> Amateur judgments of medical issues are often correct -- and often not
> correct. And there is no way for amateurs to recognize which is which.
> It's too much like conspiracy theories: even if true, they are
> politically useless because political action can be organized only
> about issues on which the facts are evident from the daily headlines,
> without even reading the articles.
>
> .........
>
>
>
> As Shag noted, Healy is a psychiatrist, not an amateur.
Well, yes, but that doesn't necessarily help us here. I think an analogy to popular comment on AGW might be instructive: It's not hard for somebody with credentials worthy or otherwise to present contrarian arguments that sound awfully compelling to somebody who has spent little time studying a complicated and technical subject and has little experience with what has and hasn't been considered. Embracing an apparent outsider on your first foray into a complex subject is pretty much the opposite of wisdom.
With respect to Healy and whatever axes he might be grinding, placing LSD and Valium (Valium!) in opposition to psychotropics as destabilizers of society may have been plausible in 1965. Today it's just dumb.
> His argument is much subtler than that of the "food faddists" we've
> satirized and dissected.
Hah! The ham-handedness of calling Healy anti-psychiatry might give you some insight to how your positions on Pollan appear.
-- Andy