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A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

nytimes.com

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Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#11

Post by JackFr »

davidf18 wrote: post #9

It is a wonderful donation, but I do wish that philanthropists would spend money on lobbying congress and The President to increase science budgets by the billions of dollars per year. Money could also be donated to those running in congress who are favorable to increasing the science budget of NIH, NSF.

Why do you prefer that model?

In fact, I would say your model has it backwards -- as a philanthropist, rather than devote my money to a cause, I should coerce/influence politicians with money, so as to compel through force of law other peoples money to flow to that cause.

Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#12

Post by HNJohnC »

dublinben wrote: post #7

This is a great donation, that seems to be going to exactly the right place. However, it's a little unfortunate that Mr. Stanley only started donating to this cause after a member of his own family was affected.

I'm fairly certain you'd find that the vast majority of donations to any cause are from people who are personally affected in some way.

Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#13

Post by JackFr »

This article is a enlightening counterpart to the 'emerging neuroscience' chorus, who would have us believe that a full model of consciousness and the brain is just around the corner. That those trying treat schizophrenia haven't a clue what causes the onset, and why certain drugs are effective tells me that we really are at the stage of the absolutely primitive models of brain activity.

Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#14

Post by tokenadult »

Behavior genetics research on schizophrenia has been going on since I was born, in other words since long before most Hacker News participants were born. The crucial issue in the research, mentioned in the article kindly submitted here, is that any one gene only has a small effect on risk for schizophrenia. "Dr. Lander cautioned that each variant accounts for only a tiny portion of the risk of developing schizophrenia. 'It shouldn’t be used for a risk predictor,' he said." Behavior geneticists, such as those I know locally,[1] and the pioneer of behavior genetic research on schizophrenia[2] hope that large-scale genomic studies of the kind that are now possible will help tease out how gene differences between one individual and another interact with environmental influences to increase or decrease risk for schizophrenia, which should lead eventually to better treatments and better prevention strategies, through deeper fundamental understanding of the disease. It is plain that environmental factors matter too, because sometimes identical ("monozygotic") twins are discordant for schizophrenia.[3] This research path will be slow and frustrating, precisely because it is well known already that no one gene has strong effect, and no particular gene acts without interaction with the environment, but this kind of fundamental research is indeed necessary to refine the diathesis-stress model[4] of the development of schizophrenia.

[1] http://www.psych.umn.edu/research/areas/pib/

[2] http://www.psych.umn.edu/people/facultyprofile.php?UID=gotte...

[3] http://www.virginia.edu/uvanewsmakers/newsmakers/spiro.html

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01564274#page-1

[4] http://college.cengage.com/psychology/bernstein/psychology/6...

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2632355/

AFTER EDIT: I'm still learning the rules about informed, thoughtful discussion here after 2073 days of participation as a registered user on Hacker News, so I'd be glad to understand what someone considered objectionable about this comment. I was just surfing by this comment to add a link emailed to me by Irving Gottesman, the prominent schizophrenia researcher who was mentioned in the acknowledgements of the book A Beautiful Mind. That link discusses the study in the journal Nature published today.

http://www.schizophreniaforum.org/new/detail.asp?id=2068

Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#16

Post by scarmig »

JackFr wrote: post #11
davidf18 wrote: post #9

It is a wonderful donation, but I do wish that philanthropists would spend money on lobbying congress and The President to increase science budgets by the billions of dollars per year. Money could also be donated to those running in congress who are favorable to increasing the science budget of NIH, NSF.

Why do you prefer that model? In fact, I would say your model has it backwards -- as a philanthropist, rather than devote my money to a cause, I should coerce/influence politicians with money, so as to compel through force of law other peoples money to flow to that cause.

Research subsidies capture the positive externalities to society that result from conducting that research. In other words: because much or all of the value of discovering--for instance--a new, accurate model of mental illness is leaky and impossible to capture, it's underprovisioned by the market. Government funding correct the inefficiency that would otherwise result.

That's the obvious reasoning, and I'm sure you knew this when you asked the question. Whether a specific topic has those particular externalities or not is always up for debate.

Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#17

Post by yogabzzz »

I'm happy that they're putting money into developing better diagnostic methods for mental disorders, because, frankly, the existing tools are terrible.

After 9 years of misdiagnoses by several different doctors, earlier this year one astute doctor was able to uncover that I had bipolar 2 and not unipolar depression or SAD. I had mixed feelings about it (ironic) but I was put on the correct medications and they have made a world of difference. In fact, I read that it can often take close to a decade, on average, to diagnose types of bipolar properly, because doctors and patients simply don't communicate well. Any tools that shorten that time gap would benefit individuals and society as a whole.

Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#18

Post by daughart »

JackFr wrote: post #13

This article is a enlightening counterpart to the 'emerging neuroscience' chorus, who would have us believe that a full model of consciousness and the brain is just around the corner. That those trying treat schizophrenia haven't a clue what causes the onset, and why certain drugs are effective tells me that we really are at the stage of the absolutely primitive models of brain activity.

Anyone who says a full model of the brain is right around the corner is either a fool or a charlatan. The BRAIN initiative was a first start to _develop the technologies_ needed to take the measurements that would underly potentially explanatory brain models.

In Conneconomics (http://dx.doi.org/10.1101/001214) we try to estimate the cost and time needed to map the connectome alone (only one component of a holistic brain model).

Re: A $650M Donation for Psychiatric Research

#20

Post by mathattack »

JackFr wrote: post #11
davidf18 wrote: post #9

It is a wonderful donation, but I do wish that philanthropists would spend money on lobbying congress and The President to increase science budgets by the billions of dollars per year. Money could also be donated to those running in congress who are favorable to increasing the science budget of NIH, NSF.

Why do you prefer that model? In fact, I would say your model has it backwards -- as a philanthropist, rather than devote my money to a cause, I should coerce/influence politicians with money, so as to compel through force of law other peoples money to flow to that cause.

I don't prefer that model from a moral point of view, but it is worthwhile from a practical point of view. Lobbying the government has a higher ROI than research for most companies. As such many companies lobby heavily for loopholes, benefits, etc all in explicit name of jobs. (And private benefit for execs and owners)

Why concede that fight? If very long term basic science is of communal benefit and can't happen in the current market structure, why not use 10% of the money to fight against lobbyists asking for corporate handouts?

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