Why the DSM-5 is dangerous

Maarten Maartensz is doing a series on the DSM-5 and there is this interesting quote:

"And that's what the DSM is -- a set of scientific hypotheses that are intended to be tested and disproved if the evidence isn't found to support them."

No! DSM 5 is most decidedly not "a set of scientific hypotheses"; it is an official manual that will influence people's lives for better (and sometimes for worse) in enormously consequential ways.

Yes - probably much for the worse. And it is a very reprehensible lie and intentional confusion to present a manual for practitioners as if it were a set of scientific hypotheses. What if surgeons would try to palm off the same sort of bullshit on their patients? ("O, we'll try to make it a bit more likely to succeed and less painful for you, once we start practicing this. Trust us! Promise! We might even introduce anesthetics! You see, we do this out of pure love for our patients!")

DSM 5 is not a research agenda "intended to be tested" after its publication; it must hit the ground safe and scientifically sound.

Actually, I don't think it can, and neither could nor did DSM-IV. But Frances is right that any proposed diagnosis or therapy that is not based on existing good evidence, that also makes it at least more probable than not (!), should not be either a diagnosis or a therapy in any manual for practitioners of any kind: That means intentional playing with the health of patients, without having any good reason to do so, apart from the money it makes for those who do so, of course.