working on the Planck Satellite and the other did stuff in life
sciences. The physict was working on a satellite that literally sees
back in time to 400,000 years after the big bang. The sensors on this
state of the art satellite are so sensitive they can peer back to the
very beginnings of the universe by looking at the edge of it (the light
travelling back from the edge comes from the Big Bang). The life
scientist spends his time working on how life exists at a molecular level.
Their science knows some amazing stuff. Physics especially can make
extraordinary predictions. This is what's so great about science: it's
ability to predict accurately. Newton predicted the position of the
Earth around the sun to a reasonable degree of accuracy. It's better
than what Gallieo achieved but what he achieved was pretty amazing.
Einstein went further still in increasing the accuracy of predicting the
position of the Earth round the sun. Hawkings brought the accuracy level
up to several decimal places. People assume it's easy to predict where
the Earth is going to be but it's taken centuries of great thinkers and
a pyramid of theories to achieve the accuracy of prediction available today.
Physics is so cool it can predict which side a coin will land. It's the
same mathematics that predicts pancake tosses and explains why bread
usually does fall butter side down (with standard sized toast and tables).
Much of mental health science is at the stage of knowing that a coin
will land heads or tails about 50% of the time. But the science is a
baby science, or perhaps better said the application of scientific
methods to people and society has only really happened in the last few
centuries. That simple statement that sums up a lot of science, "prove
it", has only in recent history been asked. In the physical sciences it
was asked in Roman times, almost two millennia ago.
The physical world is perhaps easier to understand than the mental one,
but science has been applied far longer. "Prove it" is still not used
enough. Homoeopathy is a good example but so are antidepresasants and
psychological therapies. Prove it means the application of systematic
reviews of high quuality trials and meta-analyitc techniques that look
to reduce bias to zero. Often this reduces effect sizes to small values
and results show the power of the placebo or the other elements in a
trial are almost as effective as the active treatment.
There are many reasons why. One, perhaps, is a lot of smart people shun
the soft sciences because they see them as quasi- or even
pseudosciences. They miss the opportunity: the challenge of apply real
scientific techniques to the baby science. Psychiatry is often likened
to alchemy by critical and antipsychiatrists and perhaps it is, but
that's a good time to be a scientist. Chemistry is the after product of
alchemy. Mental health doesn't even have an equivalent of a periodic
table of elements from much the many compounds (phenotypes pathologised
by psychiatric diagnosis) are made.
It seems in humanity's capability to explore the furtherest reaches of
the universe and 'see' the exotic indivisible units of matter. It is far
from our capability to see within our own minds or know the life course
of an individual with any accuracy. The latter are greater and harder
questions now that physical science has progressed so far.
hThe Large Hadron Collider costs £6.19 billion
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Hadron_Collider#Cost). It answers
some important research questions but costs more than what I guess the
European budget is for research into non-pharmcotherapy treatments in
mental health (that's a guesstimate and a conservative one).
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