I hope that the people who want to stop police from using this as a defense are also willing to stop murderers from using it when they are begging to not get life without parole.
Maybe, maybe not, but surely we can recognize the difference between trained, sworn, gov't-empowered law enforcement professionals and murderers, right?
Presumably a reference to the "temporary insanity" defenses used by criminal defendants to try to evade responsibility (without much success in general).
The asymmetry obviously being that arguing you shouldn't be responsible for what happens when the pharmacy runs out of your anti-psychotic medication is very different then arguing that you shouldn't be responsible for beating down some distressed mentally ill civilian when the pharmacy runs out of their anti-psychotic medication.
However, nothing about its existence implies anything about police brutality. For some reason the article thinks it needs to deny the existence of something that obviously exists in order to argue against police brutality. This is a strange logical fallacy to commit, because you can easily argue brutality is bad regardless of what substances an individual is on.
Responding to child comments, it's possible that this condition is not unique enough to require its own name and label. But in that case, one can simply refer to the effects of doses of the given stimulants themselves, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Adverse_effect....
Please note I'm not making any claim that brutality is okay or ever justified, just that there obviously does exist strong psychological and physical conditions that occur when an individual is on doses of very strong stimulants.
From the Wikipedia article you linked: "The condition is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association or the World Health Organization." It's under the section titled "Controversy_related_to_policing_techniques".[1]
Just because something is well-known and documented doesn't mean it's recognized as a medical or psychological condition. Sometimes it can be that medicine hasn't caught up, and sometimes it's BS.
Yes, it is controversial for being used as a justification for police brutality and having been involved in a lot of bad incidents. But the existence of it is not controversial, as it is basically a subset of affects of substances such as methamphetamine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Adverse_effect.... Does it need its own specific name and label? perhaps not, and that is part of why some organizations have not officially recognized it
Ok...but that implies these cops may be doing coke and meth on the job, since the article says that those drugs "commonly cause" it. Surely that's an even bigger problem than "excited delirium".
I think you've misunderstood, excited delirium is claimed to be present in the individual the cop is arresting, not in the police themselves. The reason they attempt to justify greater force is in order to protect themselves from someone in such a state. I'm not agreeing with this, just stating what they would say.
Have an upvote for your mature response. If more people were willing to own their mistakes instead of hiding or doubling down, the world would be a better place :-)
It's not accepted as a standard treatment, that's the key. The second key point is it's used as an excuse for violence. Same thing with pray gay away type treatments to convince men they aren't gay. Those are now illegal in many states.
Similar things, bogus classes on checking if you are high - like your eyes move in a certain way, or when driving your tire touches the white line. Cops take these classes and use them for justification. See also, pulling drivers over if they are certain minorities (driving suspiciously).
i think the issue is inventing some quasi-illness which might really be one or several other things, but conveniently describes the exact set of symptoms that can be used to justify use of force (so basically it's a way to dress up 'he was acting crazy' and sound legitimate by calling it an 'illness' when you over react)
Yes, that would have made for a much better article+title I think. They would also make a better case by mentioning cases where the substances involved do not have such effects (for example, weed) rather than methamphetamine. But with such a poor clickbait title it's too much to expect.
The thing is that there are similar substances that are not in the amphetamine class that cause similar effects . Example would be the less common experiences some people get with PCP
That date is just when the wikipedia sentence was written, probably becuase it tracks with exactly this controversy about police violence. The facts its cites about support within the medical community certainly aren't new.
I don't know why this seems so surprising to some here. The police use loopholes like everyone else does. If this gets them off the hook for borderline use of violence, of course they'll use it. If it's used inappropriately, they should stop.
That... doesn't appear to be true. It's Wikipedia, the whole history is available. Heres the page as of early/mid April: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Excited_delirium&..., which as far back as I've bothered to go, and the cited paragraph is still there.
in addition, here is the link for covering all changes on June 17, which shows that the section is question was not created or renamed on June 17, though it was substantially modified on that day : https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Excited_delirium&...
I don't know why it being substantially modified on that day would be important. Is there some significance to that date that I'm unaware of, other than it being "1 month ago today"?
> The condition is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association or the World Health Organization. Critics of excited delirium have stated that the condition is often attributed to deaths while in the custody of law enforcement and is disproportionately applied to black and Hispanic victims.
This doesn't mean that it still isn't a thing. There are plenty of very real conditions that aren't yet officially recognized but when you have the current body of experts explicitly denying its existence your burden of proof is a lot higher.
> However, nothing about its existence implies anything about police brutality.
