CHILDREN" that anyone can pull every time to justify about anything. The brain of a child does change with age because the brain is developing, you wouldn't want to be 35 with the brain of a 4 years old.
ultramarinegoat 1 year ago
Another vote for Aric Sigman here, Goldacre has missed the point
ormoluinhen 1 year ago
@ormoluinhen Yeah, he has. Which is frustrating. However I don't imagine he'd let his own children spend hours on facebook. Being an academic he'd expect on-line edifying goodies for their brains. Yet, for some reason, acts like a child himself and ignores the fundamentals on this issue.
samuel45 1 year ago
I don't think Ben Goldacre owned" Aric Sigman at all. To the contrary, Dr, Goldacre seemed emotional bordering on the truculent, repetitive and inarticulate by comparison. Adolescent but not in a good way.
pinkinvisible 1 year ago 2
@pinkinvisible I do not think there is an issue of "owning" in the popular internet vernacular.
Sigman could have distanced himself away from his research being used in the way it was; it was only when Goldacre repeated the claim that Sigman's research failed to consider a wealth of evidence arguing against his position that Sigman attempted a slight of hand and committed a number of emotional fallacies to get his point across. If we want to call a loser in the debate, Sigman was it.
vjohn82 1 year ago
Goldacre ftw :)
HeartbreakChronicles 1 year ago
we'll always get technophobic stragglers like sigman. best to just ignore them until they start to get substantial followings
moralreef 1 year ago
I love doc Ben and the dig at Milton Keynes lol ( I lived there for years so I can say that) but he didn't come cross well here from his opening line, he was like a moody child. Tho interesting points like, what you don't know for sure make up :)
iselldreams 1 year ago
Hmm, didn't like Ben Goldacre in this. Aric Sigman seemed to have a perfectly reasonable position, and all Goldacre would do is sit an smirk back at him, like he was an idiot.
Sigman - "If young children spend hours alone every day, communicating solely through a screen, should we worry how it may affect their development?"
Goldacre - *smirk* smirk* "I'm almost embarrassed to be here discussing this"
Nice one Ben! Not.
mallardvasey 1 year ago
Ben's face at 3:19 is a picture!
Rsutton99 1 year ago
This has been flagged as spam show
"There is no evidence"
paranoidandroid223 1 year ago
If not chatting to other children face to face because you're communicating with children far away using technology is bad, does this mean that I have been damaged by the pen-friends I had in my childhood?
Never did trust that new flanged "letter".
BertFicuselastica 1 year ago
@BertFicuselastica No, - though if you had grown up and communicated almost exclusively by letter, having minimal face to face contact with another person - does it not seem unreasonable to imagine that it might have affected your development?
mallardvasey 1 year ago
It says it all When all Dr Goldacre just pauses and you can almost see 'WTF?' written across his forehead!
hinkyponky 1 year ago
I saw an episode of 'Campion', a BBC detective series from the 90s, where the detective said that criminals were awfully violent these days: "I blame talking pictures." Plus ca change...
flankspeed 1 year ago
"18-17 year olds"?
tbennett450 1 year ago
Social networking made me a hermit :(
TurboDally 1 year ago 3
@TurboDally: The irony.... What's worse is, as you're a hermit, you are probably going to get an Anti-Social Behaviour Order.
flankspeed 1 year ago
Goldachre came off looking like a twat in this clip, IMO. Not from his points, just from his attitude.
TheMillsEffect 1 year ago
@TheMillsEffect I completely agree - just sitting there puling faces, like the other guy was an idiot, when he seemed to make perfect sense to me.
mallardvasey 1 year ago
wont sumwun think of the children!!
colmcq 1 year ago
Greenfield was an idiot, I'm extremely pleased she was sacked.
MrRagingMagenta 1 year ago
"It's a bit more complicated than that."
marasmusine 1 year ago
The only conclusive thing is that reading the Daily Mail is a definite indicator of you being mentally retarded.
chunkylimey 1 year ago
Contrary to some opinions here, I by no means consider Goldacre 'owned' Sigman. I found myself agreeing and disagreeing with both parties on different points; however, I found Goldacre to be very arrogant, hardly being able to give Sigman the respect of reply, and wearing very patronising expressions. In contrast, Sigman was respectful, stuck to the point, and was very concise.
acoustics4me5 1 year ago
@acoustics4me5 you are just the kind of intellectually lazy sheep that Sigman prays for. Where you put good manners above factual reliable content. You'll even be more concerned that I called you an intellectually lazy sheep rather than actually concerned that you were wrong.
