The Most Dangerous Liars Are the Ones Who Don't Know They're Lying

My heated debate with a Columbia University Professor of Psychiatry

There I was, sitting across from Dr. Ragy Girgis, a tenured professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, watching him perform the most masterful display of intellectual dishonesty I've ever witnessed.

For two and a half hours, this man dismissed black box suicide warnings, handwaved away hidden pharmaceutical trial data, and casually ignored international drug safety alerts. All while maintaining the smug certainty that only comes from never having your worldview challenged by inconvenient facts.

"The data is clear," he declared. Again. And again. And again. Watch clip below:

It became his magical incantation, his intellectual get-out-of-jail-free card, his way of dismissing any evidence that threatened his pharmaceutical-friendly narrative without actually engaging with it.

"The data is clear."

Even when it isn't. Even when there are massive methodological problems. Even when government agencies worldwide have issued warnings that directly contradict his claims. Even when court documents reveal pharmaceutical companies hid suicide data from regulators.

But apparently I should just shut up and "trust the science." Stop asking questions, you ignorant peasant. He represents Science with a capital S, and questioning him is basically heresy. He didn't need to cite specific data or address the contradictory findings I'd meticulously documented in the show notes. It didn't matter that a clinical psychologist was asking legitimate questions backed by actual evidence. It's just clear, you mouth-breathing troglodyte.

Trust him.

This is the suffocating arrogance of the modern academic priesthood: deploying "the data is clear" like a divine proclamation that ends all inquiry. It's the same authority bias we witnessed during COVID, when we were commanded to trust medical authorities without question while they flip-flopped on masks, lockdowns, and vaccine efficacy. The same psychological manipulation that turns "Follow the Science" into "Shut up and obey."

I always thought science was supposed to be the search for truth through rigorous empirical scrutiny. Debate was to be welcomed. Apparently, I was wrong. Modern "science" is actually about credentialed authorities making pronouncements and expecting deference.

This language of certainty isn't scientific. It's propagandistic. Real scientists are comfortable with uncertainty, limitations, and the evolving nature of knowledge. They say things like "the current evidence suggests" or "we don't fully understand" or "more research is needed."

They recognize the harms, are transparent about those harms, and are committed to understanding under what conditions a medical intervention's benefits may outweigh its potential harms.

But psychiatrists and primary care physicians like Dr. Girgis speak like a pharmaceutical sales rep, not a scientist. Everything is clear, definitive, settled. No room for doubt, no acknowledgment of limitations, no intellectual humility whatsoever. He speaks about these drugs with the confidence of someone discussing the law of gravity.

Dr. Girgis clearly didn't expect to come on my podcast to be actually questioned. It may have been the first time. You could hear it in his voice throughout the episode: the confusion, the irritation, the barely concealed shock that someone might dare challenge his expertise. In his Columbia bubble, he IS the authority. The psychiatric medical establishment anointed him, published his papers, and validated his worldview.

We're supposed to genuflect and accept that "the data is clear."

Watch the Entire Conversation Here

You can also listen to the audio version wherever you download your podcasts. If you only listen to one Radically Genuine Podcast episode, this may be the one.

The Suicide Warning Shuffle

Let me paint you a picture of intellectual gaslighting in its purest form.

When I brought up the FDA's black box warnings about antidepressants increasing suicide risk in young people (under age 25), Dr. Girgis didn't deny the warnings exist. He couldn't. They're right there on every insert, mandated by federal law after extensive review of clinical trial data.

Instead, he deployed a rhetorical sleight of hand that would make a carnival barker proud:

"They're being conservative."

That's it. That's his entire response to government warnings about teenagers killing themselves on psychiatric drugs. The FDA apparently is just a bunch of overly cautious bureaucrats worried about nothing.

Let's pause here because this statement is so monumentally stupid it deserves special attention.

The FDA? Conservative? The same FDA that has functioned as a rubber stamp for the pharmaceutical industry for half a century? The same agency that routinely approves drugs with minimal safety data and allows companies to conduct their own "safety" studies? The same regulatory body that takes millions in "user fees" from the very companies it's supposed to regulate?

This is the agency Dr. Girgis thinks is being "overly cautious"?

A black box warning isn't some bureaucratic overcaution. It's the nuclear option. It's the FDA's way of saying "Holy shit, this drug is so dangerous we're legally required to plaster a warning on every bottle." It's the final step before yanking a medication off the market entirely. Which would have been a public health emergency if people abruptly stopped taking a psychiatric drug. They knew that.