As I read it, the article didn't seem to be implying that the existence of "excited delirium" itself implies something about police brutality. I took their argument to be that police departments' misapplication and/or overuse of the concept had led to increased instances police brutality. Not knowing anything else about this issue, it doesn't seem implausible to me that training police officers, who generally lack medical diagnostic skills, to constantly anticipate a human threat with superhuman strength and no sense of pain might lead to an increase in the use of excessive force.
WaPo:
"Police keep using ‘excited delirium’ to justify brutality. It’s junk science."
HN: ‘Excited delirium’, used by police to justify brutality, is junk science
Both of which are accurate statements of the key point: There is a body of junk science based on the concept of ‘Excited delirium’, used to justify plice brutality.
The fact that there is something referred to as ‘Excited delirium’ that is not used for police brutality or junk science, doesn't make the title clickbait.
Astrology is junk science, despite the fact that the constellations do exist and that a person is born under a certain configuration of stars ar the location of their birth.
> But in those deaths where there was no drug use and the toxicology came back negative, the only common denominator in virtually every case was the involvement of law enforcement, such as in the case of Gregory Lloyd Edwards.
> According to the autopsy report, Edwards died of "excited delirium and complications" due to "hyperactive and violent state with subsequent restraint."
> Excited delirium is a very well-known and documented phenomenon, primarily in individuals that are on excessive doses of stimulants
"Well-known and documented" by the police, I think you mean.
Did you read what you just linked?
From the wikipedia article:
> Excited delirium is not recognized by some professional medical associations.
> EXD has been accepted by the National Association of Medical Examiners and the American College of Emergency Physicians, who argue in a 2009 white paper that "excited delirium" may be described by several codes within the ICD-9.
Imma repeat that for you:
> may be described by several codes within the ICD-9
In other words, "excited delirium" is not the diagnosis a physician would give.
More from the Wikipedia article:
> How frequently cases occur is unknown.[1] Males are affected more often than females.[9] Those who die from the condition are typically male with an average age of 36.[1] Often law enforcement has used tasers or physical measures in these cases.[1]
This sounds like really solid medical science! It's totally not something made up to cover police brutality!
> The first use of the term "excited delirium" (EXD) was in a 1985 Journal of Forensic Sciences article
Oh.
> The signs and symptoms for excited delirium may include:[12][13][14][15]
> Aggressiveness and combativeness
> Unexpected strength (typically while trying to resist restraint)
Did a police officer write this?
This is probably the most scattershot Wikipedia article I've ever read about a "medical condition", but it's also pretty damn effective in shooting down the idea that this is a real thing and not just a blanket term made up to cover the deaths of people brutalized by the police. (Assuming you don't unconditionally trust the police.)
> The pathophysiology of excited delirium is unclear,
Hahahahaha, of course it's unclear.
> Key signs of excited delirium are aggression, altered mental status, and diaphoresis/hyperthermia.
Is the primary treatment beating/tasing while shouting "stop resisting"?
Read the Wikipedia article for yourself. It's one hell of a trip.
One time when I lived in Hawaii, I had snuck into an apartment’s hot tub with a girl. When leaving, I saw this massive tree of a Hawaiian man, and I’m 6’3”, so this guy was huge. This man was screaming and hitting his wife, who was trying to run away. I yelled out to distract him so she could get away. Before I could even comprehend it, he had run across the street and was right in front of me. I was a very well trained martial artist at the time and I was scared for my life, this guy was clearly high or crazy. I jumped on a ledge where he couldn’t reach me, and he ran off after the wife. I pounded on people’s doors until the cops came and saw them try to talk him down. Three cops tased him before he went down, but then he pulled them out, stood up, and punched the window out of a nearby jeep. He was eventually subdued.
A cop later told me that this was fairly common in that area, because of PCP use.
I’m amazed this guy came out of it alive because of how easily he shrugged off tasers.
How long are we going to keep ignoring the fact that statistics do not show any racial bias in police killings, and if anything they show bias against white perpetrators rather than black?
The police kill more white people in absolute terms than black people. But white people are a larger percentage of the population, so it's still disproportionately black people. But the disproportionality goes the other way if you account for the difference in violent crime rates.
Then someone could argue that the difference in violent crime rates is itself a result of racism, and someone else could argue that that is a separate question from whether the police, rather than e.g. high school guidance counselors (or just factors like parental income), are the root cause of the disparity.
By this point there is enough space between the error bars that each side can declare victory because the other side hasn't been able to prove that their position isn't within them, even though nothing has really been decided and the level of data collection and detailed analysis required to get there is more work than anybody is ever actually willing to do.
