Research
Methodological Overview
In my research, I utilize a diverse set of tools from philosophy, cognitive science, as well as theoretical and critical psychology, including conceptual, philosophical, and historical analyses. My primary goal is to understand how researchers in the cognitive, biological, and biomedical sciences engage with their subject matter, identifying the strengths and weaknesses in their methodological approaches. By doing so, I aim to clarify where these approaches are sound and where they may fall short, contributing to a more nuanced understanding of their attempts to characterize, describe, and explain their phenomena.
Current Focus: Psychiatry’s Validity Crisis
Over the past forty years, psychiatry has faced a “crisis in confidence” in establishing validity of its psychiatric disorders. As a result, drug discovery for psychiatric diseases has shown limited success. In response, psychiatry has seen a proliferation of alternative research frameworks for studying and validating psychiatric disorders. The big three alternative approaches, which include the Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP), the Network Approach to Psychopathology, and the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) have been characterized as a healthy response to the DSM’s “crisis of validity.” In addition, the DSM itself has recently been updated with a new continuous improvement revision model to address concerns regarding the validity of its diagnostic categories.
A yet unexplored aspect of psychiatry’s “validity crisis” is related to disagreements regarding standards of validity. Such disagreements point to a thornier methodological problem that I term “the problem of disparate validation.” This two-part problem can be summarized as follows: psychiatry aims at achieving empirically-informed classifications that demonstrate “validity” in the sense that they correspond to “real” biological attributes of psychopathology in order to improve translation from bench to bedside. To achieve this, alternative research frameworks are now approaching the conceptualization, testing, and validation of attributes of psychopathology by their own standards. The first problem is, given a system of classification, by whose standards of validity should such a system be validated? Second, when we attempt to validate classifications informed by differing standards, will any such validation procedure be capable of assessing a unified sense of validity, or will each framework only be valid in its own narrow sense?
I am working to resolve this methodological problem through faithful reconstructions of what I terms the “Holy Quadrinity” of distinct senses of validity in psychiatry. Despite the appearance of a shared goal of informing valid classifications, he has learned that the existence of multiple frameworks in which each employs their own standards of validity is problematic methodologically speaking for trying to do any kind of unified validation work. To address what may amount to a new validity crisis, I am developing a methodological toolkit for psychiatric researchers by which distinct validation procedures may achieve validity in their own specific sense, while also coming to inform one another through a kind of complementary plurality by stabilizing their own principles and procedures.
Publications:
Zautra., N., (In press) Psychiatry’s Second Validity Crisis: The Problem of Disparate Validation. Philosophy of Science.
Zautra, N., (2015) Embodiment, Interaction, & Experience: Toward a Comprehensive Model in Addiction Science. Philosophy of Science. 85(2), 1023-1034.
Zautra., N. (2015). Rethinking the Conceptual History of the Term ‘Cognitive’. Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meetings of the Cognitive Science Society. Austin, TX: Cognitive Science Society.
Kufahl, P., Nemirovsky, N., Watterson, L., Zautra, N., & Olive, M. (2013). Positive or negative allosteric modulation of metabotropic glutamate receptor 5 (mGluR5) does not alter expression of behavioral sensitization to methamphetamine. F1000Research, 2.
Kufahl, P., Watterson, L., Nemirovsky, N., Hood, L., Villa, A., Halstengard, C., Zautra., N., & Olive, M. (2013). Attenuation of methamphetamine seeking by the mGluR2/3 agonist L7379268 in rats with histories of restricted and escalated self-administration. Neuropharmacology. (66), 290-301.
Invited Presentations:
Zautra., N., (2024, May). Psychiatry’s Second Validity Crisis? The Problem of Disparate Validation. Paper presented atthe Association for the Advancement of Philosophy of Psychiatry. New York, NY.
Zautra., N., (2024, March). Psychiatry’s Second Validity Crisis? The Problem of Disparate Validation. Paper presented atthe Philosophy of Social Science Roundtable. Dallas, TX.
Zautra, N. (2019, April) From DSM to RDoC: Why there are no RDoC animal models of DSM mental disorders. Paper presented at the Philosophy, Medicine, and Mental Health Conference. Omaha, NE.
Zautra, N. (2019, March) The Philosopher of Science if by Necessity a Social Animal. Paper presented at the Mid/South Philosophy of Science Meeting, Lexington, KY.
Zautra, N. (2018, November). The greatest challenge facing philosophy of science today (according to philosophers of science). Poster presented at the Philosophy of Science Association Meeting. Seattle, WA.
Zautra, N. (2017, April). RDoC: Toward a Historical Understanding of the National Institute of Mental Health’s Brain-Centric Research Program. Paper presented at Indiana University Cognitive Lunch. Bloomington, IN.
Zautra, N. (2016, May). From DSM to RDoC: On the beginning of the end of animal models of mental illness. Poster presented at the Society for Philosophy and Psychology 42nd Annual Meeting. Austin, TX.
Zautra, N., (2014, November) Embodiment, Interaction, & Experience: Toward a Comprehensive Model in Addiction Science. Paper presented at the Philosophy of Science Association Annual Meeting. Chicago, IL.
Zautra, N. and Robert, J. (2014, October). Core Competencies for “Benchside” Research Ethics Consultation Services. Paper Presented at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities 16th Annual Meeting. San Diego, CA.
Zautra, N. (2013, October). The Darkside of the Spoon: Increases in Funding of Addiction Treatment. Paper Presented at the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities 15th Annual Meeting. Atlanta, GA.
Zautra, N. (2014, April). Moral Disengagement and Deanimalization in Animal Research. Poster Presented at the Toward a Science of Consciousness Conference. Tucson, AZ.
Zautra, N. and Robert, J. (2013, July). Humanizing Animals: The selection and justification of the prairie vole as an animal model for autism spectrum disorders. Paper presented at the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology Meeting. Montpellier, France.