If I were being polite I'd say you were foolish but if you couldn't spot the contradictions in what Sigman said you're too stupid to deserve even that.
chunkylimey 1 year ago
@chunkylimey Wow....I was going to reply to your comment, but I'm just too stupid to think of anything to say.....lol.
acoustics4me5 1 year ago
Well said. I throughly agree.
harmanbrian 1 year ago
1:08 - "There's no real evidence for it, but it IS scientific fact"
jneiner 1 year ago 3
Also, liking the dig at Milton Keynes.
webbtje 1 year ago
Goldacre fucking destroyed him. Hero.
webbtje 1 year ago
Ben Goldacre is a psychiatrist and they still use ECT treatment. He's a Quack just like the rest of them.
caketheory 1 year ago
@caketheory he isnt and never was a psychiatrist,hes a medical doctor
billysue2 1 year ago
@billysue2 He is a psychiatrist. If you look on wikipedia it says so.
I even sent an email to "The Maudsley Hospital" and they have confirmed that he is infact a registered psychiatrist. The reason he calls himself a "medical doctor" is because he has a degree in medicine however his speciality is psychiatry.
He never mentions this because he knows deep down that psychiatry is a fraud and then people will call him a Quack.
caketheory 1 year ago
@caketheory Psychiatry is not a fraud, it is a complex, intellectually demanding medical specialty aimed at treating mental illnesses. These can be, by their nature, very difficult to diagnose, because there is little to observe other than the patient's behaviour, and what they tell you. ECT has a controversial history, but is now administered with a great deal of care and control, and there is a large body of research indicating its success and safety.
sxtyang 1 year ago
@sxtyang You say theres a large body of research to indicate that ECT is successful but all Quacks use this arguement. Last time I looked on a web site for magic crystals it said "Crystal Healers assess the condition of the bio-magnetic field of a client before choosing appropriate crystals to help bring it back into balance and harmony. The evidence suggest that crystal healers are able to restore these imbalaces thus restoring health.
See its the same lame arguement.
caketheory 1 year ago
@caketheory Totally not the same thing. ECT research is published in peer-reviewed, internationally recognised and respected medical journals. It's offered in hospitals because it is a legitimate mode of treatment. It isn't what would fall broadly into the realm of 'alternative medicine'. I would go and dig up some papers for you but you can easily do it yourself. Whether you'd assimilate or consider the information you read with interest, I suspect not.
sxtyang 1 year ago
@sxtyang I don't think you understand how corrupt the world actually is. When Thorazine was first introduced in the United States it was done in a huge marketing campaign conducted by the pharmaceutical company Smith Kline & French. The company president Francis Boyer launched the campaign himself on national television. They used lots of PR staff and rating scales to show the benefits of these drugs but it was all done by exagerating data and ever since its been full of fraud.
caketheory 1 year ago
@caketheory The pharmaceutical industry makes awful, tragic mistakes and do not report on them to protect their profit. I come from the UK where drug marketing and advertising is illegal, so I won't be the first whistleblower because I don't get exposed to the campaigns. My point is secondary to ECT and drugs. It's about the whole discipline of psychiatry.
sxtyang 1 year ago
@caketheory Be careful of dismissing a valuable and important medical specialty as quackery. Otherwise you run the risk of alienating those patients who rely on it to feel healthy, and continuing to demonise psychiatry and mental illness, when really, it's analogous to a cardiologist treating the heart. If I have angina or heart failure, I'll be needing a cardiologist. If I ever develop a mental illness, I'll be needing a psychiatrist. How do you propose mental illness is treated otherwise?
sxtyang 1 year ago
@sxtyang I've never heard of a patient who relies on Psychiatry to feel healthy. In case you never knew psychiatry doesn't cure people because they don't even know what they're suppose to be curing.