It would be nice to see one well done summary analysis of all the data that is available, including inclusion of as many as possible of reasonable "...but on the other hand..." caveats as possible. I have not once encountered a single article that even attempts this, it seems everything is written from a biased perspective.
I'm not sure that type of analysis is even possible. The more factors you want to take into account, the larger the sample size you need. But there are so many factors here that you could need a sample size which is larger than the entire US population, which is obviously not available.
It seems to me the better solution is to just solve the problems. Stop spending all day arguing about whether the criminal justice system is racist and instead do something about the fact that the US has the world's largest prison population. Do something about housing costs. Do something about barriers to starting a small business.
These problems may disproportionately affect black people, but they still affect everybody and solving them is a net benefit either way. Conditioning a solution to a problem on the existence of racism when the problem exists regardless is just drawing useless tribalist lines that get people fighting each other instead of solving things.
> I'm not sure that type of analysis is even possible. The more factors you want to take into account, the larger the sample size you need. But there are so many factors here that you could need a sample size which is larger than the entire US population, which is obviously not available.
Mostly agree. It certainly couldn't be done with perfection, as there are essentially an infinite number of discreet variables in existence, many of which we do not even know the existence of, most that we do not have measurements on (or even a way to measure them), and all these variables have inter-relations that we don't understand (or even know of), resulting in randomness of outcome making predictions even harder.
But what do we do instead? The majority of the time we look at, say, 1 to 3 variables, and then form highly confident conclusions based on this trivially and obviously (if you actually think abstractly about it) simplified perspective, all under the guise that we are discussing reality. In these discussions, we (and this also includes the bright minds here on HN) are not actually discussing reality, but rather a comically simplistic version of reality. And then on top of it, many here mock others for their "simple-minded" beliefs, when the reality is that typically a big part of the reason behind the difference is that different people have different working sets of variables, and different weighting on those variables due to holding different values. The irony is rich.
And most of this occurs in the subconscious (so they say), so even if one makes a valiant effort to think more properly, much of the truth (on how different people think differently) is hidden from not just the observer, but the person who holds the thoughts in the first place.
> It seems to me the better solution is to just solve the problems. Stop spending all day arguing about whether the criminal justice system is racist and instead do something about the fact that the US has the world's largest prison population. Do something about housing costs. Do something about barriers to starting a small business.
Mostly agree. But again, this entire process suffers from this same phenomenon (roughly, we do not know, or care, what is true), and democracies are particularly vulnerable to the problems that derive from it. I suspect this gives China a major leg up over Western powers in the coming decades - if they can stumble upon an operating model that works better (accommodates the real variables, regardless of whether they see and understand the system better than us or not), they can enforce compliance far more easily than democratic nations.
In my opinion, step 1 in improving this state of affairs is gaining an understanding of what the situation actually is (aka: doing an "appropriate" system analysis) - but even the geniuses here on HN not only cannot do that, but often become angry with anyone who even dares suggest it (as it implies that their wild-guess of a theory may not be correct - the horror).
Is the absolute root of the problem not the human mind? Outside of natural events/disasters that are not caused by man, do most all other things (beliefs, practices, culture, initiatives, resource allocation, governance decisions, you name it) not derive from the mind (or collection of minds)? And yet, how much attention do we pay to this, in any venue? Here again, I would say the advantage goes to countries that do not adhere to a scientific-materialist religion [1] like most Western peoples.
> These problems may disproportionately affect black people, but they still affect everybody and solving them is a net benefit either way. Conditioning a solution to a problem on the existence of racism when the problem exists regardless is just drawing useless tribalist lines that get people fighting each other instead of solving things.
> But what do we do instead? The majority of the time we look at, say, 1 to 3 variables, and then form highly confident conclusions based on this
Which is bad enough in general, but in this case there are political implications, so no matter what conclusion you reach from doing that, the people who want the opposite conclusion can accuse you of choosing the wrong factors and add enough of their own to lead where they prefer. If you only add factors that all point in a single direction you can reach any conclusion you want, but if you let each side keep adding factors in their favor indefinitely then you exceed the limits of statistical significance before either side runs out of factors in their favor.
But it's also important to notice that this is only a statistical problem. It means that statistics can't really tell you what happens in the aggregate, but that doesn't mean you can't investigate individual cases. If you have an email from the hiring manager saying not to hire you because you're black, you shouldn't need statistics to win that lawsuit. So if that sort of thing is prevalent then prove the individual cases, and keep doing that until it's not.
