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Wanna know where we’re going? Well, it’s not a pretty picture!

Yesterday I read a peer-reviewed article in a reputable journal penned by a respected researcher. The article was centered on demonstrating that depression results from chronic inflammation both in the brain and in peripheral (distant) sites of the body. The latter subsequently triggers the inflammation in the brain through “signalling”. A strong case was made for this, based on human clinical studies as well as on animal studies (you don’t wanna know what they did!).

But here’s the rub: A very similar study was performed several years ago which was not even referenced. In that latter day study they had considered and incorporated the obvious converse of inflammation causing depression... that depression due to environmental circumstances may precipitate chronic inflammation in the body – both in the brain and in peripheral organs and tissues. This effect of depression appears to be mediated primarily by the traits of subjective hopelessness and helplessness, spiraling into a sense of personal irrelevance.

It is expected that prior to undertaking such a study and reporting on it in the medical literature, one has completed a comprehensive literature review of all the relevant components of mind states and its association with chronic inflammation. As you’ve gleaned, there is a perpetuating cycle of influence wherein chronic inflammation may precipitate depression and depression in turn has been shown to initiate chronic inflammation – a relationship which would have been apparent to any researcher that had reviewed the available literature.

This perturbs me greatly. Driven by the need to “publish or perish” our medical scientific literature is littered with articles that have not been adequately referenced and which also result in redundant repetition. I recall an article published several years ago describing the functions of the pre-frontal cortex of the brain. It was penned by an author named ‘Miller’ who omitted to reference an article by another author named ‘Miller’ who had written an article on the same subject thirty years prior!!

The dumbing down of scientific authors is resulting in the re-publication of articles devoid of critical context – a situation that arises from not referencing appropriate literature and consequently contributing to the increasing flotsam and jetsam of un-integrated pieces. The importance of integration is that it creates a whole new understanding of the subject which subsequently contributes to general enlightenment – we all become a little wiser! But we are facing a tsunami of silo-science – science that is restricted to single vertical silo’s as opposed to an integrated science which integrates different silo’s and thereby notches up our understanding of things to another level. This process describes the evolution of understanding as opposed to the dumbing down of cognitive function. Add to this the presence of manipulated disinformation or worse still, fraudulent information in published articles (both of which have been confirmed in many cases) and we arrive at a body of scientific information which may be distinctly dangerous.

But I’ve left the best for last ... Unabashedly the author of the article in question states at the end of the article that it was written with the assistance of ChatGBT!! There you have it. ChatGBT is writing medical articles which form the basic substrate for the training of new doctors and to provide direction for existing practitioners. Here is illustrated the glaring shortcomings of AI in this context: AI was used to populate a topic but since it cannot create integrations reflecting observations at the coal face of life (unless it was fed into its database) it failed to produce a previously validated observation of the full dynamic of depression and inflammation. In other words AI does well to enhance the content of silo’s but it is pretty ineffective in integrating different silo’s de novo. That’s where human ingenuity pips AI. But ... if we continue to prostrate ourselves before the altar of AI we will inevitably produce whole generations of silo-based zombi’s sans human ingenuity. Integration and resultant cognitive evolution will be relegated to the trash heap of the failed Human Spirit.