Reddit mentions of Can Medicine Be Cured?: The Corruption of a Profession

> very much inhabited by people pushing anti science opinions

No, what people are doing is pushing critical views of conclusions reached by pro-psychiatrists based on the available research. Critical analysis is not antiscientific; on the contrary, it is integral to science.

Antipsychiatry is a well-established academic tradition. In this post I discuss some of the work that has been done on the topic.
_
>ThEy MaKe MoNeY bY pUsHiNG pills and other conspiracy theory opinions. It’s all a vast conspiracy to hide the truth and two separate fields of science and medicine are all in on it.

Psychiatric medications are, in fact, are highly profitable. Given that we live in a profit-driven, classist society, it is highly naive to believe that our institutions are immune to corruption. Being constantly vigilant about potential corruption is a matter of scientific, as well as moral responsibility. As a society, we need to end this silly stigma against conspiracy theories, as it clearly plays into the hands of the powerful in that it stifles genuine concern and good faith discussion about these matters. We must recognize that people who think everything is a conspiracy are no more foolish than those who feel conspiracies do not exist and cannot manifest in our society.

Regarding medical research in general, there is ample evidence that this field has been corrupted by the profit motive. For more info on this, I would highly recommend Can Medicine Be Cured? The Corruption of a Profession, by gastroenterologist and former medical researcher Seamus O'Mahony, where he details his experience in the field.

However, while the whole "conspiracy" angle is certainly one that should be considered, to reduce the entire issue to just this is a massive oversimplification. In this post, which is part of a series of posts in which I elaborate in detail on why I'm opposed to psychiatry, I touch upon these issues of profit and conspiracies, and also note that these are only one piece of the puzzle:

> In service of the biomedical model, psychiatry relies on drug therapies, which critics have noted are problematic for many reasons. According to Weiten:
> >
> >. . .
>
>>Critics maintain that the negative effects of psychiatric drugs are not fully appreciated because the pharmaceutical industry has managed to gain undue influence over the research enterprise as it relates to drug testing (Angell, 2004; Healy, 2004; Insel, 2010). Today, most researchers who investigate the benefits and risks of medications and write treatment guidelines have lucrative financial arrangements with the pharmaceutical industry (Bentall, 2009; Cosgrove & Krimsky, 2012). Their studies are funded by drug companies, and they often receive substantial consulting fees. Unfortunately, these financial ties appear to undermine the objectivity required in scientific research because studies funded by companies are far less likely to report unfavorable results than are nonprofit-funded studies (Beckelman, Li, & Gross, 2003; Perlis et al., 2005). Industry-financed drug trials also tend to be too brief to detect the long-term risks associated with new drugs (Vandenbroucke & Psaty, 2008). Additionally, positive findings on drugs are almost always published, whereas when unfavorable results emerge, the data are often withheld from publication (Spielmans & Kirsch, 2014; Turner et al., 2008). Also, research designs are often slanted in a variety of ways to exaggerate the positive effects and minimize the negative effects of the drugs under scrutiny (Carpenter, 2002; Chopra, 2003; Spielmans & Kirsch, 2014). The conflicts of interest that appear to be pervasive in contemporary drug research raise grave concerns that require attention from researchers, universities, and federal agencies. (Ibid, p. 551, bold added)
>
> I'm not certain if "ruse" or "conspiracy" would be the right words to describe psychiatry. Biological determinism is simply an ideology whose adherents tend to be staunchly conservative. Whether they actually have faith that human psychology is biologically determined, or merely lend their public support for it for political purposes is beside the point. Aside from the political aspect, what is clear is that there is a very definite economic motive underlying psychiatry. Moreover, its function as an oppressive, conservative, non-democratic system of social control is self-evident, and that it's historically rooted in the efforts of eugenicist Nazi collaborators leaves one to be understandably suspicious of its credibility.

I recommend that you read through the entirety of my polemic against psychiatry and invite you to respond to any specific points you take issue with or would like to learn more about.
_
>I agree wholeheartedly with you about biological determinism.

If this were true, then you wouldn't be pro-psychiatry. Psychiatry is a biological determinist ideology.

>as I mentioned before and you disagreed with, we don’t fully understand how the human mind works.

I didn't disagree that we don't fully understand the mind. What I said is that we know enough about the human brain to know that it doesn't come "hardwired" with specific psychological functions. The major mystery surrounding the brain lies not so much in its role in behavior but rather in the detailed, technical mechanisms and interactions underlying its many processes. Further knowledge of these processes, of course, will not illuminate anything about psychology, any more than the physico-chemical processes that make computers work can teach us anything about how to operate software.

The human mind is an emergent property that cannot be reducible to and operates by entirely different principles from its physical substratum.

>And psychology is a new field. I’m sorry but prior to the past half century or so there was little to no way to actually study the brain in any real way and the major early schools of though within the field were more philosophical than anything scientific.

This is false. Psychology has been an empirical science since at least 1879, when Wilhelm Wundt (who is often considered to be the "father of psychology") established the first psychological research laboratory at the University of Leipzig. The earliest schools of thought in the field, structuralism and functionalism, largely relied on experimental and observational evidence, respectively.

While the subfield of neuropsychology, which studies the nervous system as it relates to behavior, may be relatively novel, this does not mean psychology as a whole is a fledgling field.
___
>(Also I think that may have been a point of confusion for you and I apologize. I have been combining a defense of both psychiatry and psychology here)

Yep. They are often confused but are not the same, as I explain here:

> Though there are some similarities, psychiatry and psychology are actually distinct in important ways. As UNLV psychology professor Wayne Weiten explains in Psychology: Themes and Variations (10th Edition), a textbook used in introductory psychology courses in colleges across the US:
>
> >Psychology is the science that studies behavior and the physiological and cognitive processes that underlie behavior, and it is the profession that applies the accumulated knowledge of this science to practical problems. (p. 15, italics and bold in original)
> >
> >. . . psychiatry is a branch of medicine concerned with the diagnosis and treatment of psychological problems and disorders. (p. 18, italics and bold in original)

In the future, please be more clear on which you're referring to.