Welcome to Students from Liverpool Hope University

I would like to extend a welcome to Students from Liverpool Hope University, where this Weblog has been cited as a resource for a special course on the Biological Explanations of Behaviour. This article will be linked in the side menu once it falls off the front page.

It is up to you to determine your own opinions regarding the mind, the spirit, the soul, ethics, the origins of life, metaphysics, etc. I do not address these issues here.

I invite you to go through the archives, as there is a large amount of material there covering many subjects. The vast majority of articles provide direct links to source articles. Since there are close to a thousand articles in the archives, please be aware that some links may have become obsolete.

Much of my own opinions center around

• the ethical issues of psychiatry, psychology, and pharmacology as Big Business, with all of the ethical problems commonly found in Big Business. The profit motive does not always serve patients well.
  
• The faulty science and logic in psychiatric research and psychiatric medicine. See the work of Richard DeGrandpre, who is a past senior editor of Adbusters magazine. His is a modern voice of skepticism regarding some of the faulty scientific logic seen in many psychiatric studies, and the field in general. See also this famous talk on Cargo Cult Science by Richard Feyman, renowned physicist. There is this tidbit also.
  
• The inability of Psychiatry and Psychology to police and handle criminal and aberrant behavior in its own membership. This is a profession that purports to understand the human mind, and seeks to help people. The old adage, physician, heal thyself, certainly applies.
  
• The unwillingness to take the time to determine the true biological cause for any various mental symptoms presented. An excellent recent satire tells the story of a psychiatrist expelled from his professional organisation because he began to actually cure people. There is also the quite serious article citing 29 different medical conditions that can produce symptoms of schizophrenia.
  
• for those with a spiritual bent see the essay Television Science, the Year of the Circuit

Simply put, I am looking for competence in Science, Logic, and Ethics, in a field where these particular practical results are sorely lacking.

You can make a difference, if you want to. Or Not.