Publish or perish: Findings must be tried before true

The headline read “Kids With High Hopes Face Disillusionment.”

For someone raised as… The headline read “Kids With High Hopes Face Disillusionment.”

For someone raised as part of “Generation You can do anything you set your mind to,” I found that fairly interesting. Did I have “high hopes” as a child? Is my life an illusion or will that come later? Surely, this delightfully headlined UK Reuters article would deliver understanding.

Turns out, the findings of Dr. Helen Street were far more encompassing than I could have ever imagined. Modern psychology has delivered the real and tragic truth. Street, and her colleagues at the Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre in Perth, Australia, opened a window into the root of all human suffering.

Of course, it begins in childhood. The children of today are suffering from a depression epidemic; that’s old news to Street. Last year, the Australian Medical Journal released a report which revealed 15 percent of children suffer from depression, some as young as 5. The University of Western Australia released a report that 25 percent are at risk of developing serious depression. In October, Street went even further and told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation that 4 percent of children, aged 9 to 12, suffer from clinical depression.

Wow.

But why? Why are today’s children so depressed?

This question led Street to her most recent study, which is now complete. The results were given at a meeting of the British Psychological Society last Saturday. So why are so many kids depressed and even more at a risk to develop depression? Answer: “high hopes;” desires to be rich, famous and attractive.

Reports like these stir a feeling of urgency in parents to act and fix things. Does my child have “high hopes?” How can we get rid of them?

They stir quite a different feeling and line of questions in me. How did Street go about concluding this? What does “risk of developing” mean? And, how on earth can almost one in five of all the frolicking and happy children I see be suffering from depression? Heck, if the cause is desire to be rich, then American children should be even worse than Australian children.

Well, I’ve got a few answers.

She did her research by asking 402 9- to 12-year-olds about their life goals. Those who said money were most likely to be depressed. But, how does she know they’ll be depressed? Surely these sorts of studies have been done before; children have been asked similar questions, their answers recorded and then their mental state checked up on during the course of years to establish a direct corollary between certain responses and depression.

Surely, it is that established corollary that Street is referring to. But, alas, it doesn’t exist. Street seems to have assumed her hypothesis as a premise to make her conclusion. Ah, if only I could do that in logic class.

But what about the children who are depressed? Street reported that 16 of those 402 children currently show signs of clinical depression. That’s a serious illness, which wears on a persons psyche for months and even years. Street wouldn’t claim it was present in children without serious proof, right?

So, Street, how did you do this research? “We were asking them a series of questions about their behavior, their thoughts, and their feelings over the past few weeks.” That’s what she told ABC. It all sounds good except for that “past few weeks part.” It seems a bit presumptuous to conclude anything about a child based on what they’ve done or felt in the “past few weeks.”

Now I’m sure Street is a very smart woman. But what she and – tragically – many of her colleagues are doing is not psychology. All this data is too new to make conclusions about. Anyone who has been in an academic setting should know that. But still, in a desperate fight to publish or perish, “scientists” – like Street – go on to pollute journals and the media with fanatical proclamations whose only claim to truth is that title “doctor” to preface the author’s name.

Kinda reminds you of yellow journalism, doesn’t it? Will Minton can be reached at WMinton@pittnews.com. He likes feedback.