Randy Nesse
@RandyNesse
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A founder of the field of evolutionary medicine, now encouraging psychiatry to find its missing foundation in evolutionary biology.
Tucson, AZ
Joined March 2009
@robkhenderson Perhaps you are not familiar with the USA where families seemingly routinely hire lawyers to blame surgeons
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Richard Lewontin in 1974 describing a human tendency that obstructs scientific progress...and much else.
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@wakinyjan @AllenFrancesMD Evolutionary psychology tries to explain how natural selection shaped minds and how behavior influences fitness. Evolutionary psychiatry tries to explain why natural selection left minds vulnerable to disorders. It is a subfield of evolutionary medicine.
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It is wonderful to see attention to the possibility that ADHD characteristics may not have been deleterious in ancestral environments. However, suggesting that ADHD is an adaptation risks making the most common and serious error in evolutionary psychiatry: Viewing Disorders As Adaptations (VDAA). Advantages associated with a disorder can instead be understood as products of tradeoffs. Individuals with a trait value that deviates from the population mean are expected to be at a net disadvantage but to also have some advantages. The advantages and disadvantages can vary greatly depending on the environment. Groups may benefit from having some individuals with extreme traits, but benefits to groups cannot explain traits that decrease individual inclusive fitness. All would be so much simpler if we did not have to deal with the possibility that some individuals with ADHD have a disease that would harm fitness in any environment and others have a condition that causes problems only in modern environments. @AllenFrancesMD #EvolutionaryPsychiatry
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All of this is separate from the odiousness of many of the goals and recognition that moving fast and breaking things is a strategy. What is lacking is any thoughtful analysis of the origins of problems and the consequences of attempts to solve them.
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TODAY is the day to submit your abstract! (Well, Monday would still work, but why wait?)
Submit your abstracts now! ISEMPH 2025 will be in Nashville, Tennessee, hosted by the beautiful Vanderbilt University. It's promising to be spectacular! Details and abstract submission here: @EvolutionVU
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I posted about the Feb 3 abstract deadline for the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health July meeting in Nashville but only a few have seen it... perhaps academics and scientists are all elsewhere now. Please repost-and submit!
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I started off as an eclectic psychiatrist who customized a combination of methods and treatments appropriate for each individual. But my patients wanted simple name-brand treatments that corresponded to simple causes. And my department make it clear that eclectic psychiatry was a career dead end. Therapies split into competing factions for the same reasons as religions and political parties. But you are right as usual, @AllenFrancesMD, that the best therapists offer flexible approaches in the framework of a strong personal therapeutic relationship. To do that requires transcending the artificial boundaries academic training imposes. The only solution I see is to provide all clinicians with an evolutionary framework that can support all methods. #evolutionarypsychiatry
I strongly believe all therapists should stop rigidly following any 1 school & instead should integrate techniqies from wide variety of different useful approaches. Now! No Excuses. It's only way to be competent/flexible therapist meeting wide range of differing patient needs.
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The abstract deadline is Feb 3 for the 10th annual meeting of the International Society for Evolution, Medicine, and Public Health in Nashville July 8-10. Join us! Great talks, wonderful people, good food and music. #EvMed @ISEMPH @UmEhap @sse_evolution @UMichEEB @UAZHealth @evmed_ch @TriCEM_NC @Pitt_CEBaM
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Evolutionary psychiatry does not take positions on such issues.
Absolutely stimulating 🤩! @RealAdamHunt I dream of studying this in your institute on #evolutionary #psychiatry. #neurodiversity @FranckRamus @GuidaLavielle @nikitakarachoi @primalpoly @RandyNesse @CoralieChevall1 @stdebove @sapinker @sbaroncohen @RiadhAbed1 @paulbloomatyale
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RT @DisavowTrump20: 🚨NEW: Mike Bloomberg and other philanthropists will cover America's financial obligations to the UN climate framework u…
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I fear the DOGE boys think efficiency just means cheap. Hope not, so many other values are valuable!
Efficiency performs endless mutations—now time, now money, now speed, now productivity, now lay-offs, now accountability, now market share, now GDP. But the paradox of efficiency is that it can't exist without inefficiency.
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@RealAdamHunt Good thoughts, Adam. But every disease studied turns out to be heritable including those that strike earlier in life such as TB, pneumonia, etc. Finding out why the genes persist is a great and important challenge, but benefits offered by diseases themselves seems unlikely to me
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