Drug addiction: The complex truth

We’re told studies have proven that drugs like heroin and cocaine instantly hook a user. But it isn’t that simple – little-known experiments over 30 years ago tell a very different tale.

Drugs are scary. The words “heroin” and “cocaine” make people flinch. It’s not just the associations with crime and harmful health effects, but also the notion that these substances can undermine the identities of those who take them. One try, we’re told, is enough to get us hooked. This, it would seem, is confirmed by animal experiments.

Many studies have shown rats and monkeys will neglect food and drink in favour of pressing levers to obtain morphine (the lab form of heroin). With the right experimental set up, some rats will self-administer drugs until they die. At first glance it looks like a simple case of the laboratory animals losing control of their actions to the drugs they need. It’s easy to see in this a frightening scientific fable about the power of these drugs to rob us of our free will.

But there is more to the real scientific story, even if it isn’t widely talked about. The results of a set of little-known experiments carried out more than 30 years ago paint a very different picture, and illustrate how easy it is for neuroscience to be twisted to pander to popular anxieties. The vital missing evidence is a series of studies carried out in the late 1970s in what has become known as “Rat Park”. Canadian psychologist Bruce Alexander, at the Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada, suspected that the preference of rats to morphine over water in previous experiments might be affected by their housing conditions.

To test his hypothesis he built an enclosure measuring 95 square feet (8.8 square metres) for a colony of rats of both sexes. Not only was this around 200 times the area of standard rodent cages, but Rat Park had decorated walls, running wheels and nesting areas. Inhabitants had access to a plentiful supply of food, perhaps most importantly the rats lived in it together.

Rats are smart, social creatures. Living in a small cage on their own is a form of sensory deprivation. Rat Park was what neuroscientists would call an enriched environment, or – if you prefer to look at it this way – a non-deprived one. In Alexander’s tests, rats reared in cages drank as much as 20 times more morphine than those brought up in Rat Park. 

Inhabitants of Rat Park could be induced to drink more of the morphine if it was mixed with sugar, but a control experiment suggested that this was because they liked the sugar, rather than because the sugar allowed them to ignore the bitter taste of the morphine long enough to get addicted. When naloxone, which blocks the effects of morphine, was added to the morphine-sugar mix, the rats’ consumption didn’t drop. In fact, their consumption increased, suggesting they were actively trying to avoid the effects of morphine, but would put up with it in order to get sugar.

‘Woefully incomplete’

The results are catastrophic for the simplistic idea that one use of a drug inevitably hooks the user by rewiring their brain. When Alexander’s rats were given something better to do than sit in a bare cage they turned their noses up at morphine because they preferred playing with their friends and exploring their surroundings to getting high.

Further support for his emphasis on living conditions came from another set of tests his team carried out in which rats brought up in ordinary cages were forced to consume morphine for 57 days in a row. If anything should create the conditions for chemical rewiring of their brains, this should be it. But once these rats were moved to Rat Park they chose water over morphine when given the choice, although they did exhibit some minor withdrawal symptoms.

You can read more about Rat Park in the original scientific report. A good summary is in this comic by Stuart McMillen. The results aren’t widely cited in the scientific literature, and the studies were discontinued after a few years because they couldn’t attract funding. There have been criticisms of the study’s design and the few attempts that have been made to replicate the results have been mixed.

Nonetheless the research does demonstrate that the standard “exposure model” of addiction is woefully incomplete. It takes far more than the simple experience of a drug – even drugs as powerful as cocaine and heroin – to make you an addict. The alternatives you have to drug use, which will be influenced by your social and physical environment, play important roles as well as the brute pleasure delivered via the chemical assault on your reward circuits.

For a psychologist like me it suggests that even addictions can be thought of using the same theories we use to think about other choices, there isn’t a special exception for drug-related choices. Rat Park also suggests that when stories about the effects of drugs on the brain are promoted to the neglect of the discussion of the personal and social contexts of addiction, science is servicing our collective anxieties rather than informing us.

This is my BBC Future article from tuesday. The original is here. The Foddy article I link to in the last paragraph is great, read that. As is Stuart’s comic.

View the original article here

The curious relationship between truth and madness

I’ve got an article in The Observer on the misunderstood relationship between truth and madness.

The definition of a ‘delusion’ has just been changed so it no longer has to be considered a ‘false belief’.

It turns out that this issue turns up regularly in world events, owing to the sad tendency for whistle-blowers to be ‘accused’ of being ‘mentally ill’ when others don’t like what they’re saying.

