Also, allowing doctors to be gatekeepers only works if they are honest. Before brain imaging became a thing, doctors generally believed that prosopagnosia (aka face blindness) was only ever the result of brain injury. People who had never been able to recognize faces went to them and said they'd had this problem since birth and doctors assumed they were lying. It was only when they could study the brain functioning of people who had never had a brain injury that they accepted prosopagnosia could happen naturally.
But we've been to doctors who will look at test results and keep repeating their false assumptions about what must be going on with us. If the whole culture's value is "always trust the doctor" then it becomes easy for them as a group to simply dismiss anything that doesn't match up with their beliefs. Same with any highly technical profession.
And not many have access to the resources necessary to do an independent inquiry, with many of these professions including medicine. How many times have people said that it would be great to have some high-quality neurological or psychological studies about Otherkin? Having been a psych research grunt, I can tell you it's hard to even get a population sample that will yield a proper analysis if one doesn't have both training and a research institution (college, pharmaceutical company, government agency, etc.) to back one up. If the medical profession, or some relevant slice of it, decides simply to ignore a minority that's inconvenient to its established ideas or simply not profitable enough...well, that's back to what you said about waiting quietly and obediently.
Also, it's hard for an individual to not just accept, but admit to everyone that ey is wrong. How much harder is it as part of a group that benefits from the appearance of wisdom and authority? Someone could say, "Oh, it's only those isolated, bad doctors; the medical profession will keep most doctors honest." But an entire institution can go bad if it's not scrutinized enough, and how many people understand the capabilities, limitations, and interpretation of brain imaging technologies?
My system doesn't, but mainly because we've never taken the time...and we feel secure in trusting certain experts, like Neuroskeptic, because we've checked them against our educated criteria for which science writers we will trust. We could get up to speed in maybe a day or less if we blew spoons on doing so, because we're working from the foundation of a good science education. Many struggle to even understand the head start we already have on the subject, and on evaluating whether a study is well-designed and says what the researchers conclude it says.
I have a feeling I'm horribly rambly today, but don't have the brainpower to put it together any better. ^^; Apologies if that detracts at all. (But I had to respond, because SCIENCE, and watching the watchmen, and those things are Nautilene bait really.) French fries and thanks for you, for putting this out there.
no subject
Also, allowing doctors to be gatekeepers only works if they are honest. Before brain imaging became a thing, doctors generally believed that prosopagnosia (aka face blindness) was only ever the result of brain injury. People who had never been able to recognize faces went to them and said they'd had this problem since birth and doctors assumed they were lying. It was only when they could study the brain functioning of people who had never had a brain injury that they accepted prosopagnosia could happen naturally.
But we've been to doctors who will look at test results and keep repeating their false assumptions about what must be going on with us. If the whole culture's value is "always trust the doctor" then it becomes easy for them as a group to simply dismiss anything that doesn't match up with their beliefs. Same with any highly technical profession.
And not many have access to the resources necessary to do an independent inquiry, with many of these professions including medicine. How many times have people said that it would be great to have some high-quality neurological or psychological studies about Otherkin? Having been a psych research grunt, I can tell you it's hard to even get a population sample that will yield a proper analysis if one doesn't have both training and a research institution (college, pharmaceutical company, government agency, etc.) to back one up. If the medical profession, or some relevant slice of it, decides simply to ignore a minority that's inconvenient to its established ideas or simply not profitable enough...well, that's back to what you said about waiting quietly and obediently.
Also, it's hard for an individual to not just accept, but admit to everyone that ey is wrong. How much harder is it as part of a group that benefits from the appearance of wisdom and authority? Someone could say, "Oh, it's only those isolated, bad doctors; the medical profession will keep most doctors honest." But an entire institution can go bad if it's not scrutinized enough, and how many people understand the capabilities, limitations, and interpretation of brain imaging technologies?
My system doesn't, but mainly because we've never taken the time...and we feel secure in trusting certain experts, like Neuroskeptic, because we've checked them against our educated criteria for which science writers we will trust. We could get up to speed in maybe a day or less if we blew spoons on doing so, because we're working from the foundation of a good science education. Many struggle to even understand the head start we already have on the subject, and on evaluating whether a study is well-designed and says what the researchers conclude it says.
I have a feeling I'm horribly rambly today, but don't have the brainpower to put it together any better. ^^; Apologies if that detracts at all. (But I had to respond, because SCIENCE, and watching the watchmen, and those things are Nautilene bait really.) French fries and thanks for you, for putting this out there.