DaveDodo007... I mean... Rationalskepticism,lol.

[Mr.Samsa]

For all I know the problem may actually be one of underprescription, but that's neither here nor there. My central point was that you have indeed misrepresented Metatron. In the three pages of posts preceding your interpretation of what he said, he never once mentioned conspiracy or even profit motive, nor did he even allude to either. I don't appreciate how you keep sidestepping the issue of your misrepresentation.

I haven't sidestepped anything, I flatly stated and demonstrated that no misrepresentation occurred.

Will you please address it the question directly for once? It's been asked several times now, and you have evaded answering it every single one of those times. Is it because you can't think of a plausible sounding wording that might convince us that you have not misrepresented what Metatron said?

There is literally nothing to address. Metatron has not claimed misrepresentation because he knows it's an accurate view of his words. Beatsong jumped in when I was joking about Metatron misunderstanding what the "aliens" meme thinks (as Metatron thinks I'm misrepresenting by claiming he believes in aliens) but failed to recognise that Metatron has no concern with my general description of his position as being about unskilled people trying to diagnose and treat "normal" kids for "normal" behaviors in order to make money. That is, by definition, a Big Pharma conspiracy.

Metatron's argument with me is not that I'm misrepresenting him on the charge of believing in conspiracies but rather that he thinks I'm ignoring the fact that the conspiracy is true.

In a way your misrepresentation, real or imagined, is just another aspect of what I think is wrong with the way ratskep is run. Someone gets suspended, and may ultimately get permabanned for persistently misrepresenting what someone else has said? Fark. Next thing moderators may as well suspend, then ban people because they disagree with their views. Oh, wait...

Nobody has been suspended or banned for misrepresentation. Misrepresentation, when egregious enough, can be given a warning but it (usually) requires significant input from the mods to determine that misrepresentation has actually occurred, which involves explicit statements of what the person believes and a demonstration that their beliefs do not entail the position being described. The person doing the "misrepresenting" then gets multiple chances to refrain and only after continued restatements of untruths will a sanction be considered (and even then it's not a foregone conclusion).

But this is irrelevant as obviously no misrepresentation occurred.

My central point was that you have indeed misrepresented Metatron. In the three pages of posts preceding your interpretation of what he said, he never once mentioned conspiracy or even profit motive, nor did he even allude to either. I don't appreciate how you keep sidestepping the issue of your misrepresentation.

You're forgetting that if Mr Samsa says those three pages don't exist, then they don't. And if he says they say something that isn't there, they do.

He has magical powers like that.

What magical powers are needed? The "magical power" of knowing Metatron for years and having had these discussions with him before? Hardly seems very magical but given your level of conviction there I'm now seriously considering going on tour with my magic show.

For my next act, I'll use my past experience with Beatsong to predict that he'll continue to make claims about a topic he doesn't understand and ignore contradictory facts!

[Mr.Samsa]

I see in the ADHD thread that the bullshit claim that French kids don't have ADHD has been raised. Of course this isn't true and the prevalence rates are comparable to the US and the rest of the world. The myth is prevalent (hilariously) due to the lingering anti-Big Pharma beliefs of the French population, which is partly due to their adherence to psychoanalysis as a dominant treatment option for all mental disorders.

This is why the mental health system in France has been severely criticised for its embarrassing state of affairs, like ignoring the existence of ADHD in the country in favour of backwards old wives tales about the behavioral problems of ADHD being able to be fixed by good parenting and a structured environment. For example, it ignores all scientific evidence regarding autism and its treatment options, and goes with psychoanalysis instead.

Who'd have thought that "Psychology Today" wouldn't have been a great source? I hope Shrunk bothers to address it, as it'll be like watching a creationist bring up the idea that there is "no missing link" and getting torn apart by an evolutionary biologist.

[pErvinalia]

... duplicate post

[pErvinalia]

Yep, i just found it. This post - http://www.rationalskepticism.org/psych ... l#p1968568 makes it entirely clear that he thinks it's a big pharma con job. Samsa is right, Beatsong.

Megaphone does say that "these psychoactive drugs dispensed to treat this disorder don't do a fucking thing to cure it. Not a fucking thing" but though I strongly disagree with that opinion I see nothing hinting at conspiracy in it, unless of course profit motive equals conspiracy, but then he has never mentioned profit motive either.

So, once again I find myself being equivocal. Yes, Megadrone is wrong and yes, Mr. Samsa is misrepresenting him in regard to the conspiracy theory theory. At the same time Megadone is most likely correct in so far that drugging 10% of boys with Ritalin is a massive case of overprescription and Samsa is correct in pointing out that drugs like Ritalin do actually work. Neither Meg nor Sam is entirely right or entirely wrong, but in the heat of the debate nuances are easily ignored.

How is Metatron "most likely correct" that prescribing 10% of boys with ritalin is a case of overprescription? Off the top of my head, his figures weren't even accurate as he was confusing diagnostic rate with prescription rate, and ignoring the fact that the evidence strongly shows that ADHD is undertreated - precisely because of bullshit from worried mummies like Metatron who scare other parents away from medication, vaccines, and all those other nasty sciency-things.

If Metatron thinks there is a problem of overprescription then maybe he's right. But the point I kept emphasising in that thread was that he needs evidence to make that claim. Showing that (for the sake of argument) 10% of boys are treated with ritalin doesn't tell us anything. If (hypothetically) 20% of boys actually have ADHD, then we have a serious undertreatment problem. If only 5% of boys actually have ADHD then he might have a point about overprescription. The best evidence that we currently have tells us that there is no clear problem of overprescription and that there is in fact some decent evidence of a possible undertreatment problem (especially in girls where the disorder is hugely underdiagnosed and treated).

