Centerfield

Accurate Versus Effective

School chief wants to nix anti-drug program

I expected this story to suggest the opportunity to discuss making the choice between being accurate and being effective, as discussed in the thread below related to Schneider's green quote. If there's any domain where you can convince people that the ends justifies almost any means, its drug ed policy.

But reading it made we wonder if there was a hidden axe grinding. I'm not a defender of Scientology, but it sounded like many of the sample claims of inaccuracy were at least based in truth. To my knowledge, fat can at least store toxins which may be harmfully released later under certain circumstances, although presumedly compounds like LSD get metabolized, not stored as ingested. Chris?

I also wondered about this:

Among other findings, the panel determined that Narconon also incorrectly told students that the amount of a drug taken determines whether it acts as a stimulant or sedative, and that drugs "ruin creativity and dull senses."

My sense is that these ideas might be debatable, especially when scientific accuracy collides with naive understanding of words as used in their everyday sense. Stimulants and sedatives are classes determined by physiological manifestation which does not necessarily correspond to outward and emotional manifestations. For example, alcohol to my knowledge is classed as a depressant, which may be true physiologically but fails to encompass the obvious fact that alcohol manifests itself to many people as stimulating over the near term even though it does later manifest depressively. And the duration of such stages may depend on level of intake. Whether drugs "ruin creativity and dull senses" is in some cases manifestly true, and over the long term comes pretty close to being inevitably true, as anyone who has ever watched Behind the Music knows. :-)

I'm going to guess that this story has legs. I'm ready to sit back and watch the show. Take a drink every time someone shakes their fist. :-)