D Waters wrote:

> The patient appears disheveled, he walks with a slightly ataxic gait,
> he appears agitated and confused, there is an odor of alcohol on his
> breath, his thought processes are difficult to follow, he is unable
> to subtract 7s serially from 100, he whispers to himself and glances
> over his shoulder frequently, his speech is loud and pressured, he
> picks constantly at his clothing, and so on.

How can anything valid be determined about a person's behavior while
he's drunk?

> Suffice to say that for two of the three psychiatric diagnoses—mania
> and major depression—interrater reliability was better between the
> psychiatrists than it was among the radiologists in the first study.

They should have compared the physicians' diagnoses to those made by lay
people picked off the street. The lay people will be no match to the
radiologists, they can't even pronounce the words. But every
streetsweeper can diagnose schizophrenia and depression just as well as
a psychiatrist can. It takes no special expertise to see that someone is
crazy or depressed. But the psychiatrist goes one step further. He
claims to be able to remedy the situation. This is untrue. He can't.

Mira