These warnings don't get issued lightly. They come after mounting evidence of serious harm, after bodies pile up, after the carnage becomes impossible to ignore. The FDA doesn't wake up one morning and think, "You know what? Let's randomly scare people about perfectly safe medications."

When an agency that typically bends over backwards for pharmaceutical profits finally issues a black box warning, that's not conservatism. That's desperation. That's the regulatory equivalent of screaming "FIRE!" in a crowded theater.

But Dr. Girgis waves it away like it's a minor paperwork inconvenience. Because in his pharmaceutical fantasy land, government warnings about suicide are just regulatory noise interfering with his chemical evangelism.

Let's be crystal fucking clear about why he's denying this: The antidepressant drug has saved his entire profession from extinction. It was a dying profession. Psychiatrists have now been prescribing these "miracle" pills for decades. The same decades where we've witnessed suicide rates skyrocketing as we prescribe more of these drugs. We've watched dramatic rises in people struggling with depression and anxiety. The burden of mental illness has increased, not decreased, since the supposed "ANTI-depressant" drug came to market.

I can be a simple guy who values common sense, but wouldn't you think if we had a drug that was truly "anti- lyme disease " or "anti-flu" or "anti" anything, we would see the prevalence of that disease decrease? Or at least the severe consequences of developing that condition?

If antidepressants PREVENTED suicide wouldn’t we see suicides decrease instead of INCREASE? But apparently we're just supposed to shuffle along, knuckles dragging, and accept this salesmanship bullshit. Take your pills like a good little patient while the evidence of failure piles up around us.

We have patients around the globe reporting that these drugs induced suicidal ideation. Do they even matter to Dr. Girgis? What about the parents whose teenagers were never suicidal prior to their prescription, but died by suicide weeks after starting an antidepressant? I've spoken to those grieving parents. I've heard their stories. I've witnessed their anguish.

But none of that matters when you're this deep in the academic bubble. Imagine the degree of institutional brainwashing this gentleman had to undergo to dismiss all of this human suffering with a casual wave of his credentialed hand.

When I pressed him on Studies showing a 4-6 fold increase in suicidal behavior among children taking antidepressants compared to placebo, he dismissed it as "equivocal data"(whatever the fuck that means) while simultaneously claiming that antidepressants actually prevent suicide.

Think about the breathtaking arrogance required to casually dismiss international drug safety warnings as regulatory over-caution. This man is essentially telling you that when governments worldwide conclude these drugs pose suicide risks, they're all just being paranoid. But when he cherry-picks studies funded by the pharmaceutical companies who financially benefit from the drug being approved, that's rock-solid science.

The Hidden Data Doesn't Matter

Then came the moment that truly broke my brain.

I brought up the documented case of Eli Lilly hiding suicide data from Prozac trials. How they systematically removed patients who became suicidal from their studies and secretly gave others tranquilizers to mask the drug's effects, all without informing the FDA.

This isn't conspiracy theory bullshit. This is documented fact, revealed through court discovery processes, resulting in millions in fines and settlements. Internal company memos proving they knew Prozac was causing suicide and mania in previously stable patients.

Dr. Girgis's response?

He shrugged it off like it didn’t matter. "We have many other studies since the 90s," he said, as if corporate fraud that led to widespread prescribing of suicide-inducing drugs was just some minor paperwork error.

Imagine applying this logic anywhere else. "Sure, Boeing hid those 737 MAX crash reports and 346 people died, but look at all the flights that didn't crash! Let's just focus on those and forget about the cover-up." Or "Yeah, that babysitter’s negligence harmed a few kids and lied about it, but she's got great new references now."

This is a man who supposedly cares about scientific integrity, casually dismissing evidence of pharmaceutical fraud because acknowledging it would shatter his entire worldview and his profession. The hidden data that could have prevented countless teen suicides or mass shootings?

Not worth discussing apparently.

The proof that drug companies systematically manipulated trials to hide lethal side effects?

Ancient history- shouldn’t matter.

The intellectual dishonesty is so brazen it's almost artistic. It takes genuine talent to dismiss documented evidence of corporate homicide with such academic smoothness.

The Chemical Imbalance Lies

But the most infuriating display of academic gaslighting came when I brought up the 2022 Moncrieff study—a comprehensive umbrella review that systematically demolished the serotonin hypothesis of depression.

