Is psychiatry a science?

by Russ Roberts on May 31, 2010

The latest EconTalk is an interview with Louis Menand on the state of psychiatry. One thing that emerges from our conversation is the parallels between macroeconomics and psychiatry. Understanding causation in a complex system is difficult. Both the brain and the economy are hard to model and it’s hard to know when an intervention has actually made a difference. Menand is a superb writer (the podcast draws on a recent review article he did in the New Yorker) and a very good talker as well.