It’s not clear who forcibly sedated her in 1972. It’s not certain that she was admitted to a psychiatric ward in the following year. What’s definite though is that many people thought she was mad as she ranted about conspiracies in the White House during eccentric phone calls to the press. Questions about Martha Beall Mitchell’s sanity were encouraged by the Nixon administration, who consistently briefed against her and probably had her medicated against her will. But ultimately her claims were proven correct when the Watergate scandal broke.

It’s worth bearing in mind that we’re not talking about the everyday use of the term ‘delusion’ (typically meaning mistaken) but the psychiatric definition which describes intensely held beliefs that are impervious to reality.

They are fascinating in many ways but, as the article discusses, they do not necessarily mean that the person is wrong.

Link to Observer article on truth and delusion.

View the original article here

Playlist: The truth about stories

(TED is on its annual two-week vacation. During the break, we’re posting playlists from the TEDTalks archive. We’ll be back with new talks on August 29th.)

Elif and Chimamanda’s perspectives bring us to look at stories through the eyes of those who weave them and Jonathan offers his own story up as one who covets the tales of others. This collection reminds us to examine the bigger picture behind the fiction. While artists are urged to find their niche and unique point of view, it’s still just that: a single point of view.

Elif Shafak: The politics of fiction 

“If we have no connection whatsoever with the worlds beyond the one we take for granted, then we too run the risk of drying up inside. Our imagination might shrink, our hearts might dwindle and our humanness might wither if we stay for too long inside our cultural cocoons.”

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Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story

“To insist on only these negative stories is to flatten my experience and overlook the many other stories that formed me. The single story creates stereotypes and the problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete. They make one story become the only story.”

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Jonathan Harris collects stories

“I love this idea of the partial glimpse into somebody’s life.”

Playlist by the TEDPartnerships team.

View the original article here

Finally, the Truth About Soy

It’s one of those things that has spread on the Internet and unbelievably, has become accepted truth to many people: that soy is unhealthy, even dangerous.

I mention (to otherwise smart and informed people) that I drink soymilk sometimes, and a look of pity comes over their faces. ‘This guy doesn’t know the dangers of soy, and might get cancer, or worse … man boobs,’ they’re thinking.

Just about every fitness expert I read — people I respect and trust — says that soy is bad for you, from Tim Ferriss to the primal/paleo folk. I absolutely respect most of these guys and otherwise think their work on fitness-related matters is great. And yet, when I look for their sources on soy, often they don’t exist, and when they do, I can always trace them back to one place.

The Weston A. Price Foundation.

Seriously. I’ve never seen anyone cite a single peer-reviewed study that shows that soy is unhealthy. The only sources are the Weston A. Price Foundation, or other articles that use the Weston A. Price Foundation as a source (read more).

Here’s the thing: the Weston A. Price Foundation (WAPF) have been on a vendetta against soy (and on a campaign for meat and raw milk) for a couple decades now, and they have no solid evidence to back up their vendetta. They have lots of quasi-scientific evidence, lots of reasonable-sounding arguments, but if you look for solid proof, you won’t find any. They are not scientists, and have conducted no actual peer-reviewed studies of their own (that I know about).

It’s amazing how many people have been influenced by WAPF’s wacky writings — whenever you read articles not only against soy, but about the myths of cholesterol or saturated fat (WAPF dangerously advocates a diet high in saturated fat), or about raw milk or meat, or about coconut oil and butter … it is based on the work of WAPF. WAPF has even influenced the writings of major writers as Gary Taubes and Michael Pollan.

I’m not going to tell you to fill your diet with soy. I eat it moderately, like anything else, but am not afraid of it. What I am going to do is clear up some myths, and challenge those who disagree with me to show actual peer-reviewed studies (not articles by WAPF or that cite WAPF as their source).

I won’t do an entire treatise on WAPF, as others have done it better:

I’d encourage you to read these and consider the arguments and evidence, not the sources. While some of these articles are from vegetarians, that doesn’t negate the arguments — they just seem more motivated to do the research on WAPF than most people are.

But basically the WAPF is a fringe group that advocates some weird health claims about meat, raw milk, butter … but who came along just at the time when the meat and dairy industry was worried about soy being promoted as a healthy alternative. WAPF claims they don’t take money from agribusiness or the food processing industry, which is both true and admirable … but they do receive funding from sponsors and members — a large percentage of whom are dairy and meat farmers.

