Big Vietnam Myth Exploded: Strange Silence in Blogosphere

One of the biggest myths to come out of the Vietnam war is the exaggeration of PTSD. A major analysis, even the New York Times recognizes as “authoritative,” debunks significantly, yet the blogosphere is largely silent. I don’t know why, but guess that preoccupation with the latest news crowds it out.

That’s a mistake. Such as PTSD exaggeration have and continue to tarnish the understanding of Americans about then and now. Not only that, but for those who suspect all that comes from the mainstream media being “bad” news, it was the New York Times and Associated Press which highlighted the new analysis, while even most conservative blogs did not.

Over the past three decades, deficient studies and media have ingrained PTSD into Americans’ consciousness as a particular result of Vietnam. Similar politically motivated assertions have been made about our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The stress of engaging in a war often without clear battlefronts and enemies frequently hidden among civilians was said to produce extraordinarily high rates of post-traumatic disorders among our soldiers and Marines. Of course, this fit the anti-war narrative that somehow such stress is peculiar to that war’s opposed policy.

More and more empirical evidence is emerging that this is quite untrue. The publisher of JunkScience.com discusses what happens when “Politicized Science Produces Bad Public Policy.”

In the end, unbiased science stands a greater chance of providing policymakers with useful information and -- more importantly -- helping those who have sacrificed and suffered for their country.

Sunday’s Washington Post frontpages a long visit with a female who served in Iraq diagnosed with PTSD, “Home but Still Haunted.” One must go 1/3rd through to see that,

Women appear to be showing symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and other mental health troubles at roughly the same rates as men. If this result holds true, it would stand out because women studied in the overall population show markedly higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder than men – about twice as much.

My post of August 17, "PTSD: Science Deflates Politics," which links to several prior corrective more factual articles, focuses on the latest study – that even the New York Times calls “authoritative.” As it turns out, the incidence, persistence and severity of PTSD is a fraction of what had been previously presented.

Military.com has republished my post, as “Rethinking PTSD” for its audience of 8-million. Curiously, there’s been virtually no blogosphere coverage of this deflation of anti-war politics by science.

A fellow blogger emailed me the other day that he’s suffering “Idiot Fatigue,” over deflating bad reporting of the Israel-Hezbollah war. If prior bad reporting is not corrected, it’s more difficult for me to see how current or future media behavior will be more on guard about it.