1. Watch out for bad science

Over the past 30 years there have been countless times we have heard about "breakthroughs" in "ADHD" research, and each time the breakthrough has proven to be hollow. Many of these studies have attempted to find differences in the brains of children diagnosed with "ADHD" and "normal children". These studies often had major flaws in their design which cast significant doubt on the validity of their findings. 

Specifically, there have been two major problems with ADHD studies. First, many of them studied a very small sample of children, sometimes fewer than ten. It is a rule of the experimental method that you have to have a sufficient random sample for the results of any study to be able to be generalized to the whole population. Second, the "ADHD" children in these samples typically were taking stimulant drugs, or had taken them in the past. Since we know the potential for stimulant drugs to cause brain damage in children, it raised the question of whether any changes in these children's brains were because of "ADHD" or the side effects of these dangerous drugs. Other studies did not bother to report on the medication history of their subjects, making it impossible to determine the causes of any difference in brain structure or chemistry. Finally, more recent research has failed to compare previously unmedicated 'ADHD' children with 'non-ADHD' children of the same age or gender. This is problematic given that brain size is closely associated with age. So comparing the brains of different aged children, whether they are labelled 'normal' or labelled with 'ADHD', will invariably find differences.

If you would like some guidance on reading research reports, YANQ has published a concise document on it's website entitled "Research Reports for the Non-Scientist" by Rachel Martin. See the further reading section for more details.

The Key Questions below will help readers to spot some of major problems that have been highlighted with ADHD research.

Key Questions

1. Has the research report provided details of the medication history of it's subjects?

2. If yes, do the authors discuss the effects the medication will have on their subjects and the implications for their findings?

3. Has the research compared similar subjects? For example, is the control group of similar age, weight and sex to the experimental group?