What If Einstein Had Taken Ritalin?

MrPepper11 wrote:
Wall Street Journal
February 3, 2005

What If Einstein Had Taken Ritalin?

Probably nothing. There is no credible evidence that he had
ADHD. The stuff about him being a poor student and failing
math is a myth.

If he did have ADHD and took Ritalin then we may have a
unified theory of everything.

There is no evidence that Ritalin diminishes creativity. If
anything it would help the creative types stay off the
street drugs they seem so prone to and be more productive in
their creativity.

--
00doc

wrote in message
oups.com...
Actually, Einstein got into the university teaching based on his first
paper on his theory of relativity. He was a patent clerk when he wrote
it.

One could do that sort of thing today, I believe, but I cannot think
of an example.

You cannot think of an example because one cannot do that sort of thing
today. The academic system is designed to prevent it.

"Jeff" wrote in message
...

"MrPepper11" wrote in message
ups.com...
Wall Street Journal
February 3, 2005
(...)

The question is whether the Ritalin Revolution will sap tomorrow's work
force of some of its potential genius. What will be the repercussions
in corporations, comedy clubs, and research labs?

Can you provide any evidence taht Ritalin and other ADHD decrease
creativity? Perhaps, had Einstein taken Ritalin, he would have been even
more productive and creative.

The repercussions appear to include more focus and productive people.

I hypothesize that if Einstein had taken Ritalin, he would have been able to
pay more attention and would have been able to finish his unified field
theory. As such, because he was unmedicated, his UFT is not unified.

Don't know about Einstein, but we do have some
relavant data on the mathematician Paul Erdos:

from the book The Man Who Loved Only Numbers by Paul Hoffman.

Paul Erd=F6s "put in nineteen-hour days, keeping himself fortified with
10 to 20 milligrams of Benzedrine or Ritalin, strong espresso and
caffeine tablets. 'A mathematician,' Erd=F6s was fond on saying,
'is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.'" Once, a friend
bet Erd=F6s $500 that he could not quit amphetamines for a month. Erd=F6s
took the bet and won, but, during his time of abstinence, he found
himself incapable of doing any serious work. "You've set mathematics
back a month," he told his friend when he collected, and immediately
returned to his pills.

So much for the "Ritalin kills creativity" argument and the hypothesis
that if Einstein was diagnosed with ADHD that he would have been harmed
by rather than benefitted from treatment.

--
00doc

I don't think so. JAMA a few years ago ran a paper written by a ten
year old girl. She had some help but she still had to be as much of an
academic outsider as there ever was.

I think the real reasons are two-fold.

1) It is harder for someone who is not academically trained and
affiliated to submit a paper worthy of publication. This is both
because the journals have become more rigorous in what they expect,
both in format and methods, and because the number of simple things
that can be looked at by a person doing home experiments is dwindling.
A stop watch and a tower or a (home made) micrscope and some tap water
just won't cut it anymore.

2) Education is more available. At least in the Western world,
education is affordable for the middle (working) class and even for a
brilliant lower class person there are usually scholarships and other
opportunities. I think there are just not as many academically inclined
geniuses shut out of the sytem as there used to be.

--
00doc

In alt.support.attn-deficit Mark Probert Mark wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
Actually, Einstein got into the university teaching based on his first
paper on his theory of relativity. He was a patent clerk when he wrote
it.

One could do that sort of thing today, I believe, but I cannot think
of an example.

You cannot think of an example because one cannot do that sort of thing
today. The academic system is designed to prevent it.

In the UK it certainly isn't. I'm led to believe that in the US
they're much fiercer about having exactly the right kind of CV and
much less willing to make exceptions based on merit such as having
published excellent research even though you didn't have the usual
qualifications.

--
Chris Malcolm +44 (0)131 651 3445 DoD #205
IPAB, Informatics, JCMB, King's Buildings, Edinburgh, EH9 3JZ, UK
[http://www.dai.ed.ac.uk/homes/cam/]

"MrPepper11" wrote in message
ups.com...
Wall Street Journal
February 3, 2005

What If Einstein Had Taken Ritalin?
ADHD's Impact on Creativity
By JEFF ZASLOW

[snip]

Einstein had ADHD? Hmmm... I spose this follows the same logic that
cause people to think that Mozart and about every other genius had it as
well.
Does writting over 600 compositions by the age of 35 sound like
something that someone with a chronic ability to procrastinate and be
distracted would do?

For every ADHD "genius", there is an ADHD "bum" sitting in the slammer.
There are also plenty of people that have many of the personaity traits
that people with ADHD oftern have. This, however, does not make them
ADHD.

Perhaps we all need to remember what ADHD stands for? And remember that
it is a disorder, not a gift? Perhaps some of the traits that are common
with ADHD can be considered gifts. But the key part of the disorder is
hardly a gift to most of the people with it. It's a dead weight.


Cheers, Justin.

She never went into academic teaching.




"00doc" wrote in message
oups.com...
I don't think so. JAMA a few years ago ran a paper written by a ten
year old girl. She had some help but she still had to be as much of an
academic outsider as there ever was.

I think the real reasons are two-fold.

1) It is harder for someone who is not academically trained and
affiliated to submit a paper worthy of publication. This is both
because the journals have become more rigorous in what they expect,
both in format and methods, and because the number of simple things
that can be looked at by a person doing home experiments is dwindling.
A stop watch and a tower or a (home made) micrscope and some tap water
just won't cut it anymore.

2) Education is more available. At least in the Western world,
education is affordable for the middle (working) class and even for a
brilliant lower class person there are usually scholarships and other
opportunities. I think there are just not as many academically inclined
geniuses shut out of the sytem as there used to be.

--
00doc

In article , "Justin" writes:
Einstein had ADHD? Hmmm... I spose this follows the same logic that
cause people to think that Mozart and about every other genius had it as
well.
Does writting over 600 compositions by the age of 35 sound like
something that someone with a chronic ability to procrastinate and be
distracted would do?

Yup. Hyperfocus in narrow areas of interest is common.

Perhaps we all need to remember what ADHD stands for? And remember that
it is a disorder, not a gift? Perhaps some of the traits that are common
with ADHD can be considered gifts. But the key part of the disorder is
hardly a gift to most of the people with it. It's a dead weight.

Properly applied, it is a gift, not a disorder. Something that fell out of a
recent conversation on the subject is that ADDers don't have ADD, but the
rest of the population has "Boredom Tolerance Disorder"...

Bob Kaplow NAR # 18L TRA # "Impeach the TRA BoD"
To reply, remove the TRABoD!
Kaplow Klips & Baffle: http://nira-rocketry.org/LeadingEdge/Phantom4000.pdf
www.encompasserve.org/~kaplow_r/ www.nira-rocketry.org www.nar.org

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