“We’re really at an infant stage in terms of our clinical ability to assess traumatic brain injury,” a medical expert said.

Before he ended his life, Ryan Larkin made his family promise to donate his brain to science.

The 29-year-old Navy SEAL was convinced years of exposure to blasts had badly damaged his brain, despite doctors telling him otherwise. He had downloaded dozens of research papers on traumatic brain injury out of frustration that no one was taking him seriously, his father said.

“He knew,” Frank Larkin said. “I’ve grown to understand that he was out to prove that he was hurt, and he wasn’t crazy.”

In 2017, a postmortem study found that Ryan Larkin, a combat medic and instructor who taught SEALs how to breach buildings with explosives, had a pattern of brain scarring unique to service members who’ve endured repeated explosions.

  • Hacksaw
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    9 months ago

    It reminds me of this video. The biotech girl with a PhD in cancer biology was so sure she was the smartest person in the room until she took an IQ test and ranked behind the military guy everyone picked for last.

    https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=RAlI0pbMQiM

    • NielsBohron@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      The video is making a decent point, but doing it in a very, very flawed way. IQ tests are far from unbiased and don’t really test intelligence; they test how well you can take an IQ test. And since the structure and questions on IQ tests are very biased against every demographic that’s not “white, upper/middle class, male” all this video really shows is that a dude in the military knows how to take an IQ test.

      • Hacksaw
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        9 months ago

        I only linked it to support OP’s point that doctors are just normal people but tend to be very overconfident. Your point is correct but I don’t think it detracts from what I’m using the video to illustrate.

        The whole video is a fun watch to see how people behave in tense social situations with strangers.

    • rottingleaf@lemmy.zip
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      9 months ago

      The biotech girl with a PhD in cancer biology was so sure she was the smartest person in the room until she took an IQ test and ranked behind the military guy everyone picked for last.

      Apparently you really want to think that an unscientific “intelligence test” designed by a Nazi (look it up) better summarizes a person than a PhD in cancer biology.

      Being smart is different from being fit for IQ tests, or for human computer job, I think these people would score well in IQ tests, but nobody would consider them smarter than engineers and scientists for whom they’d make calculations.

      I haven’t yet finished watching the video, but judging by the quality of recommendation, she might really have been

      the smartest person in the room

      .

      OK, at this point I’ve finished watching it and that girl ranked people based on what she called “social intelligence”, saying that explicitly, in contradiction with what she said in the beginning of the video. She seems to worry about that a lot, and that appears to be her weaker side, so - oops.

      “The military guy”, I think, just wasn’t distracted by the situation, makes sense.

      In his ranking, 6 - really cares about his appearance, wastes emotional resources unnecessarily, 5 - a bit of the same, and also arrogance, 4 - not too much arrogance, but a lot of nervous attempts to be social, 3 - similar to 4, but less nervous, 2 - still a bit strained, 1 - himself.

      EDIT: and it makes sense that 6 noticed the same emotional problem in 4, LOL.

      Anyway, I’ve scored ~120 one time, ~170 another time, I can’t take them (EDIT: these tests) seriously.