Topic: Spotting a sociopath (Read 6508 times)

...
You two have a serious misunderstanding of what a sociopath is at their core. The number of sociopaths walking around is debatable, but what is a fact is that they ARE wired differently than what most would call "normal" people. They in fact are incapable of empathy, even on a theoretical level they just don't get it.

This is a mistake I see so often, and it is quite frustrating because sociopaths know this is a common misconception and they utilize it to be better at being sociopaths. Depending on circumstance they may be more or less destructive to those around them, but from birth they simply learn to be proficient mimics of emotional states so as to appear normal to everyone else. Some times they are SO good at it you could be around one for years and not even know it.

...by definition they try to blend in to their surroundings. Any psychologist will tell you a sociopaths worst fear is being exposed for what they are.

I dunno. People can act weird under weird circumstances. Spot the sociopaths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd7dxmBLg48

It is true that is an issue with trusting data from pharmaceutical companies. It would be a mistake, however, to automatically trust data from academia where there are huge pressures to "get significant results", and worse, more and more often you see researchers apologizing in their papers when they do not prove their hypothesis true.

If a grad student just started a family or needs to pay medical bills or something like that, it should go in the conflicts of interest just the same as if they got paid by a pharm company.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2783432/

I don't know enough to argue particulars but most mri results published are much more questionable then they at first appear. Even moreso than most science, there are numerous steps in the process that allow researchers to introduce bias.  Here is an abstract coming from the first page of a google search for "mri analysis":

[quote]Obtaining reliable data and drawing meaningful and robust inferences from diffusion MRI can be challenging and is subject to many pitfalls. The process of quantifying diffusion indices and eventually comparing them between groups of subjects and/or correlating them with other parameters starts at the acquisition of the raw data, followed by a long pipeline of image processing steps. Each one of these steps is susceptible to sources of bias, which may not only limit the accuracy and precision, but can lead to substantial errors. This article provides a detailed review of the steps along the analysis pipeline and their associated pitfalls. These are grouped into 1 pre-processing of data; 2 estimation of the tensor; 3 derivation of voxelwise quantitative parameters; 4 strategies for extracting quantitative parameters; and finally 5 intra-subject and inter-subject comparison, including region of interest, histogram, tract-specific and voxel-based analyses. The article covers important aspects of diffusion MRI analysis, such as motion correction, susceptibility and eddy current distortion correction, model fitting, region of interest placement, histogram and voxel-based analysis. We have assembled 25 pitfalls (several previously unreported) into a single article, which should serve as a useful reference for those embarking on new diffusion MRI-based studies, and as a check for those who may already be running studies but may have overlooked some important confounds. While some of these problems are well known to diffusion experts, they might not be to other researchers wishing to undertake a clinical study based on diffusion MRI.

+1
I've met people who check all the right boxes: chronic/compulsive lying, making up fantasies, charming, sometimes anti-social behaviour, careless about others... If they're like that when they're old and grey, it's probably too late, but I've actually seen someone (mostly) grow out of it due to proper family support and a willingness to change. I don't believe in the fad that there's a "psycho lurking around every corner", that it's "1 out of 25 people" and all that bullshit.

Instead, what I see are excuses. A tiny minority might indeed have some diagnosable mental 'anomaly' that makes them incapable of feeling empathy. For the most part, I'm guessing your garden-variety corporate/political psychopath is likely to have been a spoilt child who always "got away with murder" unpunished. How can people develop certain connections in their brain if they grew up never needing them??

Part of the problem as I see it, is a profit-driven medical industry that wants to define as many disorders as possible so there's something for everyone. More disorders = more drugs, more funding, more hypochondriacs, more gullible parents wanting to fix their problematic kids... more profit!

An early experimental study by Mahoney8 is a particularly striking example of how researchers’ bias can influence their behaviour. Reviewers were asked to referee manuscripts, all of which had identical methodology but reported different results. Reviewers were strongly biased against manuscripts that reported results that contradicted their own theoretical perspectives. This can have a deleterious effect as ideas that have long since been contradicted can persist in the literature.9,10 Researchers’ biases caused by preference for their own ideas can cause a serious COI when they present their own work and when they are involved in any aspect of peer review. Nonetheless, much more attention is paid to COIs owing to external influences such as money than to COIs related to researchers’ inherent biases.

You two have a serious misunderstanding of what a sociopath is at their core. The number of sociopaths walking around is debatable, but what is a fact is that they ARE wired differently than what most would call "normal" people.  They in fact are incapable of empathy, even on a theoretical level they just don't get it. This is a mistake I see so often, and it is quite frustrating because sociopaths know this is a common misconception and they utilize it to be better at being sociopaths. Depending on circumstance they may be more or less destructive to those around them, but from birth they simply learn to be proficient mimics of emotional states so as to appear normal to everyone else. Some times they are SO good at it you could be around one for years and not even know it.

 This isn't something they learned, it was something they were BORN with. How do I know this? EEG and active MRI technology now enables anyone with the correct equipment and training to demonstrate which areas of the brain are active during specific activities designed to activate target brain areas while under observation. Now I don't think people should walk around suspecting everyone of being a sociopath, but it is important to note that by definition they try to blend in to their surroundings. Any psychologist will tell you a sociopaths worst fear is being exposed for what they are.

....