Anyway, the problem is not where their funding comes from — it’s their science. Sally Fallon (WAPF founder) and her co-author Mary Enig, WAPF board member Dr. Joe Mercola, Stephen Byrnes, and other WAPF authors use quack science to promote their agenda, and yet most people can’t distinguish between good and bad science. When they make claims about Eskimo diets being entirely meat and fat based, that sounds reasonable to most people, who don’t realize that you can’t just observe a people and make conclusions that are then generalized to other populations, or that the Inuit Greenlanders had the shortest life expectancy of any indigenous North Americans and high cancer rates (read more). Most people don’t understand how empirical science is done, and so don’t understand why criticism by the WAPF’s Chris Masterjohn of The China Study is a misinterpretation of the evidence.

Don’t take my word for it. Read the links above, become informed, weigh the evidence. Ask for the results of actual peer-reviewed studies, instead of relying on scientific-sounding arguments.

One of the most-repeated of WAPF’s myths about soy is that it contains dangerous estrogens that will cause cancer, man boobs, and a host of other health problems. So I thought it would be good to clear this up.

There is no evidence that eating soy causes any of the problems caused by raised levels of estrogen (a hormone that’s already naturally in our bodies).

The confusion that WAPF plays on is that soy contains a natural, non-steroidal compound called phytoestrogens — but actually many other plants and plant foods contain phytoestrogens too, including flaxseeds, sesame seeds, hummus, garlic, peanuts, and more.

Phytoestrogens are not estrogens, and though they might be similar, they have completely different effects on the human body. They do not affect the sperm count or concentration in men, nor do they affect the size of your testicles or volume of ejaculate (more). Note: A small-scale, preliminary study by Harvard researcher Jorge Chavarro found that processed soy might have some effect on sperm counts of obese men, but even Chavarro cautioned that nothing conclusive has been found (more).

Phytoestrogens don’t cause breast cancer in women (more).

Soy infant formula, while not nearly as good as human breast milk, is safe (more and more).

As you can see, I’ve linked to a few peer-reviewed studies that look at actual evidence, not pseudo-scientific arguments. There are many more that are easily found via Google. If you read or hear people making claims about soy and estrogen, ask for the sources, and ask that they be peer-reviewed studies.

In a word: no.

While I won’t claim that soy is a magic bullet for getting healthy, it also doesn’t have the dangers that WAPF and others claim it does. In fact, there is no evidence for any of those claims. I won’t get into all the claims, but just touch on a couple of the prevalent:

1. FALSE: Soy inhibits the digestion of nutrients (anti-nutrients). It’s true that soy, like many plants, have anti-nutrients — but when you cook, ferment, soak, roast, or sprout these plants, you do away with the anti-nutrients. From Dr. Andrew Weil: “There is no scientific data suggesting that soy consumption leads to mineral deficiency in humans.” (more) Fallon, Enig, and the other WAPF writers have failed to provide any evidence at all for this claim (more).

2. FALSE: Soy increases the risk of cancer. In fact, the evidence shows just the opposite. The Health Professionals Follow-up Study found a 70% reduction in prostate cancer for men who consume soy milk daily. The American Institute for Cancer Research, in collaboration with the World Cancer Research Fund, issued a major report in 1997 that analyzed more than 4,500 research studies, with more than 120 contributors and peer reviewers, including those from the World Health Organization, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the International Agency on Research in Cancer, and the U.S. National Cancer Institute. The report said that “Phytoestrogens are found in high concentrations in soya beans, and have been shown in vitro to exhibit a plethora of different anti-cancer effects, including inhibiting proliferation.” The report found some evidence that soy protects against stomach and prostate cancers. In 2000, Riva Bitrum, the President of Research for the American Institute for Cancer Research, said that “Studies showing consistently that just one serving a day of soyfoods contributes to a reduction in cancer risk are encouraging. Consuming one serving of soyfoods is a step most individuals would not find too difficult to take.” For healthy women, according to the American Institute for Cancer Research, “even two or three servings a day of soyfoods should be fine as one part of a mostly plant-based diet.” (more)

3. FALSE: Soy causes (insert scare claim here: Alzheimer’s, birth defects, etc.). There isn’t any evidence for any of the scare claims that originate from WAPF. I’m not going to argue them all, but I urge you to read these articles from John Robbins, Dr. Neil Barnard, Syd Baumel, and Dr. Joel Fuhrman — they contain many more sources than I could list here, and they’re based on actual evidence.

