PREDICTION - NONSENSE OR HOPE

Psychiatry and psychopharmacology are no longer aiming to make a decis ive breakthrough at the end of the century. Rather than seeking explan ations, research workers are looking for 'predictions'. Three main typ es of prediction are emerging: a tautological, a heuristic, and an irr elevant one. Few predictions found in the recent literature can be mar ked as 'logical' ones. Nevertheless, predictions play two important ro les: they generate new hypotheses that can be falsified in properly de signed scientific experiments; they also may serve to falsify given hy potheses. The main recent findings on predictions in psychiatry are br iefly summarised.