A cardiologist on the other hand is a real doctor because they give you an objective test to find out if you need a medical intervention. Some people do need help like a "Bypass" and the cardiologist will CURE you. Psychiatry on the other hand doesn't.
caketheory 1 year ago
@caketheory You didn't answer my question. How else do you propose mental illness is treated otherwise? It is because it is so difficult to diagnose, it is because mental illnesses often have little physical manifestation in the body, that it is so important, and so much is unknown. Psychiatrists are real doctors, they have chosen to pursue a field which is challenging and murky, and they fully well know that there is often no cure.
sxtyang 1 year ago
@sxtyang I would treat mental illness by going down the prevension avenue, in other words stop it from happening in the first place. I don't think its an illness, I think its a reaction to being placed in an impossible social situation. I would therefore make people realise how much we effect each other and make social change, like making society less stressful, creating more left wing institutions for people to be given jobs rather than going crazy trying to fit in etc etc.
caketheory 1 year ago
@caketheory I'm sorry that you had severe mental illness and paranoid delusions, and you clearly feel let down by psychiatry, and you've your own right to feel the way you do. I just don't think you're justified in claiming that psychiatry is quackery based on your own personal experience of it. How have you recovered from your illness? If not from psychiatric intervention?
sxtyang 1 year ago
@sxtyang I sent you the link explaining it and I've done loads of vids on my channel. I guess I got better when I woke up haha
caketheory 1 year ago
@sxtyang Dr Erick Turner conducted a study in the New England Journal of Medicine and found the effectivness of antidepressant drugs has been exagerated. He says psychiatric journals publish only positive clinical trials and supress the negative ones which were originally sent to the FDA. These psyciatric jouranls are "peer-reviewed, internationally recognised and respected medical journals."
Why should we believe what they say about ECT when we know they lie about other treatments?
caketheory 1 year ago
I tend to be an isolated individual, socially also...But thanks to a few online games and some "social networking" sites I managed to make a few friends and actually met them. The unfortunate side to this is I ended up getting too close to a person and heartbroken, another hurdle to overcome.
PassionForPasta 1 year ago
Nice bit of anecdotal evidence relating to Sigmans stories about "children in foreign countries gaining access to the internet".
Rubbish.
muserock69 1 year ago
This is hilarious. Ben's face when he's trying not to laugh is my favourite bit.
Kewen 1 year ago 20
Ben, you're a hero!
mattroberts66 2 years ago
actually it seems its more of a fear that their children will be so radically different from them that they make a case against it...not that they will be less intelligent or interactive
ezelite 2 years ago
The most reactionary thing ever, first it was heresy, then technology, then bicycles, radio, cinema, TV, Rock and Roll, Drugs, MTV, Terrorism, and now Twitter...
ezelite 2 years ago 3
wow Dr Goldacre gave such a rousing smackdown of crap/fluff science-woo here that I think I actually have an erection.
10mintwo 2 years ago
As a psychology major, I can tell you that the brain is constantly being "re-wired" so this claim that social networking sites "rewire" the brain is rather silly; well of course it does, everything does!
Neuroplasticity is very prevalent.
What do you think happens when you become good at something? Ie. lowered reaction time for a particular task.
Something has to have changed to facilitate that decreased reaction time. And the mind is not something that changes without a change in the brain.
Joe22c 2 years ago 3
@Joe22c
Also, I friggin love Ben Goldacre.
He's the badass academic I want to one day be.
3:41 to 4:01.
Just badass, in his facial expressions and delivery. Essentially in a nutshell:
"You only picked evidence to support your hypothesis; that's irresponsible, I'm going to expose you; I'm going to discredit you on my website, and I'm going to do it RIGHT after we're done this interview which I'm embarassed to even be appearing on. Shame on you, Sigman."
Friggin beautiful.
Joe22c 2 years ago 2
But to be fair, Dr. Sigman didn't do a bad job entirely either.
He covered the whole "My essay wasn't about social networking" - "It had social networking in the title!" bit surprisingly well, by clarifying that he meant it in a different context, and that last study about screen-media sounded like it had potential.
Having said that, Ben Goldacre (to me) still came out on top.
Much better than those homeopathy BS debates. It's like arguing at a wall. A very retarded wall.
Good stuff.
Joe22c 2 years ago 2
@Joe22c Of course it's true that the brain is constantly being "rewired", the point at issue is the potential beneficial / detrimental nature of that rewiring, when a child spends a large portion of their time looking at a screen. I must say Aric Sigman's position seemed perfectly reasonable to me, and Ben Goldacre's facetious dismissals wholly uncalled for.
mallardvasey 1 year ago
@mallardvasey
.
Mallard, there's a distinct difference between adopting a position that "seems reasonable" and asserting a position as though it were supported by the preponderance of scientific literature.
.
For instance, Cognitive Dissonance is fairly robust in the scientific literature, but at first glance it would not seem "reasonable" by any standard at the time of 'discovery'.
