Comment by dlcarrier | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dlcarrier | Hacker News Reader

When the APA elected Philip Zimbardo, creator of the infamous Stanford Prison Experiment (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment#Cri...), as their president (https://www.apa.org/about/governance/president/bio-philip-zi...) they lost my trust. He came up with a hypothesis on human behavior, then did everything he could to force the data to reflect that, including coercing volunteers into torturing each other.

His whole career revelved around promoting strategies for policing and incarceration that clearly don't work, and the APA celebrated him for it. They have a huge bias toword the notion that everyone needs their help. Problems with the DSM wouldn't matter so much, if the APA hadn't shoehorned themselves, and their bible of the DSM, into countless aspects of government and healthcare.

The DSM-5 is from the "American Psychiatric Association".

Phillip Zimbardo, and the link you linked to, are the "American Psychological Association".

These are two different associations.

Theresa Miskimen is the president of the American Psychiatric Association, not Zimbardo.

I hadn't noticed that, but they both look to be helping their members, at the cost of society in general. The American Psychological Association does have a good style guide though, so they have that going for them.

so ... apa ...the apa that writes the dsm-5, psychiatric disorders, the medical group, is the american PSYCHIATRIC assn.

the psychologists, they never went to medical school, so despite forming an organization and many publications, have little to do with diagnostic standards for medical doctors.

for clarity: THERE ARE TWO APA, the one written about in the article is not the same as the one in this comment.

There's also the American Philosophical Association.

There used to be an American Philological Association, but they decided to change their name to the "Society for Classical Studies," because most people don't know the word "philology."

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