Schizophrenia, Hubris and Science

The author rightly notes that there is always a lot of hyperbole / exaggeration in the releases from the Broad institute. When they have as much money as they do I suspect that their leadership feels that they have to have “big / ground breaking” announcements or people are going to start thinking that they are wasting their money… which may yet be the case. We’ll see where these new discoveries lead, but its going to take a long time I’m sure of that. As with all things - a good dose of skepticism is helpful.

"When I first heard about this on Twitter, I couldn’t believe it. Surely Broad hadn’t actually claimed the “first-ever insight” into the biological origin of schizophrenia? Yet, absurdly, they did. They seem to be saying that no-one has ever found out anything biological or genetic about schizophrenia until now.

Further down the press release, Broad Institute head Eric Lander chips in, saying that “For the first time, the origin of schizophrenia is no longer a complete black box”. For Lander, it seems, everyone was completely in the dark until Broad stepped, Prometheus-like, onto the scene!"

“This is cool stuff, but there have been plenty of cool studies before in this field (not all of which have turned out to be correct.) C4A is not the first schizophrenia risk gene to have been discovered, nor is it the first whose neurobiological function has been established using a gene-protein-brain approach (e.g. one of many previous examples.) It’s not even the first schizophrenia risk gene whose role in synaptic pruning has been elucidated!”

Read the full commentary here:

http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/neuroskeptic/2016/02/01/schizophrenia-hubris-science/#.VrEWlmQrKvM

This is related to this news story:

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Results The absolute frequency of positive words
increased from 2.0% (1974-80) to 17.5% (2014), a relative increase of
880% over four decades. All 25 individual positive words contributed to
the increase, particularly the words “robust,” “novel,” “innovative,”
and “unprecedented,” which increased in relative frequency up to
15 000%. Comparable but less pronounced results were obtained when
restricting the analysis to selected journals with high impact factors.
Authors affiliated to an institute in a non-English speaking country
used significantly more positive words. Negative word frequencies
increased from 1.3% (1974-80) to 3.2% (2014), a relative increase of
257%. Over the same time period, no apparent increase was found in
neutral or random word use, or in the frequency of positive word use in
published books.

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Love it.!

“The absolute frequency of positive words increased from 2.0% (1974-80) to 17.5% (2014), a relative increase of 880% over four decades. All 25 individual positive words contributed to the increase, particularly the words “robust,” “novel,” “innovative,” and “unprecedented,””

Unfortunately, what with ‘genetic’ and ‘schizophrenia’ being mentioned in the same sentence, I had already tuned out on that story.:smile:

Alright alright I’m sorry I followed the hype :smile:

I read that a few hours ago and noticed a few of the commentators saying that he could have chosen a much better target re “hubris” ,That the research really was as good as the press had been making it out to be.

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I think we will only know what comes out of this, if its research for the sake of research than it means nothing, if its content helps us in better treatment options than good. If not, well, again, sorry for following the hype.

The frequency of words is “innovateively innovative,” “stupendously profound”," robustly novel," and also “stupendously stupid”. :smiley:

I see what you mean. Or, as my family members say, “It’s not hard to find an a$$hole.”

My bad minni, I was not referring to you in that last post, I did not read the whole thread, just the post on words used.

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Might not blame the researchers anywhere near as much as a loose cannon publicist.