Tracing an unsatisfactory article about ADHD

[hollyduck]

Over the past few months I set up a Google News alert for several topics that interest me. One of them is the phrase "attention deficit", and I get one to five "hits" most days.

The past week or two I have been getting daily hits on this article: The piece begins:

Attention Deficit Disorder

Attention Deficit Disorder Affects You In Childhood And Can Continue Even Into Your Adult Years

Attention deficit disorder or ADD for short is a condition that is psychosomatic and it is mostly seen to be a problem with learning as well as disorders related to behavior, and it is mostly diagnosed as a problem with children though it is more commonly found to affect male infants than females. In fact, attention deficit disorder is known to begin during childhood though it can even affect a person in his or her adult years, and it is characterized with anti-social behavior, which however are absent in children suffering from the problem.

"Psychosomatic"? That was the word that really annoyed me, partly because it's not true (there is a real underlying physical deficiency in ADHD) and because very often the word "psychosomatic" is a code word for "fake".

There are several other related articles at this site, which I am guessing is simply a target site for drawing hits to the advertisements garlanded around all four edges of the main page. ADHD is a definite target of interest right now, and I don't mind except I wish the uncredited authors of the pieces had done a better job of research and writing.

Of course, there's a lot of unsatisfactory stuff on the net, no way to avoid it. But that didn't explain why I why was I getting so many hits in my daily news alerts.

This search [http://www.google.com/search?q=%22fo...g%22&filter=0] showed me why I was getting so many hits. Everybody and his dog has been nabbing it and reprinting it on their own sites.

On the original site, it was printed first in August of 2008, four months ago. Since then it's been reprinted at least 35 times.

www.attentiondeficitdisorder.info/ [originating site]
http://www.electkatejackson.com/demo...cial-concerns/
www.electkatejackson.com/
www.friendsofpaulstewart.com/
www.frontiersofip.org/business-practices/1020
www.frontiersofip.org/
www.ubssa.net/
www.haganshospitality.com/
http://www.familyandkids.info/attent...icit-disorder/
www.maxshrapnel.com/
www.templaterate.com/
http://www.attention-deficit-disorde...ssment/page/2/
http://www.attention-deficit-disorde...008/04/page/2/
vacation.prodstore.com/vacation/vacation.php [and 14 others from the same originating site]
attention-deficit-disorder.newhealthexchange.com/.../attention-deficit-disorder-affects-you-in-childhood-and-can-contin.
technorati.com/blogs/www.spaceshotal.com
http://www.thehealthcarecenter.com/a..._disorder.html
www.statssheet.com/articles/article60353.html

As we can see, most of these sites have also used the original article as a lure, to sites selling vacations, business advice, a student paper or blog, or their own approach (herbal, psychological or whatever) to ADHD treatment. I didn't find any that had an author name attached. On reading it again, I suspect English was not the author's first language.

Why am I writing about this? First, because the information itself is not reliable or well written, and secondly because in the space of 4 months it has spread all over the place. I offer this snapshot to help you, if you are researching ADHD, to show you that you need to judge what you read and expect some websites and articles to be fake or unreliable information, there only as an eye-catcher.

Ducky

[prtsimmons]

That was a good piece of research. It's very interesting to see how misinformation seems to grow and spread, almost of its own accord, on the Internet.

I'm not sure what bothers me more: the crappy ADHD information, or the fact that anyone would re-print such a badly written article. That first sentence, alone, should be a warning sign that this article was not written by somebody with the ability to do any research or fact-checking.

Please don't read this as an attack on anyone's writing ability on this forum. A post to a forum, or an e-mail to a friend, doesn't need to be gramatically perfect - if you get your point across, you have succeeded. Professional writers, on the other hand, should take pride in their craft - and that means grammar- and fact-checking. (A real writer would also take pride in accountability - an article with no author or source is about as useful as no article at all.)

[WarPhalange]

I hate it when people use "anti-social" to mean someone is not social. "Anti-social" is basically only a step away from being a sociopath. It's not common at all.

Diagnostic criteria

Originally Posted by Wikipedia

Three or more of the following are required:^[1]

1. Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest;
2. Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure;
3. Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead;
4. Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults;
5. Reckless disregard for safety of self or others;
6. Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations;
7. Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.

Also, ADD is in infants? How do they find that out?

People will be idiots. There is no way to stop that. The worst part about it is that their stupidity infects otherwise smart people and they start believing garbage.

EDIT: Something just came to my mind. Do we have some sort of Scientology watch here? Those guys blatantly state that they think psychiatry is a scam. I wouldn't be surprised if they had something to do with this. They have a lot of money and will stoop very low to achieve their goals.