Peter is the Gift that keeps on Giving

Last post, I touched upon the findings of the possible genetic link to ADHD, and what that could mean for our societies outlook on behavioural problems, and indeed criminality and deviance. I said that religious people may have difficulty swallowing this, as columnists such as Peter Hitchens have shown when they have reacted in their columns on the issue. The Judeo Christian concept of sin and fallen man and free will explaining away theodacity are contradicted by genetic theories of behaviourism in humans, and we know which trumps which in the reasoning of the devout. It could go someway to explaining why someone like Hitchens who believes that evil, and souls and sin are physically manifest -is resistant to this sort of stuff, as well as his dislike for anti - depressant use. So it is no surprise that he gave his tuppenceworth this week in response to the findings. As it is quite short I'll reproduce it here:

"The latest propaganda for the non-existent complaint ‘ADHD’ was torn to shreds on Radio 4’s Today programme by Oliver James, despite highly unhelpful interruptions by the presenter Justin Webb, who gave the pro-ADHD spokeswoman a free run. ‘Evidence’ of a genetic link is nothing of the sort.

(THAT TODAY DEBATE IS HERE AT 2:21:00 INTO THE PROGRAMME)

Even if it were, the fanatics who want to drug normal children and excuse our society’s selfish, horrible treatment of them, have to solve this problem. How can you have a ‘genetic link’ to a complaint for which there is no objective diagnosis? What is it linked to?"

"Evidence" he is very reticent to highlight in the article, and that James does not cite the sourse of in the interview. He is right it isn't "evidence" of a direct link between the gene studied and ADHD, just that there was a possible causal link discovered, which the researchers have admitted. Hitchens has only a rudimentary grasp of how science works, in his mind it must either be a direct link or not at all. All or nothing, which is pretty much counter to the way the incremental scientific method often operates.

"What is it linked to?" he asks, in regards to something that has no concrete objective diagnosis. Well the answer to his rhetorical question is the criteria put down by comparing case study notes of disorders like this, to come up with as close as a set of coherent symptoms to identify and provide diagnostic criteria for a disorder that has certain common similar behavioural patterns in different people. It's actually quite common that scientific terms may not have a cast iron objective definition that encompasses them all. For instance there is no fully objective criteria to identify something as a metal, and no rigid set of properties that define a celestial body as a planet, but we don't just say "fuck it, they don't exist then." Hitchens absolutist stance on everything shows how little he actually grasps what science is.

I just really get so hacked off with these pundits who play all these ad hominem, straw men - bum brained philosophical parlour games to make themselves look cleverer than they are, about stuff they know nothing about. It's purely because ADHD and genetic theories of behaviour don't fit into Hitchens world view, nothing more - that he opposes them and calls those who dent this view as "fanatics". Should stop trying to make out that his articles are something they aren't

Don't hold your breath!