Meanwhile you solve the underlying problems which takes care of the cases you can't prove. The cops can't be murdering disproportionately many black people if the cops aren't murdering anybody whatsoever, which they shouldn't be doing for any reason racism or otherwise.
> Which is bad enough in general, but in this case there are political implications, so no matter what conclusion you reach from doing that, the people who want the opposite conclusion can accuse you of choosing the wrong factors and add enough of their own to lead where they prefer. If you only add factors that all point in a single direction you can reach any conclusion you want, but if you let each side keep adding factors in their favor indefinitely then you exceed the limits of statistical significance before either side runs out of factors in their favor.
This is my point. When people cherry pick statistics to "prove" their point, it's easy to cherry pick other statistics that disprove that point. Reality is incredibly complex, but even relatively smarter people seem unable to discuss it accordingly, and also seem unable to realize they are debating in an unintelligent/dishonest manner, *while calling their adversary in the argument "stupid". It's interesting to observe human behavior, particularly self-perception.
> But it's also important to notice that this is only a statistical problem. It means that statistics can't really tell you what happens in the aggregate, but that doesn't mean you can't investigate individual cases. If you have an email from the hiring manager saying not to hire you because you're black, you shouldn't need statistics to win that lawsuit. So if that sort of thing is prevalent then prove the individual cases, and keep doing that until it's not.
I agree - dealing with precise details of individual cases is superior. But people on both sides of "the argument" seem intent on broadcasting mistruths based on cherry picked statistics (dimensions of reality, etc), which is how we end up in these silly, never ending arguments, which increases polarization, which begets more silly argument, and around and around we go.
Or, we could discuss reality as it is, to the best of our ability. The way I think about things, I believe more intelligent people should take that burden upon themselves, because they have greater ability to do so. If their argument is just and accurate, they should be able to win the argument, should they not? And yet, they seem to insist on sticking to a disingenuous rhetoric approach, and finding holes in these arguments is very easy so the fight never ends.
I'm assuming it's related to the MSU study and the VP of research at the university who was quoted in a WSJ article and subsequently fired due to his role talking about it to the media.
A rough outline by the authors is here, you can search scihub for the actual paper.
As for the Professor Hsu controversy, here's some additional data:
> the main thrust to oust Hsu came because the professor touted Michigan State research that found police are not more likely to shoot African-Americans
> The graduate union told The Fix that administrators should not share research that runs counter to public statements by the university.
> “It is the union’s position that an administrator sharing such views is in opposition to MSU’s statements released supporting the protests and their root cause and aim,” Ackles wrote in an e-mail to The College Fix.
I wouldn't call it junk science. I am not a scientist but I do know of times I've gotten so emotional (and really, pick an emotion here) that I've lost myself. IMO there is a breakpoint for most people when we either get too depressed, or too manic, to fully appreciate and control our behavior. With the fight or flight response kicking in, I think we can find ample evidence of people under extreme stress or duress just...losing themselves and going on autopilot.
The philosophy of this is interesting. As we start to understand more about genetics and psychology, we'll probably be able to more closely pinpoint why people do what they do. But that doesn't mean people shouldn't be held accountable. (Affluenza)[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluenza] may be a real "condition"? that impacts people, but even if we eventually discover the genetic and neurological reasons behind it, it still shouldn't excuse behavior.
I've had similar experiences where I "lose control" because I'm angry, or excited, or "emotional", but I think it's my responsibility to work to make that better. I don't know what this means in terms of consequences, but I know it shouldn't mean letting cops off the hook for brutality.
Science doesn’t have a great explanation for everything, but that doesn’t make it junk science.
Suffice to say it’s not uncommon for people to die suddenly when they encounter stressful situations, even not related to police interactions. I remember reading about a case where a person fell through the ice on a lake, the water never going over his head. He was pulled out immediately, but died of cardiac arrest. What happened? Not unusual to label it vasovagal syncope that resulted in sudden death. Is it a great explanation? No, but it’s the best we have.
Similar to excited delirium, we have folks who exhibit similar symptoms and some of them die. Do we know exactly why? Not always, but it doesn’t make “excites delirium” junk science.
Not excusing police brutality at all, but it shouldn’t be surprising some of these sudden deaths happen in police interactions too, especially when you’ve got drugs involved and/or mental illness.
> For decades, critics of using "excited delirium" as a cause of death have expressed concern that the term appears almost exclusively on medical reports for deaths in custody or that otherwise involve law enforcement.
> About two-thirds of the cases reviewed by FLORIDA TODAY fit that bill. A majority of those cases are complicated by the presence of illegal stimulant drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine. But in those deaths where there was no drug use and the toxicology came back negative, the only common denominator in virtually every case was the involvement of law enforcement, such as in the case of Gregory Lloyd Edwards.
