To me the problem was more that the initial information contained only two facts (see above) and the rest are gratuitous claims and induced assumptions that the commenter seemed to adopt and build upon without showing any critical sense.
Getting back to the facts, there is nothing allowing us to think that depressed people feel better when taking ketamine BECAUSE the number of synapses increases when taking ketamin.
A possible correlation is presented as a cause relation. Was it verified on the same people ? If not we can't even consider this to be a true correlation.
The OP goes even beyond that, but this should be enough to justify my critic.
(pseudo) scientific PR are leveraging this common logical error for their promotion to such point that people get totally blind to it. This is debilitating and should be classified as crap information.
"Getting back to the facts, there is nothing allowing us to think that depressed people feel better when taking ketamine BECAUSE the number of synapses increases when taking ketamin."
This seems to be a strange use of the word "allowing". I would say that the evidence presents an interesting and testable hypothesis about the role of synaptic connections in depression. The obvious next step would be to find other methods of inducing similar effects on synapses by means other than ketamine and see if they have similar effects on depression.
Out of interest, what do you think might be some of the biological mechanisms associated with chronic depression and how would you seek to investigate them?
I think most people doubt that depression is caused by a single biological mechanism and is most likely a holistic/dynamic problem. I think that's why some doubt the value of pursueing such reductionist hypothesis of depression.
I don't think that depression is down to a single biological mechanism, and there is a big difference between depression due to environment and chronic depression. But saying "holistic/dynamic" is not an explanation, but is more like waving your hands around and saying "woooo" a lot.
Getting back to the facts, there is nothing allowing us to think that depressed people feel better when taking ketamine BECAUSE the number of synapses increases when taking ketamin.
A possible correlation is presented as a cause relation. Was it verified on the same people ? If not we can't even consider this to be a true correlation.
The OP goes even beyond that, but this should be enough to justify my critic.
(pseudo) scientific PR are leveraging this common logical error for their promotion to such point that people get totally blind to it. This is debilitating and should be classified as crap information.