Hyderabad: The assumption that air pollution leads to bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and depression is a direct example of pseudoscience, said psychiatrists and neurologists while reacting to a report published in PLOS Biology, a peer reviewed journal from the United States.
The journal is now facing a severe backlash from academics and medical professionals who state that a casual association has been drawn between air pollution and mental disorders from invalid observations.
Dr Minhaj Nasirabadi, professor and head, department of psychiatry, Deccan College of Medical Sciences exp-lained, “Neuropsychia-tric disorders are due to a continuous development process. Multiple genes at multiple times of development affect the neuro development process and wherever there are faults, it results in the onset of mental disorders. To state that air pollutants impact and produce disease is a hypothesis. There is no rigorous data to prove it as of now.”
The journal report has a very poor data set and too many variables have been omitted. There have also been too many coarse and confusing variables included where there is a potential bias noticed which is a perfect example of social science a.k.a pseudoscience paper, stated consultant psychiatrist Dr Bhaskar Mukherjee.
Doctors state that there is no proper data yet to establish the fact that air pollution can cause mental disorders and these wrongful publications create a lot of confusion.
Dr Minhaj Nasirabadi, professor and head department of psychiatry Deccan College of Medical Sciences, said neuropsychiatric disorders are due to continuous development process.
“Multiple genes at multiple times of development affect the neuro development process. Wherever there is a fault, it results in the onset of mental disorders. To state that air pollutants impact and produce the disease is a hypothesis. There is no rigorous data to prove it as of now. If it can be proved in the future we will have to wait and see,” Dr Nasirabadi said.
The journal report has very poor data set and too many variables have been omitted. There have been too many coarse and confusing variables included where there is a potential bias noticed which is a perfect example of social science a.k.a pseudoscience paper, stated consultant psychiatrist Dr Bhaskar Mukherjee.
The doctors state that there is no proper data yet to establish the fact that air pollution can cause mental disorders and these wrongful publications merely create a lot of confusion. To counter these wrongful claims there is excess energy which has to be put up stated academics as the young learning minds are at crossroads due to these unscientific claims.