Indeed. But "probably true in some cases" is sorta a giant red flag for "junk science". Real medicine uses higher standards before basing policy on a model like this.
I heard someone claim that Excited Delirium idea is being spread by Axon (Taser company) lobbyists as a way of justifying the deaths of victims of improper taser use.
"But according to civil-liberties groups and legal filings, Taser may have financial reasons to support — and even encourage — the use of the excited delirium diagnosis.
Take the case of Frederick Williams. On a grainy video, Williams is screaming, 'Don't kill me! I have a family to support. I've calmed down!" as several officers carry him into the Gwinnett County Detention Center in a suburb of Atlanta. One officer takes out his Taser and fires it directly onto Williams' chest.
The officer yells, "Relax! Stop resisting!" But the shock keeps jerking Williams' chest upward. As several officers hold Williams down, he is stunned six more times. A few minutes later, the officers realize Williams is not breathing. Williams died a few hours later.
Williams' family is now suing the county and Taser International. The company has made it clear in proceedings so far that it intends to argue Williams died of excited delirium — not because of the Taser or excessive force. The medical examiner could not determine the exact cause of death."
Also, tasers regularly kill people with no underlying health conditions, typically the autopsy will say "heart issue due to drug use" or something along those lines. Whenever there's a taser involved death, Axon has a "response team" which works with police to ensure "correct" death classification.
It also works in practice almost half the time in states that allow the defense to reduce a conviction from murder to manslaughter, and not only for police, cause juries are made up of humans.
If you want to say someone's toe hurts because they stubbed it, you can refer to it as "stubbed toe pain". Even if "stubbed toe pain" isn't an official diagnosis in some health organizations, that doesn't mean it's junk science.
I don't get why the article's attacking the term "excited delirium" in the first place, though. I mean, do the authors think that the correctness of police-brutality hinges on whether or not there's such a thing as "excited delirium"? Do the authors think that, if there's such a thing as "excited delirium", it'd justify police-brutality?
The question isn’t whether the authors think that, it’s whether the police think that. If you thought a suspect had superhuman strength and was impervious to pain, wouldn’t you use more lethal means to control them?
Did you read the article as critiquing the belief that some suspects have superhuman strength and imperviousness to pain?
I mean, I Google'd "drug-induced strength". Among the first few hits were [this video][1] and [this article][2], which seem like reasonable evidence of those two symptoms existing together.
The article's logic was disjointed, but I read it as primarily focusing on terminology. If it was instead an argument against the existence of those symptoms, that'd be a tad confusing given stuff like the YouTube video.
61 comments
[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadThose are overlapping sets.
The asymmetry obviously being that arguing you shouldn't be responsible for what happens when the pharmacy runs out of your anti-psychotic medication is very different then arguing that you shouldn't be responsible for beating down some distressed mentally ill civilian when the pharmacy runs out of their anti-psychotic medication.
However, nothing about its existence implies anything about police brutality. For some reason the article thinks it needs to deny the existence of something that obviously exists in order to argue against police brutality. This is a strange logical fallacy to commit, because you can easily argue brutality is bad regardless of what substances an individual is on.
Responding to child comments, it's possible that this condition is not unique enough to require its own name and label. But in that case, one can simply refer to the effects of doses of the given stimulants themselves, e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#Adverse_effect....
Please note I'm not making any claim that brutality is okay or ever justified, just that there obviously does exist strong psychological and physical conditions that occur when an individual is on doses of very strong stimulants.
Just because something is well-known and documented doesn't mean it's recognized as a medical or psychological condition. Sometimes it can be that medicine hasn't caught up, and sometimes it's BS.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Excited_delirium#Controversy_r...
EDIT: I'm an idiot.
Similar things, bogus classes on checking if you are high - like your eyes move in a certain way, or when driving your tire touches the white line. Cops take these classes and use them for justification. See also, pulling drivers over if they are certain minorities (driving suspiciously).
i think the issue is inventing some quasi-illness which might really be one or several other things, but conveniently describes the exact set of symptoms that can be used to justify use of force (so basically it's a way to dress up 'he was acting crazy' and sound legitimate by calling it an 'illness' when you over react)
I don't know why this seems so surprising to some here. The police use loopholes like everyone else does. If this gets them off the hook for borderline use of violence, of course they'll use it. If it's used inappropriately, they should stop.
I don't know why it being substantially modified on that day would be important. Is there some significance to that date that I'm unaware of, other than it being "1 month ago today"?