Joe22c 1 year ago
@mallardvasey It's true the brain is being rewired? Evidence for this is where?
vjohn82 1 year ago
@vjohn82 Everything you learn, experience, see, remember involves some rewiring of the brain. How else do you imagine it stores memories, learns skills? It's constantly adapting itself.
mallardvasey 1 year ago
@mallardvasey You're talking about something completely different. "Rewiring" suggests that there is a complete overhaul of the system - certainly that is what the term implies. The basis of learning is found within the idea of Synaptic Plasticity - completely different. It's too complex to discuss here of course.
I note your failure to provide the evidence sir. I will propose a reason why: there is none.
vjohn82 1 year ago
@vjohn82 On the contrary, rewiring does not imply anything as dramatic as an overhaul. Gradual adaption, over years of exposure to certain behaviour / stimulus, will affect an individual's thought processes in ways not directly linked to that behaviour. For example, a chess grand master's thought processes will end up molded by his obsession with the game. It seems patently plausible to me, but I don't have any double-blind studies to cite, so obviously it doesn't occur at all.
mallardvasey 1 year ago
@mallardvasey Well there's the debate right there and the crux of the issue; there is no viable research whatsoever which verifies Sigman's claims, or that of any other person inc. you, suggesting the brain rewires itself upon consistent exposure to social networking. Whether something seems plausible or not is a logical fallacy when it comes to evidence based research.
vjohn82 1 year ago
@vjohn82 I agree with you - but Sigman isn't claiming to have study results and proof of an effect. All he is saying is that it would be worthwhile to investigate further, because given what we know about the brain, it is plausible that there could be an effect. He is using his prior knowledge of the brain's behaviour to suggest an interesting line of investigation. He is not claiming to have completed the investigation. Can you see the difference?
mallardvasey 1 year ago
@mallardvasey No, he is letting his personal bias get in the way of his scientific work. There is no other explanation for him ignoring all positive and neutral evidence. Just because something is 'plausible', it doesn't mean that you can assume it's true! He is not claiming to have completed the investigation, you're right. All that does is make it more alarming that he's ready to make conclusions.
deadpassive 1 year ago
nice professorial bouffant.
phunboy 2 years ago
I love the way Ben scratches his head at 6:56! Tells you everything you need to know in a way...
lleucullwyd1 2 years ago
I think there is a need for a none commercial educational network that will involve all the help support lectures (live/archived and well organized)
including links to activities in real life.
ofcourse the media cause attention problems as it is not organized and filled with distracting commercialism and tricks on the mind.
you need to give kids the access for high quality games which involves logic imagination and culture.
telewebservices 2 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
The problem here is that Goldacre is not a scientist, he's a trick-cyclist. Ive never heard him bring the same level of scorn down on his psychiatric friends from Kings College Road, and their very controversial construct CFS/ME. This has become a dustbin diagnosis for lazy and/or incompetent GPs.
ShowalterdontlikeME 2 years ago
Dudes from video is so boring!
Fuck web I'm going to the pub.
antonRCF 2 years ago 2
This comment has received too many negative votes show
Ben Goldacre is a Psychiatrist.
Psychiatry has no biological test for any mental illness. All they do is give you an interview and then label you with a BRAIN DISEASE. BEWARE Goldacre is a QUACK.
caketheory 2 years ago
Psychiatatic medicence like all medecince is based on peer reviwed evidnece, as are their treatments. Are you going to deny that their patients have a deasies or is it perfectly healfy to have paraniod delusions. the fact that chemical imbalances in the brain, when treated by physcaitric drugs reduce instances of parnoid delusion proves you are wrong. whether or not there is a biological test for mental illness (their is) is irelvant, a mental illness would logical manifest in behaviour.
corranhornrogue9 2 years ago
The reason people with paranoid delusions improve with medication (in the short term) is because antipsychotics are SEDATIVES. As Dr Joanna Moncreiff points out in her book "the myth of the chemical cure", the drugs merely sedate the person rather than fix a so called "chemical imbalance".
I've had severe mental illness myself as well as paranoid delusions and it doesn't mean a disease was the cause.
caketheory 2 years ago
Psychiatrists' papers are peer reviewed by other psychiatrists. Richard Horton the editor of The Lancet wrote, "But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong." It is not actually unethical for a psychiatrist to peer review his own work, if he considers himself to be the world's leading expert, or to peer review papers from other specialties.
