> What is bad faith is to tell people not to look at the contradictory results. If you choose not to look at results that don’t confirm your view, then of course you will think there is a consensus.
The only person who has told anyone not to look at anything is you. If you can find somewhere where I am telling people not to look at things, then you might have a point.
> My primary goal here is to demonstrate publicly that you're an uninformed crank who doesn't know the subject,
Inspector Javert enters stage right!
> so that parents don't deny potentially life-changing medication to their kids.
Noble, but you haven’t demonstrated that. You’ve made some unsubstantiated claims to your own expertise on the subject but otherwise you are just another commenter on the internet, who is a strong advocate for medications.
You say, ‘potentially life changing’, and of course there are people who have that experience. But you say potentially, because it would be a lie to claim certainty.
> lower rates of substance abuse in adulthood, higher rates of academic achievement (as in graduation rates/highest level of degree attained), visible normalization of volume in areas of the prefrontal cortex associated with executive functioning compared to healthy controls.
None of which can be attributed directly to the effects of medication. Substance abuse and lower executive function are well established sequelae of adverse childhood experiences.
It’s fairly easy to see that if drugs make kids easier for schools and families to manage, then they will have fewer adverse experiences, so there is a causal pathway that supports this outcome.
And frankly if you as a family can’t handle an ADHD kid, or find suitable education for them, such that you won’t end up problematizing them, then indeed medications will be a benefit.
Nobody is questioning that.
However a singleminded focus on medication, a denial of the trade-offs, and a refusal to consider the context, means we can only look at it from this dismal perspective, and renders us incapable of recognizing that medication is not in fact positive for everyone with ADHD.
We know that there is a wide range of different relationships to medication use chosen by diagnosed adults. By no means all of them choose to use it as their only tool, or even at all.
I know you are focused on defending medication, but I think you’re doing so to the exclusion of every other consideration, and it’s not clear why.