> it is completely relevant here as he's being cited as a real psychiatrist. That's not verifiable without knowing a real name.
We're discussing his criticism of how a ton of "real psychiatrists" got some major things wrong. This criticism stands or falls on its merits, not on his status as a "real psychiatrist". You don't need to be a "real psychiatrist" in order to this sort of analysis (and, it turns out, a ton of "real psychiatrists" got this wrong in the past).
This is like reading a cooking blog by someone who says they're an auto mechanic, and demanding proof that they really know how to fix cars before you'll listen to them talk about pie crusts. If they're not claiming special expertise in the area (and he isn't), the credentials don't matter.
Eg, Scott writes:
> Border et al focus this infrastructure on 5-HTTLPR and its fellow depression genes, scanning a sample of 600,000+ people and using techniques twenty years more advanced than most of the studies above had access to. They claim to be able to simultaneously test almost every hypothesis ever made about 5-HTTLPR, including “main effects of polymorphisms and genes, interaction effects on both the additive and multiplicative scales and, in G3E analyses, considering multiple indices of environmental exposure (e.g., traumatic events in childhood or adulthood)”. What they find is…nothing.
I mean, either he's right or he's wrong, and you could go read the paper yourself and find out. Or you can trust other people who have read the paper. Or, I dunno, you could ask one of the authors of the paper if they think Scott's summary is any good:
> I have never in my career read a synopsis of a paper I've (co-)written that is better than the original paper. Until now. I have no clue who this person is or what this blog is about, but this simply nails every aspect of the issue
And again, none of this has anything to do with his status as a psychiatrist. You shouldn't blindly trust a blog post about this topic just because the author is verifiably a psychiatrist, but you shouldn't blindly distrust one just because they are not.
Psychiatrist is normally a protected title that requires a professional qualification and a registration, so it's not unreasonable that people are told that this is an alias.
> We're discussing his criticism of how a ton of "real psychiatrists" got some major things wrong
No, you replied to me. My comment was it is strange that this Atlantic article cites him as "the psychiatrist Scott Alexander" because that is a pen name, and it isn't verifiable that he is a psychiatrist due to his anonymity.
Your refutation of my point is "it doesn't matter that it isn't verifiable", but that was part of my point. You can't just toss it out, that's being intellectually dishonest.
Any piece of journalism that cites a person should do so only if they can verify the source. Journalists who skip this step means at least a portion of their article is fake news.
> You shouldn't blindly trust a blog post about this topic just because the author is verifiably a psychiatrist, but you shouldn't blindly distrust one just because they are not
This has nothing to do with my point, which is all about how The Atlantic journalist cites him, and has little to do with whatever his blog says.
He could have mentioned it, but I don't understand why you think it's important?
The authors of the actual scientific study are Richard Border and his co-authors. Scott Alexander is just a well-known blogger who gets credit for writing about it in a vivid way that got people's attention. He's not a primary source, so for the purposes of this article, it doesn't really matter whether he's using an alias or even whether he's a psychiatrist. (It's not a credential in the relevant field anyway.) You can verify the quotes by following the link.
Calling up other scientists in the field and asking questions about a scientific paper is how science writers verify a science article, and Ed Yong did that.
> I don't understand why you think it's important?
Scott Alexander is a pseudoynm. Journalists referencing that name should note this, along with the fact that his credentials as a psychiatrist are not publicly verifiable.
We're discussing his criticism of how a ton of "real psychiatrists" got some major things wrong. This criticism stands or falls on its merits, not on his status as a "real psychiatrist". You don't need to be a "real psychiatrist" in order to this sort of analysis (and, it turns out, a ton of "real psychiatrists" got this wrong in the past).
This is like reading a cooking blog by someone who says they're an auto mechanic, and demanding proof that they really know how to fix cars before you'll listen to them talk about pie crusts. If they're not claiming special expertise in the area (and he isn't), the credentials don't matter.
Eg, Scott writes:
> Border et al focus this infrastructure on 5-HTTLPR and its fellow depression genes, scanning a sample of 600,000+ people and using techniques twenty years more advanced than most of the studies above had access to. They claim to be able to simultaneously test almost every hypothesis ever made about 5-HTTLPR, including “main effects of polymorphisms and genes, interaction effects on both the additive and multiplicative scales and, in G3E analyses, considering multiple indices of environmental exposure (e.g., traumatic events in childhood or adulthood)”. What they find is…nothing.
I mean, either he's right or he's wrong, and you could go read the paper yourself and find out. Or you can trust other people who have read the paper. Or, I dunno, you could ask one of the authors of the paper if they think Scott's summary is any good:
> I have never in my career read a synopsis of a paper I've (co-)written that is better than the original paper. Until now. I have no clue who this person is or what this blog is about, but this simply nails every aspect of the issue
(Source: https://twitter.com/matthewckeller/status/112638089124318822...)
And again, none of this has anything to do with his status as a psychiatrist. You shouldn't blindly trust a blog post about this topic just because the author is verifiably a psychiatrist, but you shouldn't blindly distrust one just because they are not.