Now, this wasn't some fringe paper published in a conspiracy theory journal. This was a rigorous systematic review published in Molecular Psychiatry, examining decades of research on the supposed link between low serotonin and depression. An umbrella study covering research spanning decades.

The authors' conclusions were devastating: there is NO reliable evidence that depression is caused by serotonin deficiency or activity. Not weak evidence. Not inconclusive evidence. NO evidence.

Think about what this means. The serotonin hypothesis wasn't just some academic theory gathering dust in medical journals. It was THE foundational justification for prescribing SSRIs to millions of people worldwide. The entire marketing campaign for these drugs—from Prozac to Zoloft to Lexapro—was built on the premise that depressed people have low serotonin and these medications "correct" that deficiency.

"Chemical imbalance" became the magic phrase that convinced doctors, patients, and parents that psychiatric drugs were just like insulin for diabetes—correcting a biological deficit to restore normal function. The pharmaceutical industry spent billions selling this story. Medical schools taught it as established fact. Doctors prescribed based on it. Patients accepted it as scientific truth.

But if the serotonin hypothesis is completely unsupported by the scientific literature, then what the fuck have we been doing for the past three decades?

We've been conducting a massive, uncontrolled experiment on human brains based on a lie. We've been chemically altering the neurochemistry of millions of people—including developing children and teenagers—not to correct any actual deficiency, but to interfere with systems that were functioning normally.

When you have no biological target, when there's no actual "imbalance" to correct, when you're manipulating complex neurochemical systems just because you can—that's not medicine. That's reckless experimentation disguised as treatment.

And the results of this experiment are all around us: skyrocketing suicide rates, epidemic depression, and generations of people chemically dependent on drugs that were never designed to fix anything that was actually broken.

When determining causal relationships, the strength of that relationship matters enormously. It's like claiming smoking causes cancer because 90% of lung cancer patients smoked, versus claiming red socks cause cancer because 5% of cancer patients wore red socks once. The Moncrieff study found the serotonin-depression link falls into the red socks category.

Dr. Girgis's response was a masterclass in intellectual manipulation. He claimed the study actually supported the serotonin hypothesis, cherry-picking microscopic fragments of data while completely ignoring the totality of the data as well as the authors' devastating conclusions.

"If you look at the results, they say there's a relationship," he insisted, apparently hoping I hadn't actually read the fucking paper.

After our conversation, I went back and read the Moncrieff study again to make sure I wasn't missing something. Nope. The conclusions are crystal clear: no reliable evidence for the serotonin hypothesis.

Then I fed the entire paper into AI for analysis to double-check my understanding. The AI's verdict? "NO Reliable Evidence of a Relationship" between serotonin and depression. In fact, some evidence pointed toward increased serotonin activity in people with depression—the exact opposite of what Dr. Girgis claims.The study's authors explicitly stated: "We suggest it is time to acknowledge that the serotonin theory of depression is not empirically substantiated."

How much clearer could it be?

Here's the beautiful irony: Throughout our conversation, this man repeatedly admitted that we understand maybe 1% of how the brain works. He acknowledged that consciousness itself remains a complete mystery. Yet somehow, he's supremely confident about manipulating one of the most complex neurochemical systems in the human brain- one that interacts with systems throughout the body.

Think about that contradiction. "We know almost nothing about the brain, but trust me, we definitely know enough to chemically alter serotonin in millions of developing teenagers."

When I offered to arrange a debate between him and Dr. Moncrieff herself, he agreed. Here's the beautiful part: I just spoke with Dr. Moncrieff, and she has agreed to come on the podcast to address Dr. Girgis's mischaracterizations directly. Dr. Girgis has also agreed to come back on and have the debate.

This is actually how I knew he wasn't intentionally lying. He's so thoroughly brainwashed and has deluded himself so completely that he genuinely agreed to debate the woman whose work he's been misrepresenting. A conscious liar would never take that risk.

Honestly, ignorance may be worse than lying. We generally have a strong bullshit detector for con artists trying to sell us something. But a physician who truly believes the pharmaceutical lies he's peddling? That's infinitely more dangerous.

A conscious liar might hesitate when prescribing suicide-inducing drugs to teenagers. But a true believer? They prescribe with absolute conviction. They dismiss your concerns with genuine authority. Their certainty becomes your confidence. Their delusion becomes your reality.

