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Old Jul 17, 2009 | 1:44 pm
  #49  
Mats
All eyes on you!
20 Years on Site
 
Join Date: Sep 2001
Location: Arizona, USA
Posts: 2,422
Okay, let's try applying the same screening credentials to medicine.

"Here is a machine that can test for glioblastoma, an extremely rare form of cancer. I can't tell you how it works--that's secret. I have no data to show that this machine is effective, safe, sensitive, or specific. Let's make everyone go through the machine."

Although I could go on for days about this, screening technologies rely on specific criteria: it has to be a common enough disease, the screening test has to be sensitive and specific, the test has to be acceptable to the study population, and so on.

Here we have a screening test for a very rare "disease." The test has no published data, yet the test is in widespread use. From a scientific perspective: social, behavioral, medical, or hard sciences... this is unacceptable.

It's well worth reading Anne Murphy Paul's "The Cult of Personality." It's about personality testing and its misuse. It's very much analogous to behavioral detection.
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