> The condition is not recognized by the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association or the World Health Organization. Critics of excited delirium have stated that the condition is often attributed to deaths while in the custody of law enforcement and is disproportionately applied to black and Hispanic victims.
This doesn't mean that it still isn't a thing. There are plenty of very real conditions that aren't yet officially recognized but when you have the current body of experts explicitly denying its existence your burden of proof is a lot higher.
> Excited delirium is not recognized by some professional medical associations
If you go to the reference for that, it mentions that it's not recognised by _any_ professional medical association.
As I read it, the article didn't seem to be implying that the existence of "excited delirium" itself implies something about police brutality. I took their argument to be that police departments' misapplication and/or overuse of the concept had led to increased instances police brutality. Not knowing anything else about this issue, it doesn't seem implausible to me that training police officers, who generally lack medical diagnostic skills, to constantly anticipate a human threat with superhuman strength and no sense of pain might lead to an increase in the use of excessive force.
WaPo: "Police keep using ‘excited delirium’ to justify brutality. It’s junk science."
HN: ‘Excited delirium’, used by police to justify brutality, is junk science
Both of which are accurate statements of the key point: There is a body of junk science based on the concept of ‘Excited delirium’, used to justify plice brutality.
The fact that there is something referred to as ‘Excited delirium’ that is not used for police brutality or junk science, doesn't make the title clickbait.
Astrology is junk science, despite the fact that the constellations do exist and that a person is born under a certain configuration of stars ar the location of their birth.
> But in those deaths where there was no drug use and the toxicology came back negative, the only common denominator in virtually every case was the involvement of law enforcement, such as in the case of Gregory Lloyd Edwards.
> According to the autopsy report, Edwards died of "excited delirium and complications" due to "hyperactive and violent state with subsequent restraint."
"Well-known and documented" by the police, I think you mean.
Did you read what you just linked?
From the wikipedia article:
> Excited delirium is not recognized by some professional medical associations.
> EXD has been accepted by the National Association of Medical Examiners and the American College of Emergency Physicians, who argue in a 2009 white paper that "excited delirium" may be described by several codes within the ICD-9.
Imma repeat that for you:
> may be described by several codes within the ICD-9
In other words, "excited delirium" is not the diagnosis a physician would give.
More from the Wikipedia article:
> How frequently cases occur is unknown.[1] Males are affected more often than females.[9] Those who die from the condition are typically male with an average age of 36.[1] Often law enforcement has used tasers or physical measures in these cases.[1]
This sounds like really solid medical science! It's totally not something made up to cover police brutality!
> The first use of the term "excited delirium" (EXD) was in a 1985 Journal of Forensic Sciences article
Oh.
> The signs and symptoms for excited delirium may include:[12][13][14][15] > Aggressiveness and combativeness > Unexpected strength (typically while trying to resist restraint)
Did a police officer write this?
This is probably the most scattershot Wikipedia article I've ever read about a "medical condition", but it's also pretty damn effective in shooting down the idea that this is a real thing and not just a blanket term made up to cover the deaths of people brutalized by the police. (Assuming you don't unconditionally trust the police.)
> The pathophysiology of excited delirium is unclear,
Hahahahaha, of course it's unclear.
> Key signs of excited delirium are aggression, altered mental status, and diaphoresis/hyperthermia.
Is the primary treatment beating/tasing while shouting "stop resisting"?
Read the Wikipedia article for yourself. It's one hell of a trip.
Then someone could argue that the difference in violent crime rates is itself a result of racism, and someone else could argue that that is a separate question from whether the police, rather than e.g. high school guidance counselors (or just factors like parental income), are the root cause of the disparity.
By this point there is enough space between the error bars that each side can declare victory because the other side hasn't been able to prove that their position isn't within them, even though nothing has really been decided and the level of data collection and detailed analysis required to get there is more work than anybody is ever actually willing to do.
It seems to me the better solution is to just solve the problems. Stop spending all day arguing about whether the criminal justice system is racist and instead do something about the fact that the US has the world's largest prison population. Do something about housing costs. Do something about barriers to starting a small business.
These problems may disproportionately affect black people, but they still affect everybody and solving them is a net benefit either way. Conditioning a solution to a problem on the existence of racism when the problem exists regardless is just drawing useless tribalist lines that get people fighting each other instead of solving things.
Mostly agree. It certainly couldn't be done with perfection, as there are essentially an infinite number of discreet variables in existence, many of which we do not even know the existence of, most that we do not have measurements on (or even a way to measure them), and all these variables have inter-relations that we don't understand (or even know of), resulting in randomness of outcome making predictions even harder.