Dr. Girgis isn't trying to deceive anyone. He's been deceived so completely that he's become the perfect vehicle for spreading pharmaceutical propaganda. He's not a corrupt villain counting drug company money. He's something far more insidious: a well-meaning puppet who genuinely believes he's practicing medicine while actually functioning as a marketing department for Big Pharma.

The Rising Burden of Mental Illness

We're living through the greatest failure of medical expertise in modern history, and nowhere is this more obvious than in mental health.

We have more psychiatrists, more antidepressants, more therapists, more prescribers, more access, more research funding, and more "evidence-based" treatments than ever before in human history. And we have more depression, anxiety, suicide, and psychological suffering than ever before in human history.

Where is the humility?

But here's where Dr. Girgis's delusion reached peak absurdity: He actually claimed that psychiatry is "reducing the burden of mental illness" and compared their "success" to cancer treatment.

This man looked me in the eye and claimed that a field presiding over skyrocketing suicide rates, epidemic depression, and mass drugging of American children is somehow analogous to cancer medicine. Yes- that is a real time picture of me in disbelief. Watch the clip to get a better understanding.

Here's the beautiful irony: His comparison to cancer treatment was accidentally perfect. Cancer rates are exploding, people are getting cancer younger than ever, and most cancer treatments are brutal, toxic interventions that often kill patients faster than the disease itself. It's another medical catastrophe disguised as progress.

So yes, Dr. Girgis, psychiatry IS exactly like cancer treatment. Both fields are spectacular failures that have normalized chronic illness while enriching the industries that profit from the disease.

But at least cancer patients aren't told their tumors are caused by "chemical imbalances" that never existed. At least oncologists don't claim their treatments prevent cancer while cancer rates skyrocket. At least cancer doctors don't dismiss safety warnings as "being conservative."

How is this not considered a crisis of expert credibility?

How are we still trusting the same authorities who've presided over this catastrophic failure? How are we not demanding answers from the people whose "clear data" has led us into this nightmare?

The Expert Gaslighting Playbook

What I witnessed in my conversation with Dr. Girgis was a textbook demonstration of how modern "experts" systematically gaslight the public. Here's the playbook they all use:

Step 1: Deploy Absolute Certainty as a Weapon

Never say "I think" or "the evidence suggests." Always declare "The data is clear" with unshakeable confidence. This isn't scientific communication—it's psychological warfare designed to shut down inquiry before it starts. Why question something that's already been definitively settled by someone in authority?

Step 2: Dismiss Every Inconvenient Fact With Sociopathic Casualness

Government suicide warnings? "Regulators being conservative." Hidden trial data showing kids killing themselves? "Ancient history." Systematic reviews demolishing your worldview? "You're misunderstanding the results." Never engage with substance—just wave it away like an annoying fly.

Step 3: Hide Behind Your Credentials When Cornered

When the facts become inconvenient, when the evidence threatens your pharmaceutical orthodoxy, when reality starts intruding on your carefully constructed delusions, that's when you pull out the credential card with the desperation of someone drowning.

"I'm an expert in this field."

"Trust the science."

"Follow the science."

Your resume becomes your argument. Your institutional affiliation becomes your evidence. Your fancy degrees become your bulletproof vest against inconvenient truths. This is the ultimate intellectual cowardice: using authority to avoid accountability, using credentials to escape scrutiny, using prestige to silence dissent. It's what people do when they know their arguments can't stand on their own merit.

Step 4: Paint All Dissent as Ignorance

When cornered with inconvenient facts, deploy the complexity card: "Well, it's very complex" or "The science is more nuanced than that" or "You wouldn't understand the intricacies." Then never actually explain the complexity. Just let the implication hang in the air that you possess some mystical knowledge that's too advanced for peasant brains to comprehend.

This is brilliant psychological manipulation. You get to dismiss legitimate challenges without having to address them. You avoid defending your indefensible positions by claiming they're too sophisticated for your critics to understand. You never have to explain why the "complexity" somehow negates clear evidence of harm..

Step 5: Never Admit Uncertainty

Real scientists say "I don't know" constantly. Propagandists never do. Everything is settled. Dr. Girgis admitted we understand 1% of the brain yet spoke with absolute certainty about chemically altering human brains with pharmaceuticals disguised as “mental health treatment”.

This isn't science.

This is industrial and ideological manipulation dressed up in lab coats. And Dr. Girgis just demonstrated every single step of the process while apparently believing he was defending scientific integrity.

The most dangerous liars are the ones who don't know they're lying.

RESIST

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