Letter to the Editor

As promised in my review of Pinker's "Enlightment Now".

Reading "Enlightenment Now" by Steven Pinker, I came across a reference to Betteridge’s Law of Headlines: Any headline that ends in a question mark can be answered with the word no. This was in reference to a 2006 NIH study titled “Is There an Epidemic of Child or Adolescent Depression?” Answer, no. The study concluded "there is no evidence for an increased prevalence of child or adolescent depression over the past 30 years."

I was surprised the very next day, April 11, to see on Page 1 of the Living section the headline "Is there a child, teen mental health crisis in the US?" The author, syndicated psychologist John Rosemond, answered "yes". His evidence: "Today's child by age 16, is five to 10 times - depending on the source - more likely to experience a prolonged emotional crisis than was a child raised in the 1950s. For example, ..."

OK, he's going to tell us about some of those sources, right? Wrong! Instead we get a worthless anecdote: "For example, I do not remember, nor have I ever run into a person my age who remembers a high school classmate committing suicide."

We are all now concerned with fake news. I rely on the Herald-Leader to fact-check what it prints. I guess with syndicated columnists, they are like a pig in a poke? Regardless, in matters of public health and science, data and evidence are what matter, not opinion and anecdotes. Rosemond's lack of data and evidence should have been noted.