I agree. This is really, really dumb research. It is a bit like trying to prove that horse shit and perfume are related because both smell. And then they conclude that their results relate to women because they found (drumroll) more women wear fragrance than horse shit.
The thing I find baffling about all this is the total lack of interest these researchers seem to show in the underlying causes of these conditions. They seem to be content to just sit cataloguing traits, organising them into 'conditions' or disorders (drawing arbitrary lines all over the place in the process), and then pontificating endlessly about which conditions overlap with which other conditions, due to which traits - without ever seeming to take a step back and wonder what causes the traits in the first place. Surely the ultimate goal of this kind of research is to gain enough understanding of these disorders to one day be able to properly treat them, or even better prevent them from developing in the first place - since for the most part they seem to cause significant distress to the people suffering from them, and/or the people close to them. But how can we possibly get to the point of being able to treat or prevent these disorders, if we don't understand what causes them to develop in the first place?
No-one seems to stop and consider whether maybe the reason there's overlap between the conditions is because humans are complex, and childhoods can be abusive and dysfunctional in a million different ways, probably as many different ways as there are families on earth, so not everyone is going to fit neatly into the relatively arbitrary boxes they've drawn around particular collections of traits.
It's just so odd that people who've chosen to spend their lives scientifically studying things seem to lack the basic curiosity to ask the question why? What kind of childhood experiences cause these dysfunctional traits and behaviours to develop in the first place, and by what mechanism? What genetic and biological factors might also influence how likely the traits are to develop? Those questions seem infinitely more interesting and potentially fruitful to me, than just drawing random lines between random collections of traits, and then wondering why there's so much overlap.
And don't get me started on the constant 'psychopathy and ASPD are two different things but also we're going to call everything psychopathy just for fun' - way to muddy the waters even more, the lack of logic is quite astounding for so-called scientists!
I agree. This is really, really dumb research. It is a bit like trying to prove that horse shit and perfume are related because both smell. And then they conclude that their results relate to women because they found (drumroll) more women wear fragrance than horse shit.
The thing I find baffling about all this is the total lack of interest these researchers seem to show in the underlying causes of these conditions. They seem to be content to just sit cataloguing traits, organising them into 'conditions' or disorders (drawing arbitrary lines all over the place in the process), and then pontificating endlessly about which conditions overlap with which other conditions, due to which traits - without ever seeming to take a step back and wonder what causes the traits in the first place. Surely the ultimate goal of this kind of research is to gain enough understanding of these disorders to one day be able to properly treat them, or even better prevent them from developing in the first place - since for the most part they seem to cause significant distress to the people suffering from them, and/or the people close to them. But how can we possibly get to the point of being able to treat or prevent these disorders, if we don't understand what causes them to develop in the first place?
No-one seems to stop and consider whether maybe the reason there's overlap between the conditions is because humans are complex, and childhoods can be abusive and dysfunctional in a million different ways, probably as many different ways as there are families on earth, so not everyone is going to fit neatly into the relatively arbitrary boxes they've drawn around particular collections of traits.
It's just so odd that people who've chosen to spend their lives scientifically studying things seem to lack the basic curiosity to ask the question why? What kind of childhood experiences cause these dysfunctional traits and behaviours to develop in the first place, and by what mechanism? What genetic and biological factors might also influence how likely the traits are to develop? Those questions seem infinitely more interesting and potentially fruitful to me, than just drawing random lines between random collections of traits, and then wondering why there's so much overlap.
And don't get me started on the constant 'psychopathy and ASPD are two different things but also we're going to call everything psychopathy just for fun' - way to muddy the waters even more, the lack of logic is quite astounding for so-called scientists!