Logical Fallacies and Misinterpretations that Hinder Progress in Translational Addiction Neuroscience

Substance use disorders (SUDs) are heterogenous and complex, making the development of translationally predictive rodent and non-human primate models to uncover their neurobehavioral underpinnings difficult. Neuroscience-focused outcomes have become highly prevalent, and with this, the notion that SUDs are disorders of the brain embraced as a dominant theoretical orientation to understand SUD etiology and treatment. These efforts, however, have led to few efficacious pharmacotherapies, and in some cases (as with cocaine or methamphetamine), no pharmacotherapies have translated from preclinical models for clinical use. In this review and theoretical commentary, we first describe the development of animal models of SUDs from a historical perspective. We then define and discuss three logical fallacies including 1) circular explanation, 2) affirming the consequent, and 3) reification that can apply to developed models. We then provide three case examples in which conceptual or logical issues exist in common methods (i.e., behavioral economic demand, escalation, and reinstatement). Alternative strategies to refocus behavioral models are suggested for the field in an attempt to better bridge the translational divide between animal models and the clinical condition of SUDs.

Central Sensitization: Explanation or Phenomenon?

Central sensitization (CS) is a popular concept that is frequently used to explain pain hypersensitivity in a large number of pain conditions. However, the concept of CS is now also increasingly used to explain nonpain symptoms. In the present commentary, we argue that CS, as defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain, refers to changes in nociceptive neurons only and therefore cannot be applied to enhanced responses to stimuli other than nociceptive and/or pain. Moreover, the evidence for CS in widespread pain (other than secondary hyperalgesia) and many other conditions is scarce to absent. As a consequence, CS is a descriptive label for the explanandum rather than an explanation and, as such, suffers the risk of being a circular explanation. Finally, cognitive and emotional factors should also be considered as potential mechanisms for the wide range of phenomena that are currently interpreted as evidence for CS.

BEWARE THE CONVINCING EXPLANATION

Most advice for sharpening our thinking skills concerns how to avoid bad arguments. But argument is only one of the two basic forms of reasoning. The other is explanation, and it is equally susceptible to abuse. You may already be familiar with certain forms of explanatory malfeasance. One of the best known is circular explanation, in which the stated cause is just a different way of describing the effect. (Why did we lose the match? Because our opponents scored more goals.) Here I'd like to introduce you to a less appreciated error of explanation. To my knowledge it has no widely accepted name, but I call it ‘the convincing explanation’.

Charisma and Integration: an Eighteenth-century North American Case

The renewed interest in the phenomenon of charisma, which was first given coherent conceptual form by Max Weber, shows little sign of abating. It is probably the most easily comprehensible, possibly the most popular and certainly the most dramatic model which can be utilized in interdisciplinary studies. Moreover, the theory has the apparent attractiveness of enabling students to intensively study one leader and his movement and then draw more general conclusions about that leader's impact on the society in which he operated. In an article written in 1966, Claude Ake gave a timely warning to practitioners who made grandiose deductions from evidence about one leader and then drew firm conclusions about his total society. In particular, Ake, at one stage in his critique, pointed out the fallacy of assuming that charisma usually implies integration of a previously decentralized, regionalized or fragmented society. As Ake correctly noted, this is unenlightening, unanalytical reasoning since ‘the theory seeks to explain how solidarity may be forged [by a charismatic leader]; but it does so by means of a concept which assumes the existence of solidarity’, thus producing ‘a circular explanation of integration’.