Talk:Fred Baughman

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article must adhere to the policy on biographies of living persons. Controversial material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libellous. If such material is repeatedly inserted or if there are other concerns relative to this policy, report it on the living persons biographies noticeboard.

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Biography. For more information, visit the project page.	Biography Portal
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-Class on the project's quality scale. [FAQ]

Contents 1 Clean up 2 Bias 3 citation suppport requested supplied 4 Antipsychiatry

[edit] Clean up

I tagged this article for clean up because it needs some tidying & wikifying. --Ginkgo100^talk 23:16, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Bias

I think the first line "highly controversial social criticism" in the article was written from a very biased point of view. I have since changed that particular bit to a more neutral tone. -- EmilyGreene1984, 09:35, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

He complains of being excluded from publicly being excluded from senate hearings, TV shows...etc. He talks of conspiracies to silence him. These are places that other anti-psychs like Breggin have no difficulties appearing on. Revert.--scuro (talk) 17:24, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] citation suppport requested supplied

First you meet with the rest of the DSM Committee of the APA and, over cigars and drinks you invent a "disease"...not out of thin air but out of the troubled emotions and behaviors of entirely normal human beings, and call it a disease. Next you have bio-psychiatry "researchers" not really biologists, not really researchers or scientists, apply the tools of biology and medicine to these entirely normal persons (some infants and toddlers) and, in this way you create a "scientific" literature, that becomes the stuff of their "scientific" meetings. Next, their "break-throughs" regarding these diseases, not diseases at all become the stuff of press releases, and from their literature, of their text-books.... This quote was in the second paragraph.--scuro (talk) 12:42, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

The article addition has "He also believes that Psychiatric disorders such as ADHD were unscrupulously invented and supported by bogus research." This article must meet WP:BLP. I'm insisting on *absolute* accuracy. Does Baughman "believe" what is in that quote, or is it hyperbolic or figurative? No *conclusions*, Scuro. But if you can find a reliable source that draws that conclusion, and given the quote, I'd accept it. Understand that I'm not challenging the round substance of what you've put in, but rather insisting that we are not going to succeed in cleaning up this family of articles (ADHD, Controversies over ADHD, Baughman, etc.) except by being very careful.

Baughman presents a picture of extensive conflict-of-interest. If you are going to quote the text for the image he presents, it would be necessary for balance to cite the *evidence* he cites, for he does not just give this bald accusation; he presents evidence that purports to support it. Of course, even there he engages in hyperbole and seems to miss the point. Consider this, from what you quoted above: "out of the troubled emotions and behaviors of entirely normal persons." He adds the "infants and toddlers" for emotional impact, I'd suggest. Yet the substance of the claim that ADHD is not a disorder, properly, is that the behaviors are within the range of normal. "Entirely normal," though, would have to mean toward the center of the normal range. ADHD behaviors aren't. It is certainly still a reasonable claim that ADHD is not organically based (though I find that also dependent upon a very artificial distinction between biology and neural programming, which is, after all, encoded biologically), but it is entirely a different claim that ADHD is "normal."

I was diagnosed about ten years ago with ADHD, when I was over fifty years old. I did not fit the hyperactive picture as a child because, I think, my "hyperactivity" was inward. Outwardly I was not fidgety or bouncing off the walls. However, I certainly was not normal, starting with I.Q., testing put me somewhere around the top 0.1%. That's not "normal." Is it pathological? Well, not directly. Indirectly, though, in how I relate to other people, I'm "disordered," in the sense that what may be easy for "normal" people isn't for me. Kids with ADHD (i.e., fitting the diagnostic picture) are not "normal." Are they "sick"? Not generally, but they are *different*. And the blessing of the development of the understanding of ADHD is that public institutions and families can start to recognize that, and to provide appropriate support. The story is found in the literature, over and over, of ADHD kids who are in constant trouble, considered problem children, misbehaving, performing poorly, who blossom when their special needs are met, who become, even, high-performance, spectacularly successful. Are the captains of industry who have ADHD "normal"? Hardly. But do we expect such a person to meet deadlines, fit into an existing set of social expectations, follow the rules, not forget appointments because they are absorbed in something? No, we provide them with a secretary, if we recognize their worth. If such a person is just starting out as an employee, do we fire them because they were late for a meeting, because they were up all night developing the proposal for that meeting? Maybe. Certainly companies used to do this, but they were dumping possibly their most valuable resource as if it was useless. Baughman focuses on medication, but medication is a small part of the issue. I have little faith in the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry when it comes to supporting research that favors their bottom line, and acting to withdraw support from research that might hurt. But I place the blame, not with them, but with the public. Us. Until *we* support unbiased research and make sure that good research is rewarded without regard to whether or not it makes some company profitable, we are going to have the problem. I don't *expect* pharmaceutical companies to fund research on the dietary treatment of ADHD, would you? Why?

But this is background, about me as an editor. Not about Baughman, directly, merely in about how I see him, as a crusader, and crusaders don't stop to be neutral and unbiased in how they talk and write. He is not a reliable source, in spite of his substantial background as a neurologist. Indeed, his neurological background causes him to focus on structural and disease processes, and ADHD is not a "disease," though ADHD can be affected or caused, sometimes, by disease.... in which case it may be really something different, a disease which produces some of the symptoms of ADHD.

Behind Baughman's approach, I intuit, is a dualistic concept of mind and body. Disease, Baughman would think, is in the body. Problems with the mind are problems of the spirit, moral issues, matters of good and bad behavior. Baughman seems to be mostly looking at the drug company issues, the alleged abuse of Ritalin, and how drug companies may have influenced the medical profession's view of ADHD. I'll agree with him that it's all too easy to prescribe a pill and think that this is going to solve the problem. That's not likely, though, in some cases medication may ease the problem sufficiently such that other processes can deal with it. I've heard it said that medication is about one-third of the treatment of ADHD, with the other thirds being education of the patient and education of those who interact with the patient. Indeed, it can be useful to consider ADHD behaviors as "normal," but normal for the population of people with ADHD. Then the question becomes how to, on the one hand, educate the patient to function successfully *given these behavioral tendencies,* and, on the other hand, educate the family, teachers, employers, friends of the patient how to successfully interact with the patient for mutual benefit. Prior to the ADHD diagnosis, all too easily, ADHD symptoms were seen as moral issues, the patient should just "straighten up and fly right." As a friend of mine says, expecting someone with ADHD to do better in these ways by "trying harder" is like telling someone who is near-sighted to see more clearly by "trying harder." It's not going to work; and the analogy may indeed be quite good. Is myopia a disease? Depends on what the person needs to look at! If it is close, the person with myopia may see better than "normal" people. But if it is far, the myopic person may be, indeed, "disabled," needing special support.

I'm reverting Scuro again pending resolution.

--Abd (talk) 15:28, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Antipsychiatry

[1] is an edit in which User:Scuro reverts me, restoring his redundant mention of antipsychiatry. The edit comment is "More important to note his link to antipsychiatry." Given that the section head is "Antipsychiatry," and what I had was, immediately after the head, "Baughman has been most critical of ADHD and psychiatry. He has stated, "Biological psychology/psychiatry is a total perversion of medicine and science...", isn't that enough? Perhaps we should use blinking text? I'm reverting it. At this point, the article needs more substance, not more labeling with categories. --Abd (talk) 03:41, 17 January 2008 (UTC)