But what do we do instead? The majority of the time we look at, say, 1 to 3 variables, and then form highly confident conclusions based on this trivially and obviously (if you actually think abstractly about it) simplified perspective, all under the guise that we are discussing reality. In these discussions, we (and this also includes the bright minds here on HN) are not actually discussing reality, but rather a comically simplistic version of reality. And then on top of it, many here mock others for their "simple-minded" beliefs, when the reality is that typically a big part of the reason behind the difference is that different people have different working sets of variables, and different weighting on those variables due to holding different values. The irony is rich.
And most of this occurs in the subconscious (so they say), so even if one makes a valiant effort to think more properly, much of the truth (on how different people think differently) is hidden from not just the observer, but the person who holds the thoughts in the first place.
> It seems to me the better solution is to just solve the problems. Stop spending all day arguing about whether the criminal justice system is racist and instead do something about the fact that the US has the world's largest prison population. Do something about housing costs. Do something about barriers to starting a small business.
Mostly agree. But again, this entire process suffers from this same phenomenon (roughly, we do not know, or care, what is true), and democracies are particularly vulnerable to the problems that derive from it. I suspect this gives China a major leg up over Western powers in the coming decades - if they can stumble upon an operating model that works better (accommodates the real variables, regardless of whether they see and understand the system better than us or not), they can enforce compliance far more easily than democratic nations.
In my opinion, step 1 in improving this state of affairs is gaining an understanding of what the situation actually is (aka: doing an "appropriate" system analysis) - but even the geniuses here on HN not only cannot do that, but often become angry with anyone who even dares suggest it (as it implies that their wild-guess of a theory may not be correct - the horror).
Is the absolute root of the problem not the human mind? Outside of natural events/disasters that are not caused by man, do most all other things (beliefs, practices, culture, initiatives, resource allocation, governance decisions, you name it) not derive from the mind (or collection of minds)? And yet, how much attention do we pay to this, in any venue? Here again, I would say the advantage goes to countries that do not adhere to a scientific-materialist religion [1] like most Western peoples.
> These problems may disproportionately affect black people, but they still affect everybody and solving them is a net benefit either way. Conditioning a solution to a problem on the existence of racism when the problem exists regardless is just drawing useless tribalist lines that get people fighting each other instead of solving things.
100% agree, based on the above.
[1] AnthonyMouse ↗ > But what do we do instead? The majority of the time we look at, say, 1 to 3 variables, and then form highly confident conclusions based on this mistermann ↗ > Which is bad enough in general, but in this case there are political implications, so no matter what conclusion you reach from doing that, the people who want the opposite conclusion can accuse you of choosing the wrong factors and add enough of their own to lead where they prefer. If you only add factors that all point in a single direction you can reach any conclusion you want, but if you let each side keep adding factors in their favor indefinitely then you exceed the limits of statistical significance before either side runs out of factors in their favor.
Which is bad enough in general, but in this case there are political implications, so no matter what conclusion you reach from doing that, the people who want the opposite conclusion can accuse you of choosing the wrong factors and add enough of their own to lead where they prefer. If you only add factors that all point in a single direction you can reach any conclusion you want, but if you let each side keep adding factors in their favor indefinitely then you exceed the limits of statistical significance before either side runs out of factors in their favor.
But it's also important to notice that this is only a statistical problem. It means that statistics can't really tell you what happens in the aggregate, but that doesn't mean you can't investigate individual cases. If you have an email from the hiring manager saying not to hire you because you're black, you shouldn't need statistics to win that lawsuit. So if that sort of thing is prevalent then prove the individual cases, and keep doing that until it's not.
Meanwhile you solve the underlying problems which takes care of the cases you can't prove. The cops can't be murdering disproportionately many black people if the cops aren't murdering anybody whatsoever, which they shouldn't be doing for any reason racism or otherwise.
This is my point. When people cherry pick statistics to "prove" their point, it's easy to cherry pick other statistics that disprove that point. Reality is incredibly complex, but even relatively smarter people seem unable to discuss it accordingly, and also seem unable to realize they are debating in an unintelligent/dishonest manner, *while calling their adversary in the argument "stupid". It's interesting to observe human behavior, particularly self-perception.
> But it's also important to notice that this is only a statistical problem. It means that statistics can't really tell you what happens in the aggregate, but that doesn't mean you can't investigate individual cases. If you have an email from the hiring manager saying not to hire you because you're black, you shouldn't need statistics to win that lawsuit. So if that sort of thing is prevalent then prove the individual cases, and keep doing that until it's not.