The problem is that Metatron doesn't believe in the existence of ADHD at all so for him there is nothing to treat. Even if only .05% of boys were given ritalin he would be making the exact same argument. It's anti-science at its finest.

For all I know the problem may actually be one of underprescription, but that's neither here nor there. My central point was that you have indeed misrepresented Metatron. In the three pages of posts preceding your interpretation of what he said, he never once mentioned conspiracy or even profit motive, nor did he even allude to either. I don't appreciate how you keep sidestepping the issue of your misrepresentation.

Will you please address it the question directly for once? It's been asked several times now, and you have evaded answering it every single one of those times. Is it because you can't think of a plausible sounding wording that might convince us that you have not misrepresented what Metatron said?

He's already said that this isn't the first time that he's discussed this stuff with Metatron. And Metatron did indeed say later on, in not so many words, that he thinks it's a distortion of science by big pharma (and psychiatrists and GP's supporting them).

[Mr.Samsa]

He's already said that this isn't the first time that he's discussed this stuff with Metatron. And Metatron did indeed say later on, in not so many words, that he thinks it's a distortion of science by big pharma (and psychiatrists and GP's supporting them).

And also note that I didn't mention conspiracy in response to Metatron's position until he said:

My considered judgment is that kids behavior falls on a spectrum, and the distribution of that spectrum of behavior probably follows the standard bell curve pretty closely. It's becoming more and more obvious to me that the desire is to modify the behavior of the outliers to make them act more like the masses. Easier to handle, that way. Less work.

Which literally says that psychiatrists and psychologists are drugging normal kids in order to get them to conform rather than help them with any behavioral problems. He even uses the word "masses" which is synonymous in conspiracist-speak with "sheeple". If someone claimed that fluoride was being added to the water to make people more complacent and easier to control we'd have no hesitation in calling them a nutjob - it's the exact same situation with ADHD drugs (no matter how hard anti-science cranks try to fight for "teaching the controversy").

And I assume it goes without saying that on RatSkep I made no reference to "Big Pharma" or "drugging for profits" so, again, it's absurd that it's being used as evidence that I've "misrepresented" him and that's what I 'deserved' a warning for. The mods got it right there in concluding that absolutely no misrepresentation took place.

[pErvinalia]

Yeah, I pointed out the lunacy of that conspiracy theory earlier in the thread. It's just another example of an arrogant twit disrupting threads that they clearly don't have an understanding of. Ratskep is full of this shit. It's embarrassing.

[Mr.Samsa]

Yeah, I pointed out the lunacy of that conspiracy theory earlier in the thread. It's just another example of an arrogant twit disrupting threads that they clearly don't have an understanding of. Ratskep is full of this shit. It's embarrassing.

Disrupting this thread or the ADHD one on RatSkep? If the latter, then in all fairness there's not much to "disrupt" with clearly pseudoscientific nonsense. It's not like a thread about how HIV isn't real or how cancer can be cured with magical crystals can be "derailed" in any meaningful way. All the sane people point out that the main premise of the thread is absurd and then the cranks fight among themselves over whether it's caused by aliens or the healing quantum effects of Mother Nature.

[pErvinalia]

I'm talking about Ratskep. There's clearly a cadre of professionals and academics and otherwise highly intelligent people there who know their shit. Then most of the rest of the membership is composed of humble intellectually curious people who learn a great deal and ask sensible questions (on the most part). But it's the small but vocal and arrogant minority like Metatron, Cito duh Pense, KennyC, Scott Dutchy, HomerJay, epepke (I think it was), that dick from Belgium who was a moderator (no the other dick, not Metatron), and a whole bunch of others who I've thankfully forgotten about, who fuck up good threads with their arrogant bleating and refusal to learn or accept that they may be wrong. Those people also tend to be the same people who are ardent sycophants when it comes to the moderating and moderators. They are generally narcissistic elitists who think that because they've worked out that religion is bollocks and atheism is the moral high ground, that they can lord it over anyone, including people who likewise worked all this shit out themselves without the aid of them. They're the type of people who would be (and perhaps are) CEO's and upper management. I.e. sociopathic and psychopathic tendencies.

[Scott1328]

That's an awful lot of conclusions from sparse data.

[pErvinalia]

It's the same in every internet forum. It's just a representation of the distribution throughout the general population. Of course this isn't a scientific study, it's just my opinion from having participated in internet forums and particularly rationalist ones for the last 7 or 8 years.

[Scott1328]

What an active imagination you have.

[pErvinalia]

Surely you can't deny the phenomenon (of a small but vocal minority disrupting thread after thread with arrogant assertions and refusal to accept counter arguments and evidence)? I admit, I chucked in the psychological assessment of these twits as a bit of an added extra. There'll be all sorts of reasons why people act like that. Whatever the reasons, they are a fucking pox on that forum.

[JimC]

Some of them are a pox on both our houses...

[pErvinalia]

At least here you are able to tell someone if you think they are speaking unmitigated bollocks. Over there, you just have put up with their disruptions.

[Mr.Samsa]

At least here you are able to tell someone if you think they are speaking unmitigated bollocks. Over there, you just have put up with their disruptions.

Well that's not entirely true. You're allowed to tell people that their entire posting history consists of nothing more than turds in a punchbowl. Of course, you have to be a mod to say it and get away with it.