ShowalterdontlikeME 2 years ago
You absolutely have no idea what you are talking about,
Chemical imbalance can happen to anyone, psychiatrists take people and make it a disease, instead of solving this and curing people, this is the most nasty field i have ever witnessed.
The medications themselves doesn't cause any chemical balance, the brain overrides them and there is damage, the best way to treat psychiatric problems would be via nutrition, lifestyle and andocrine system that is cannabinoids..
telewebservices 2 years ago
sorry its not the endocrine system
but the endocannabinoid system,
Imbalance is sometime due to poison, hormonal problems, stress, substance abuse - including nictotine, trauma etc etc, by cutting the brain circuits with a Dophamine blocker or Histamine or Serotonine or whatever you just play a nasty game where the brain cells are damaged and you create more problems, which could have been prevented with better help than this drug treatment.
telewebservices 2 years ago
Ben Goldacre for prime minister. Its that simple.
craig2318 2 years ago 31
In Goldacre's point of view, an observation made by an expert is a mare "conjecture". Fair enough, but Greenfield made a comment based on her observation on this issue, from her numerous years of studies and experties. I personally think her opinion deserved a little more respect.
I do often enjoy reading Goldacre's columns but in this particular instance I think you behaved rather immaturely.
theFirecat00 2 years ago
Psychological problems like ADD and depression are increasing worldwide, as well as physical problems like obesity. Is it a coincidence that we're also becoming evermore sedentary and dependent on computers to do our routine stuff? Sigman is absolutely right, and as we study the effects of social networking sites more closely, more people will agree with him.
versus79 2 years ago
I agree with you on physical problems such as obesity, but I'm not quite convinced about psychological problems. Firstly conditions such as depression were less recognised in past and so the increase in diagnosis might simply reflect that people are more likely to refer to GP for such conditions in modern society.
theFirecat00 2 years ago 2
Psychiatric diagnoses are on the increase because we now have better diagnostic tools, and a better understanding of disorders. Moreover, people are more aware of mental disorders, leading to more of them seeking treatment, and often rightly so. An increase in diagnosis does not even suggest an increase in occurrences, and even if it did, it's merely coinciding with the increasing use of computers tells us nothing of a causal relationship. Go learn some science.
MeerkatGoodness 2 years ago
I never asked you why psychiatric diagnosis are on the increase.
I said "psychiatry has no biological test for any mental illness", so they have no right to treat people for a biological illness. I did a video explaining it called "psychiatry how they make a diagnosis".
Anyway my point was that Ben Goldacre is a QUACK.
caketheory 2 years ago
Fine, ignore reality all you want, but more and more studies are showing that technoculture leads to depression and alienation, not to mention loss of cognitive abilities. In Japan there's something called hikkimori: self-isolation, where people stay in their rooms for years looking at screens. Look it up. This kind of "lifestyle" is spreading everywhere, and no one has the balls to say technology is the problem.
versus79 2 years ago
That is a really bad news, Psychiatry involves medications that usually do more harm than good,
you can diagnose anyone with anything,
this is an arbitrary field.
society will be better off with cutting on sugars eating natural food and working on yourself
via sports/memory enhance techniques, meditation and many other fields who can help without drugging people with bad evil and addictive drugs with tons of side effects.
this is exactly where you don't want to go!
telewebservices 2 years ago
iv heard it all now....bebo and twitter is rewiring childrens brains....pahahaha
blacktt99 2 years ago
lets play spot the cherry picker!
VicKyCusTard 2 years ago
Reprogramming brains? What a bunch of arse.
meekychuppet 2 years ago
I good book to read is "Freakonomics", it helps to put the statistics professionals use into context and how they are used to support their arguments. One statistic in the USA stared that that " the number of books in a childs home directly influenced the childs performance in school" Read the book to find out if or how it did.
johnkibb 2 years ago
Steven Levitt's Freakonomics is great :)
highly recommend his talk at TED about drugdealers, it's quite funny as well as informative!
beebobox 2 years ago
The answer to this conundrum is 42.
Lots of talk and nothing said.
