> I've never understood the stigma associated with all mind-altering drugs ...
One objection that comes immediately to mind is that it may divert from a search for the actual cause of depression. Remember that this treatment, like all depression treatments, is symptomatic. It doesn't either identify or treat the underlying condition, only its symptoms.
Yeah, but that's true of Prozac, as well. It turns out that depressed people are definitionally ineffective at finding the root causes of their problems, and if you cam artificially suspend the feedback loop, then they might have a chance to diagnose and fix the underlying problem. And then of course for some people, the underlying causes are already gone and the depression is just a standing wave of feedback, and temporarily inhibiting the cycle is enough to cause it to stop.
> One objection that comes immediately to mind is that it may divert from a search for the actual cause of depression.
That's an insane objection, because understanding of how different depressions (depression isn't one thing, its just a set of symptoms) respond to different treatments is one method of determining the causes.
Linking observed symptoms to environmental factors (both those that precede the symptoms, those that occur with the symptoms, and those that cause changes to the symptoms) is a fairly essential part of the normal scientific method of determining the mechanism behind the symptoms.
That it also helps people in the here and now is a not insignificant side benefit, of course.
>> One objection that comes immediately to mind is that it may divert from a search for the actual cause of depression.
> That's an insane objection ...
Actually, it's called "science". Science isn't about descriptions, it's about explanations. If we knew why ketamine worked, we would have finally crossed the threshold of science.
Without science, we will continue to see one "breakthrough" after another, each lasting a few months, to eventually be discarded as its questionable statistical basis comes to light.
> Linking observed symptoms to environmental factors (both those that precede the symptoms, those that occur with the symptoms, and those that cause changes to the symptoms) is a fairly essential part of the normal scientific method of determining the mechanism behind the symptoms.
That can only be a preliminary to science. Science is not about "links", it is about testable, falsifiable explanations for those links. Without an effort to explain "links", any correlation becomes science. But that's not how science works.
> That it also helps people in the here and now is a not insignificant side benefit, of course.
But that has no value at all, in fact it's an obstacle to understanding. And it explains the many drugs presently available that are either known to be ineffective or that have adverse effects -- all of them gained a foothold by a study like this one, a questionable study, over-reliant on self-reporting.
> Actually, it's called "science". Science isn't about descriptions, it's about explanations. If we knew why ketamine worked, we would have finally crossed the threshold of science.
Actually, science is mostly observation and description. Sometimes the descriptions can lead to theories, but only after peer-majority agrees the theory adequately describes enough observed cases to be trusted for prediction. Most of the seemingly immutable parts of science are in fact maths.
> Actually, science is mostly observation and description.
That's not science, that is a preliminary to science. If this were not so, astrologers -- who do lots of observing and describing -- would be scientists.
> So... Uhhh... Why does gravity work? I know we can describe it, but is it considered science yet?
Bad example. General relativity describes gravity in great depth, and made a number of testable predictions, all of which have been proven in experiments many years after the original predictions. So yes, modern physics is not only a science, but it's the science to which other sciences are unfavorably compared.
Also, an explanation, a scientific theory, as useful as it is, doesn't say "why" something is so -- that's for philosophers.
> Actually, it's called "science". Science isn't about descriptions, it's about explanations. If we knew why ketamine worked, we would have finally crossed the threshold of science.
But you said that if we knew why it worked, it would have become science. You also said that it's about explanations, not about descriptions.
General relativity may describe gravity, but it doesn't explain it. According to your previous post, this excludes gravity from science. I was just pointing out the flaw in your reasoning.
Consider this a final response - I see you will keep any argument going for the sake of arguing throughout this post. It's clear you have some sort of agenda or preconceived notion to defend, and I'll leave you to that.
> But you said that if we knew why it worked, it would have become science.
No, I said if we explained it, that would be science. For God's sake, read the words. Explaining something like gravity doesn't try to justify why it is that way, it only shows that we understand it in depth.
> General relativity may describe gravity, but it doesn't explain it.
FALSE! GENERAL RELATIVITY IS THE PRESENT EXPLANATION FOR GRAVITY.
>Explaining something like gravity doesn't try to justify why it is that way, it only shows that we understand it in depth.
So clearly there's some disagreement here about what "explain" means, so I'll avoid that semantic argument and skip to the point:
Understanding something "in depth" is not necessary for science. As long as a shallow understanding makes accurate predictions, it is scientific. Trying to make more detailed rules would just be violating Occam's Razor.
To get back to the original point: If we make the hypothesis "Ketamine cures depression" and find no evidence to the contrary, then it is a theory which is sufficient to describe the world, and speculation about the mechanism is a pointless exercise, just as it would be pointless to look for a more complicated theory of gravity to describe things adequately explained by GR.
However, if we were to find (as is more likely) that in some cases Ketamine doesn't cure depression, only then is there a reason to delve deeper to work out why.
One objection that comes immediately to mind is that it may divert from a search for the actual cause of depression. Remember that this treatment, like all depression treatments, is symptomatic. It doesn't either identify or treat the underlying condition, only its symptoms.