Re: Candace Pert and summer reading

[Tim Shearon]

Stephen Black wrote:
>>From molecular neurobiologist to New Ager: who would have guessed it?
>Curiously, her conversion reminds me that the same thing seems to have
>happened to Michael Crichton, the novelist. Years ago I was impressed
>with his account of cutting-edge medicine in "Five Patients". But as
>he recalls in his autobiographical book "Travels", he went from
>Harvard Medical School to eventually becoming a New Ager who talks to
>cacti in the desert. I hope this isn't becoming a trend.
>

Stephen- Though it seems new and a trend it is mostly an old trend in new clothing. I suspect it is the same phenomenon that we see (and have seen) in our classes (e.g., the recent thread on convincing majors that psychology is a science. Sometimes, I think, searching for meaning in our lives seems to result in belief over substance: A kind of faith in the plausible, if you will, over careful investigation. However, if one interacts with the other side of this belief structure, often present in "scientific" practitioners like psychiatrists (forgive the overgeneralization), one can understand the willingness of some to forgo the difficulty of careful thinking and buy into the attractiveness of overly simple explanation. Of course, another way of saying that is that maybe we aren't doing enough to share the joys and the meaning imparted by the hunt or the process of scientific investigation.
TOS _______________________________________________________
Timothy O. Shearon, PhD
Albertson College of Idaho
Department of Psychology
2112 Cleveland Blvd
Caldwell, Idaho

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