Find it in the hitchikers guide to the galaxy.
sidensvans54 2 years ago 4
At the end Sigman cherry picks yet another piece of research that might possibly be related favourably to his argument ! Thank goodness for Goldacre.
shatnerpower 2 years ago 2
Nice try. Keep it up check out esteembpo + com for social media marketing. mnm
DoloresTripp 2 years ago
this is just anecdotal but i have become a much MUCH more sociable and confident in my self and social situations since i started using social networking. i can see how people can get to involved in this scene and become reclusive but they are the kind of people who have some other underlying problem.
i agree wholly with Ben Goldachre and his approach and would recommend his books
tonicwhite 2 years ago 3
not a good idea to publish a one-sided 'provocative' article, and he gets grilled for it, but surely its unfair to dismiss his concerns just because 'hard evidence' isn't out yet. its worth following it up, just like concerns about smoking proved to be right before there was hard evidence to show they caused cancer etc. the stakes are potentially high and unknown, he shouldn't be ridiculed for it.
cambridgeecon 2 years ago
It's odd Sigmund travels the world asking adults what children are doing on social networking sites. Why can't he ask the children themselves? I thought we'd got past the situation where children (along with non white, non male ect.) are treated as muted groups. It's simple if: If you want to know how it affects them. Ask them.
kezren 2 years ago
I think Dr Goldacre comes across better here, not only because his point is argued well, but also because he has a better and more polite demeanor.
Vismund42 2 years ago 4
Ben Goldacre totally owned Sigman (and Baroness Greenfield) in this clip- more power to him.
mlpoulter 2 years ago 22
Excuse my grammatical errors - I'm still quite jet lagged and tired.
pretendwedontexist 2 years ago
I went to a film festival in the US (I'm english and from Manchester) last week and now can keep in contact with all the filmmakers I met. Brilliant. But when kids are using these website to speak to their bestfriend up the street instead of just knocking on for them and having real life conversations - that is where it is getting scary and bad for this new generation.
pretendwedontexist 2 years ago 2
Of course a lot of things damage attention, but its clearly obvious that one of those things is prolonged hours of internet usage and communicatio. Who cares if other things affecting this too. Why would we ignore one cause just because others exist? That seems ridiculous to me. In all honesty - I think the internet is an amazing resource and internet social websites and a great way to keep in contact with people in different countries.
pretendwedontexist 2 years ago
I completely agree with Aric Sigman - Social networking websites of course have their benefits but his argument is that kids are spending too much time on these sites and I'm sorry but kids face to face communication skills have already been affected - adults now accustomed to these website are as well and I think it's a serious issue that needs to be taken seriously. I don't want my 11 year old nephew suffering from depression when older because he doesn't know how to communicate face to face.
pretendwedontexist 2 years ago
Sigman comes across as a Luddite and a judgemental middle class person misjudging young people.
Dr Goldacre is spot on - as usual
pete975 2 years ago 3
as much as i love Ben Goldacre and lap up most of his comments - for once i thought he was really unfair here. Sigman has an enormously valid point that we spend more time infront of screens and less socializing - i'm currently writing a comment to be read by people i'll never meet!
Goldacre misrepresented Sigman's work as Daily Mail Bandwagon stirring when really the both of them have very fair points - Sigman acknowledges that his paper was not an analytical study! He knows its biased!
CassLoweMusic 2 years ago
Ben Goldacre makes valid points, his rationale seems more coherant than Sigman.
supinder 2 years ago 4
Ben Goldacre is a complete dickhead
IHaveABeard123 2 years ago
I think Jeremy Paxman has been on too many social networking sites himself.
FishType1 2 years ago
This comment has received too many negative votes show
So environmental factors totally explain crime, drug addiction and anti-social activity, but environmental factors (hours and hours of social networking) don't have any influence on anything. In other words environmental factors only affect issues that liberals say they affect. Goldacre will do anything to get his mug on TV.
perunatic 2 years ago
I read the Daily Mail and they were far more succinct than Goldacre tries to suggest: Social networking sites are the creation of gay foreigners that dont even believe in Jesus and since Princess Diana died we have no longer been protected from there influence. That just about sums it up.
saintee1000 2 years ago 26
@saintee1000 I'm waiting for them to make a cancer link next........lol
metalebd 1 year ago
@saintee1000 are you being ironic?
horlock91 1 year ago
this guy in the suit is right, just like a tv can influence and affect us so can junk like facebook affect our actions in a good or bad way but mostly badly, because people would rather keep in touch over the pc rather than meeting each other.
mafiamob2005 2 years ago
i dont think its a screen that can make you thick, but whats being presentedand watched. i.e facebook, or an e book, factual video or a film like spiderman.
mafiamob2005 2 years ago
Daily Mail bullshittery, gotta love it.
gossieuk 2 years ago 4
This is quite funny, Greenfield is an idiot if she thinks we should be spending money on ridiculously pedantic, worthless research when we could be looking at something that we might actually benefit from, like improving altruistic qualities in young adults and finding why no-one seems to have a comprehensive set of morals these days.
