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Canadian Blood Services Promotes Pseudoscience
trianglecat writes "The not-for-profit agency Canadian Blood Services has a section of their website based on the Japanese cultural belief of ketsueki-gata, which claims that a person's blood group determines or predicts their personality type. Disappointing for a self-proclaimed 'science-based' organization. The Ottawa Skeptics, based in the nation's capital, appear to be taking some action."
I've run across several things from Japan that are either science not supported elsewhere or pseudo-science, depending on -- well, on which you believe.
There's 10 times more schizophrenia in the US than Japan. Environment? Cultural? No, books. The diagnostic criteria used in Japan is far more stringent, with 90% of what we'd call schizophrenia being called something else by them. How do you tell who's right? Either by where you're standing, or by knowing a lot more about schizophrenia than anyone else on the planet, because both are based on correct but incomplete science, thus conflicting results.
In EEG research Japanese studies often include analysis of 'midline frontal theta', and hardly anyone other than them ever does. It's there, but western research only notes the existence. Japanese science claims it correlates to personality and clinical diagnoses. There are other constructs they include in studies that are otherwise complete and correct in western terms, most of them also relate to the same personality construct.
Here's where culture shoulders in. The clinical construct so often studied in Japanese science is that of 'extroversion'. In western science that's one end of a range, the other being introversion. In western culture the latter is more often a social problem, being related to shyness and to that ubiquitous fear, speaking in public. If anything, extroversion is preferred here. In Japan, where the culture of conformity can be described with the phrase "the nail that stands out gets pounded down", introversion is closer to successful cultural adaptation than its opposite.
Related, when researchers started looking at the perceptual crossover effect called synesthesia, they were amazed to find that it did not exist in Japan. When neurological evidence was found explaining its nature, they started to wonder why Japanese did not have this unusual wiring. When they went to study it experimentally, they included a test to check for non-conscious manifestations of synesthesia. Lo and behold, the Japanese have this just as often as everyone else. But they deny it and claim nothing unusual happens. Far be it from the Japanese to go around admitting to being different.
I personally have a beef with the construct 'personality' and how it's studied. But the research constantly shows something there, and biochemical testing does support some of it. In our tobacco and Parkinson's studies we examined monoamine oxidase activation in the mitochondria of platelets. That's the stuff that deactivates dopamine, epinephrine, norepinephrine, serotonin and a few other neurotransmitters prior to recycling. Differenes in MAO activation mean differences in the amount of those chemicals, and so a difference in brain operation. Now this is nuts and bolts stuff I can wrap my pragmatic methodologist's head around. Hell yes there's scientific backing. NIH's National Library of Medicine database PubMed http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez shows about 150 if you simply search for "blood mao personality". With other search terms related to blood or its components, and personality one can probably get a good idea that personality is based in the physical body, and can sometimes be detected in blood.
But ABO typing related to personality? Preposterous. So don't go to PubMed, don't put the three words "blood type personality" into the search term bar, and don't look through over 1,000 results, 75 of which are reviews covering up to decades of research and 175 having free full text available should one want to not read any of the actual work done. That's what today's "skeptic" does. Rather than researching claims to see if there's support, they simply criticize, often using derogatory language. It is not skepticism to assume one is correct and someone else wrong. That's pre-judging, the latin term often used being a direct translation of that: prejudice. There's safety in ignorance -- it makes one correct, and skeptics seem to need to be correct
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
People all over the world take age/maturity serious.
How come the amount of revolutions the earth gives around the sun can determine if you are eligible for drinking, having sex or driving?