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Thursday, September 20, 2018

Dr. Bernard Carroll: blogger, funny tweeter, and critic of scientific and ethical lapses in psychiatry


Dr. Bernard Carroll (Nov 21, 1940 – Sep 10, 2018)




I was friends with Dr. Carroll (“Barney”) on Twitter, and always enjoyed his wit.



Before that he was an early commenter and supporter of my blog, The Neurocritic. Which pleased me to no end, given this brief biography from his blogger site.


My blogs Health Care Renewal
Occupation Psychopharmacology
Introduction Past chairman FDA Psychopharmacologic Drugs Advisory Committee.
Past chairman, department of psychiatry Duke University Medical Center.
Interests Professional ethics, medicine


He didn't know who I was and didn't care. He assessed me by the quality of my writing, and allowed me entrée into a world I would have no access to otherwise.1

As I'm facing the most catastrophic loss of my life, I will miss him too. He was a brilliant, principled, and compassionate man.


Remembrance from Health Care RenewalRemembering Dr Bernard Carroll


Obituary in BMJ by Dr. Allen Frances (and Dr. Barney Carroll):

Barney Carroll: the conscience of psychiatry
A pioneer in biological psychiatry, more recently Bernard Carroll (‘‘Barney’’) became a withering critic of its compromised ethics and corruption by industry. Shortly before his death, he helped prepare this obituary—his last chance to help correct the perverse incentives that too often influence the conduct and reporting of scientific research.
. . .

Barney rejected grand biological theories that offered neat, simple-but-wrong explanations of psychopathology. Ever aware of the complexity of the human brain, he was an early rejecter of blind optimism that any simple imbalance of monoamine transmitters could account for the wide variety of mental disorders. More recently, he deplored the ubiquitous hype that suggested that genetics or neuroimaging or big data mining could provide simple answers to deeply complex questions. He predicted—presciently—that these powerful new tools would have great difficulty in producing solid, replicable findings that could be translated to clinical practice.





Footnote

1 i.e., Very senior male psychiatrists. When I wrote my blog post about being female, and my wife's diagnosis of stage 4 cancer...

So yeah, think of this as my “coming out”. Sorry if I've offended anyone with my ability to blend into male-dominated settings.

Thank you for reading, and for your continued support during this difficult time.

...Barney was the first to comment, with his usual wit and grace: “I am pretty sure we can handle that. Bless you both.”

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