But Nemeroff is also a touchstone in reverse. Not only can we learn about X and Y by seeing how they react to Nemeroff, we can also learn about X and Y by seeing how Nemeroff reacts to them.
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That Nemeroff likes these ideas suggests they are wrong. Supporting what I’ve said earlier.

@Seth

I would advise caution in drawing this type of conclusion. You are falling prey to the anti-expert fallacy. Nemeroff liking those ideas and those ideas being wrong (or right) are in fact, independent of one another.

Allow me to illustrate:

From Bryson’s A Short History of Nearly Everything:

In one of his last professional acts before his death in 1955, -A FAMOUS SCIENTIST- wrote a short but glowing foreword to a book by a geologist named Charles Hapgood entitled “Earth’s Shifting Crust: A Key to Some Basic Problems of Earth Science”. Hapgood’s book was a steady demolition of the idea that continents were in motion. In a tone that all but invited the reader to join him in a tolerant chuckle, Hapgood observed that a few gullible souls had noticed “an apparent correspondence in shape between certain continents.” It would appear, he went on, “that South America might be fitted with Africa, and so on….It is even claimed that rock formations on opposite sides of the Atlantic match. Mr. Hapgood briskly dismissed any such notions, noting that the geologists K.E. Caster and J.C. Mendes had done extensive fieldwork on both sides of the Atlantic and had established beyond question that no such similarities existed. Goodness knows what outcrops Messrs. Caster and Mendes had looked at, because in fact many of the rock formations on both sides of the Atlantic are the same– not just very similar but the same.

If that was all you knew about this famous scientist, is that he endorsed a book that erroneously attempted to invalidate the theory of plate tectonics, and you followed your line of reasoning, you would think this person’s judgement suspect and likely wrong on many other important ideas, no? And perhaps he is.

But for record, the person who endorsed Hapgood’s book and ideas was none other than Albert Einstein.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Hapgood

The latter are almost as useful as the former. After you’ve identified an Oracle of Wrong, then when in doubt you just do the opposite of what they recommend.

Brain imaging, genome analysis and proprietary pharmacotherapy are the way to go according to Nemeroff and those owning the current paradigm of medicine. He and his colleagues foresee a future in which the tools become more and more complex and the treatments more expensive and toxic. I suggest that correcting and balancing the CNS neurotransmitters will be the future. Simple, cheap and safe, precursors of dopamine and serotonin can correct craving and neuropsychiatric disorders; but Glaxo and Nemeroff will be redundant when this is recognized.

1. http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/General/occam.html