IATV1 2 years ago
You're wrong, Greenfield knows her shit and as a neuroscientist is quite rightly interested in funding for studies on the physical properties of the brain, not on social experiments, space rockets, nanotechnology or anything outside her field.
bitplane 2 years ago
Susan Greenfield talks bollocks. She is the worst kind of populist media scientist - she makes Magnus Pike look like fucking Einstein.
revjimbob 2 years ago 4
Hooray for Goldacre! He is officially my hero now.
And by the way Sigman i have a friend in Canada who i've never met but e-mail everyday and she now knows me better than half my 'real' friends. I'd call her a friend.
And yes, what a great way to waste time and money putting research into a claim made by 'not so much a paper but an idiots guide issued in bitesize daily instalments'- quoting from Guardian journalist Charlie Brooker.
mousesandwich 2 years ago 3
i don't think sigman saying anything wrong, nor is ben. I read another article related to sigman's research saying how there are around 200 genes in our body that are affected by "real social interaction", and that we are not really gaining social skills through the net because there is no way we can see the facial and body expression also physical interaction. He is not saying facebook is bad but be considerate since the young mind is still devoloping common sense and how life works.
kiminosan01 2 years ago
Although he doesn't explain properly. Like social networking is a term commonly used in online communities. lol i found it quite amusing that i understood what he was trying to say even though he was going around in circles XD
kiminosan01 2 years ago
Reminds me of the stereotype of asians being genetically smarter than whites or blacks because of their higher than average scholastic accomplishments. As it turned out, it was a stronger supportive family unit, including older siblings. I wonder if the negative outcomes being claimed relating to TV, texting, Internet, gaming, and mobile phones might be related to the same thing....
jw29307 2 years ago
"There is no evidence"
CuntKnuckles 2 years ago 2
You are all just realizing this??
i am 16, and i wrote an essay on this basically saying the same thing last year
caraaryana 2 years ago
Have a gold star.
MatticusAnt 2 years ago
Ben is pure Gold.
He should have rebutted Sigman's claim it's bad for children from different countries to talk to each other via the internet, as they'll never meet in real life. The internet has opened up many possibilities, greater global interaction and communication being one of them. Surely we should encourage children to explore other cultures in the relatively safe realm of social network sites, BECAUSE they would never get the chance to meet such a diverse mix of people in real life.
sunflowersgrow 2 years ago 9
Exactly! The global social interaction can make people from different cultures understand each other and prevent cultural clashes - maybe even promote democracy, freedom and prevent wars, when people could discuss political issues over the internet without government propaganda bias. I think this could be considered as a major advantage.
tessman88 2 years ago
To quote Brass Eye: "Now that is scientific fact. There's no real evidence for it, but it is scientific fact."
Sum0199 2 years ago 6
ive spent my whole life researching this.If you actually have shaken hands with someone and become "real"and then they do you wrong what good is that?But raising a child on the internet or using the internet as a third parent goes against any and all common sence.
sirnicholson 2 years ago
Common sense is not a reliable means of decision making. That's demonstrably true by experimentation and it's why we've spent several hundred years developing the modern scientific method. Sigman is making an assertion without showing the full balance of evidence and no amount of common sense makes that right.
AtomicHorror 2 years ago
And they will spend hundreds of years more changing it and developing it.Your right he is making an assertion without evidence.Because this will be debated for several hundreds of years.
sirnicholson 2 years ago
Public debate is not how scientific knowledge progresses. Were Sigman proposing a scientific hypothesis to be tested then we'd have no issue, but he's making a specific claim to the public that will cause some to modify their behaviour. We can't expect people to accept advice without evidence that it is good advice. Andrew Wakefield did it with MMR and caused great public harm in the process. Presenting an hypothesis as fact to the public is not responsible.
AtomicHorror 2 years ago 7
Atomic?I do believe that is the best comment that ive heard yet.Well done.!
sirnicholson 2 years ago
I love the way Goldacre wiggles his eyebrows to the other camera while Sigman is talking.
dafyddoe 2 years ago