4. Legitimate concerns. Like most foods (meat, milk, peanuts, nuts, berries, chocolate, etc.), there are people with certain conditions that should be more careful. None of the legitimate concerns about soy are causes for alarm. Some people are allergic to soy. There is conflicting evidence about soy’s effect on women who already have breast cancer — some evidence suggests that it might be beneficial, but it’s not conclusive. If you already have a thyroid disorder, excess soy consumption (more than a couple times a day) could affect thyroid function (more). Genetically modified soybeans (common in the U.S. because of Monsanto) are not as healthy as organic soybeans — try to eat organic more than not. Soy formula for infants is less healthy than human breastmilk (as is milk-based formula) — though decades of people brought up on soy formula as babies have shown no ill effects. Still, human breastmilk is much better. Again, none of these legitimate concerns is anything to be scared about — most people can eat soy a few times a day with no effects, according to the overwhelming mass of evidence, and even those who might have a concern can eat some amounts of soy with no problems.

I honestly don’t care if you do or not. My general recommendation is to eat mostly real, whole foods — veggies, fruits, nuts, beans, seeds, a moderate amount of whole grains. I don’t eat meat or dairy for ethical reasons, but if you do eat meat, you should limit your intake of red meat (many studies have shown the health risks of red meat).

But soy has been eaten in moderation for centuries, and as I said above, has not been shown to be unhealthy. It can be included in a healthy diet — tofu, some soy milk, whole soy beans, tempeh can all be good for you if you mix them in with the other real foods I mentioned above. Soymilk is basically whole soy beans soaked in water and squeezed to produce a milky liquid, and tempeh is actual soybeans fermented.

I would be cautious about overly processed soy foods — processed soy protein — just as I would any other processed foods. Meaning, don’t be afraid of them, but don’t make them a major part of your diet. Eat real foods instead. And organic is healthier.

As a last note to doubters: I welcome your doubt — it’s important not to take my word as final. But instead of rebutting me with scientific-sounding arguments, show me the peer-reviewed studies. And not just one study, as no one study will be proof of anything — show me the mass of research that’s been done. When you look at the entirety of the research that has been done on soy, the evidence is overwhelmingly clear. I’d love to see someone show otherwise.
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Why the truth will out but doesn’t sink in

Bin Laden used a woman as a human shield and fired at the commando team sent to kill him – at least according to the first reports. These have just been corrected to say he was unarmed and standing alone, but the retractions follow a useful pattern – media friendly version first, accurate version later – because the updates make little impact on our beliefs.

In this particular case, I can’t speculate why the corrections came as they did. Maybe it was genuinely the ‘fog of war’ that led to mistaken early reports, but the fact that the media friendly version almost always appears first in accounts of war is likely, at least sometimes, to be a deliberate strategy.

Research shows that even when news reports have been retracted, and we are aware of the retraction, our beliefs are largely based on the initial erroneous version of the story. This is particularly true when we are motivated to approve of the initial account.

Psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky has been studying this effect for several years and not just with abstract test material. Here’s a summary of his study study on retracted reports of the Iraq war:

Media coverage of the 2003 Iraq War frequently contained corrections and retractions of earlier information. For example, claims that Iraqi forces executed coalition prisoners of war after they surrendered were retracted the day after the claims were made. Similarly, tentative initial reports about the discovery of weapons of mass destruction were all later disconfirmed.

We investigated the effects of these retractions and disconfirmations on people’s memory for and beliefs about war-related events in two coalition countries (Australia and the United States) and one country that opposed the war (Germany). Participants were queried about (a) true events, (b) events initially presented as fact but subsequently retracted, and (c) fictional events.

Participants in the United States did not show sensitivity to the correction of misinformation, whereas participants in Australia and Germany discounted corrected misinformation. Our results are consistent with previous findings in that the differences between samples reflect greater suspicion about the motives underlying the war among people in Australia and Germany than among people in the United States.

More recent studies have supported the remarkable power of first strike news. The emotional impact of the first version has little influence on its power to persuade after correction, and the misinformation still has an effect even when it is remembered more poorly than the retraction.

Even explicitly warning people that they might be misled doesn’t dispel the lingering impact of misinformation after it has been retracted.

So while the latest reports say Bin Laden was alone and unarmed, the majority of people are likely to believe he was firing from behind a human shield, even when they can remember the corrections.

And if this isn’t being used as a deliberate strategy to manage public opinion, I shall eat my kevlar hat.

Link to Iraq was misinformation study DOI.
pdf of full text.
Link to related 2007 WashPost piece on the persistence of myths.

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