I agree - dealing with precise details of individual cases is superior. But people on both sides of "the argument" seem intent on broadcasting mistruths based on cherry picked statistics (dimensions of reality, etc), which is how we end up in these silly, never ending arguments, which increases polarization, which begets more silly argument, and around and around we go.
Or, we could discuss reality as it is, to the best of our ability. The way I think about things, I believe more intelligent people should take that burden upon themselves, because they have greater ability to do so. If their argument is just and accurate, they should be able to win the argument, should they not? And yet, they seem to insist on sticking to a disingenuous rhetoric approach, and finding holes in these arguments is very easy so the fight never ends.
A rough outline by the authors is here, you can search scihub for the actual paper.
https://research.msu.edu/the-truth-behind-racial-disparties-...
As for the Professor Hsu controversy, here's some additional data:
> the main thrust to oust Hsu came because the professor touted Michigan State research that found police are not more likely to shoot African-Americans
> The graduate union told The Fix that administrators should not share research that runs counter to public statements by the university.
> “It is the union’s position that an administrator sharing such views is in opposition to MSU’s statements released supporting the protests and their root cause and aim,” Ackles wrote in an e-mail to The College Fix.
https://www.thecollegefix.com/scholar-forced-to-resign-over-...
I've had similar experiences where I "lose control" because I'm angry, or excited, or "emotional", but I think it's my responsibility to work to make that better. I don't know what this means in terms of consequences, but I know it shouldn't mean letting cops off the hook for brutality.
________, used by police to justify ________, is junk science.
Suffice to say it’s not uncommon for people to die suddenly when they encounter stressful situations, even not related to police interactions. I remember reading about a case where a person fell through the ice on a lake, the water never going over his head. He was pulled out immediately, but died of cardiac arrest. What happened? Not unusual to label it vasovagal syncope that resulted in sudden death. Is it a great explanation? No, but it’s the best we have.
Similar to excited delirium, we have folks who exhibit similar symptoms and some of them die. Do we know exactly why? Not always, but it doesn’t make “excites delirium” junk science.
Not excusing police brutality at all, but it shouldn’t be surprising some of these sudden deaths happen in police interactions too, especially when you’ve got drugs involved and/or mental illness.
https://www.floridatoday.com/in-depth/news/2019/10/24/excite...
> For decades, critics of using "excited delirium" as a cause of death have expressed concern that the term appears almost exclusively on medical reports for deaths in custody or that otherwise involve law enforcement.
> About two-thirds of the cases reviewed by FLORIDA TODAY fit that bill. A majority of those cases are complicated by the presence of illegal stimulant drugs like cocaine or methamphetamine. But in those deaths where there was no drug use and the toxicology came back negative, the only common denominator in virtually every case was the involvement of law enforcement, such as in the case of Gregory Lloyd Edwards.
The issue here is that some people (the police) are applying this idea as if it was a great explanation. That's what makes it junk science.
I guess my point is - it’s probably true in some cases.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=762231...
"But according to civil-liberties groups and legal filings, Taser may have financial reasons to support — and even encourage — the use of the excited delirium diagnosis.
Take the case of Frederick Williams. On a grainy video, Williams is screaming, 'Don't kill me! I have a family to support. I've calmed down!" as several officers carry him into the Gwinnett County Detention Center in a suburb of Atlanta. One officer takes out his Taser and fires it directly onto Williams' chest.
The officer yells, "Relax! Stop resisting!" But the shock keeps jerking Williams' chest upward. As several officers hold Williams down, he is stunned six more times. A few minutes later, the officers realize Williams is not breathing. Williams died a few hours later.
Williams' family is now suing the county and Taser International. The company has made it clear in proceedings so far that it intends to argue Williams died of excited delirium — not because of the Taser or excessive force. The medical examiner could not determine the exact cause of death."
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-taser-deaths-insight/...
I don't get why the article's attacking the term "excited delirium" in the first place, though. I mean, do the authors think that the correctness of police-brutality hinges on whether or not there's such a thing as "excited delirium"? Do the authors think that, if there's such a thing as "excited delirium", it'd justify police-brutality?
I mean, I Google'd "drug-induced strength". Among the first few hits were [this video][1] and [this article][2], which seem like reasonable evidence of those two symptoms existing together.
The article's logic was disjointed, but I read it as primarily focusing on terminology. If it was instead an argument against the existence of those symptoms, that'd be a tad confusing given stuff like the YouTube video.
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HV6FnGeYUOE&t=24
[2]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2015/06/1...