While I’d always been a data hound, I ultimately gravitated to the world of long term psychotherapy. I preferred what might be called the "case study" model to the statistical grouping of many patients. It felt like research to me. So most of what I learned firsthand was from lots of data on a smaller […]
This month’s American Journal of Psychiatry has an editorial and several articles addressing the question of treating patients with symptoms suggesting a coming Schizophrenic Illness with antipsychotic medications as preventive medicine. The short editorial is available on-line and nicely summarizes the history of this debate [Early Intervention for Schizophrenia: The Risk-Benefit Ratio of Antipsychotic Treatment […]
con·ten·tious \kÉ™n-ˈten(t)-shÉ™s\ adj 1: likely to cause disagreement or argument <a contentious issue> 2: exhibiting an often perverse and wearisome tendency to quarrels and disputes <a man of a most contentious nature> I’ve used this blog to talk about different topics over the years – most recently to protest what I consider to be the […]
Recently, an attempt was made to use the comment section of this blog to advance a personal agenda and engage me in a dialogue about it, presumably based on the title of my last post – "ask your doctor…" Obviously, that title had to do with the government report on Direct to Consumer advertising, not […]
I periodically peruse the Coalition for Healthcare Communication web site. It’s essentially a proPHARMA organization that predictably attacks any attempt to reform any current practices. I visit it to see what they’re talking about. There’s a current commentary supporting a report by the Congressional Budget Office on Direct to Consumer advertising [those "ask your doctor […]
"The STAR*D trial is now complete. More than 100 articles have been published from this decade-long effort… As is often the case, however, such large research efforts raise many new questions while answering others. This commentary highlights those STAR*D findings that I believe have important implications for either present clinical practice or for future investigations"… […]
Chilcot points the finger at Blair over Iraq: Inquiry ‘will condemn over four key failings’ The Daily Mail UK By Daniel Martin 1st August 2011 Tony Blair is to be officially blamed over his decision to involve Britain in the disastrous Iraq War, it was reported yesterday. The Chilcot Inquiry is expected to lay out […]
This post is an addendum to the last two posts. Here are two articles from the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability at the National University of Singapore where Dr. A.J. Rush is now CEO of the Singapore Clinical Research Institute and Professor and Vice Dean of the Duke Graduate Medical School: Recursive subsetting to […]
In the last post [STAR*D lives…], I discussed three articles covering the same subjects from a study [STAR*D] done between 2001 and 2004. Why did we need three versions since the data was available for several years before the first study? I don’t know the answer to that question, but it is a pattern observed […]
Anyone reading this blog more than a few times would know that I’m no fan of the STAR*D sequential antidepressant study [a thirty-five million dollar misunderstanding…]. And besides the objections to the study itself and the fact that the authors have never published the results of the primary outcome variable [HAM-D], I object to the […]