I left town on July the 8th and came back last night. Today, I get the same Google results that I got the day I left. I guess they’re just not going to publish their results and hope the short news cycle just lets the story die. I think I must just be terribly naive. With all I’ve written myself about the antics of the DSM-5 Task Force and all that others with more knowledge than I have written, I still do a search like that expecting to find some kind of report. I can’t seem to get it through my thick skull that the best and brightest would act this way. I must still think there’s some Aesculapian or Hippocratic pact that insists on pristine and open science, even though if I’d just read my own blog, I’d know that’s a naive assumption.Both Dr. Robert Spitzer and Dr. Allen Frances stood on their heads trying to keep the DSM-5 Task Force open and honest in their deliberations. They cautioned against running a closed, idiosyncratic shop. They were rewarded with demeaning and antagonistic responses. Suzy Chapman has diligently reported the DSM-5 goings on as the DSM-5 Watch Dx Revision Watch blog and had the APA threaten her with a Trademark battle. You can’t say they weren’t warned. But the Task Force has made it very clear that the DSM-5 is a property of the APA to do with as they see fit, rather than a scientific product owned by all.
Edsel. Subprime mortgages. Segway. New Coke. Move over guys – there’s a new kid on the block…
Good to have you back, Mickey.
On June 17, I left some questions for James H. Scully, M.D. on his Huff Po blog, here:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-h-scully-jr-md/dsm-5_b_1560280.html
I asked Dr Scully:
Why has this report been delayed?
Does the Task Force still intend to publish a report and if so, when might a report be anticipated?
Five weeks later – nada. No response of any kind from the American Psychiatric Association’s CEO and Medical Director.
Try google scholar
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=%22dsm-5+field+trials%22&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C38&as_sdtp=
Wiley, it’s understood that the various DSM-5 Work Groups intend presenting and publishing evaluations of field trial results at conferences and via journals at some point later this year. But these are not what we are looking for at the moment. What we are looking for is transparency from the APA, now, especially since it failed to place results in the public domain while the final stakeholder review was in progress. So stakeholders were obliged to submit comment without the benefit of field trial data to inform their submissions.
See: “DSM-5 Field Trials Generate Mixed Results”, Deborah Brauser, Medscape Medical News, May 8, 2012 http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/763519
“Members of the task force said they hope to publish the full results “within a month.” However, the third and final public comment period for the manual opened last week and ends on June 15. Although the entire period is 6 weeks long, the public may only have 2 weeks to comment after the publication of the field trials’ findings.”
The field trials had originally been due to complete by the end of December. The completion of some trials was delayed until March. Nevertheless, Task Force has now had several months in which to place its results in the public domain but is choosing not to do so. Conferences and publication in non open access journals disenfranchises large numbers of stakeholders from access to field trial data, information on study groups etc.
I get that Suzy. But their attempts and posturing are fair game and I would like to see them excoriated regularly at every turn. They WILL spin.