re·form [ri-‘fôrm] verb make changes in something [typically a social, political, or economic institution or practice] in order to improve it. In this case, my preferred definition is more literal: re·form = to form again… University of Minnesota to bar scientists from being paid by companies that sponsor research U scientists will have to choose: […]
Conflict of interest: forward not backward by Fiona Godlee British Medical Journal. 2015 350:h3176 [Published 11 June 2015] The New England Journal of Medicine has refuelled the smouldering debate on conflicts of interest. In a surprising series of articles and an editorial by its editor in chief, Jeffrey Drazen, the journal seems to signal a […]
In psychiatry thinks…, I was complaining that many critics pretend that all psychiatrists can be represented as a single homogeneous group – being of one mind. Recently, George Dawson of Real Psychiatry came at the same point from a somewhat different direction in his post The Myth of Monolithic Psychiatry: Psychiatrists have the most diverse […]
I decided that trying to summarize Why is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders so hard to revise? Path-dependence and "lock-in" in classification in the last post [a curious inertia…] was too much, but rereading it this morning, I changed my mind. Independent from how the DSMs came into being, this article has […]
Why is the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders so hard to revise? Path-dependence and "lock-in" in classification. by Cooper R Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences. 2015 51:1-10. The latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the DSM-5, was published in May 2013. In the […]
So first there was the New England Journal of Medicine series by Jeffrey Drazen and Lisa Rosenbaum suggesting a relaxation of the restrictions on industry affiliated experts writing editorial or review articles in the NEJM. Then came strong rebuttals in the British Medical Journal from both sides of the pond [UK: Elizabeth Loder, Catherine Brizzell, […]
By the beginning of 2011, I was finally catching on to the extent of the the problem with the Psychopharmacology literature. I had written a sarcastic post about inventing a computer to generate Clinical Trials mixing every drug with every condition [NIMH·receptalator…] and I got a comment from someone in Texas pointing out that such […]
The Hundred Year War started during the ravages of the Black Death and ending when the heroism and martyrdom of Joan of Arc inspired the resurgence that ultimately closed that chapter of history: "Bubonic plague and warfare reduced population numbers throughout Europe during this period. France lost half its population during the Hundred Years’ War. […]
The Maudsley The Maudsley Debates occur three times a year. The debate last month was on the topic «Does long term use of psychiatric drugs cause more harm than good?». Since it’s mentioned in the recent commentary so frequently, I thought I’d post the video and some of the comments from the BMJ for those […]
In deeply troubling…, I started in 2001 with the publication of the Paxil Study 329 paper looking at Karen Dineen Wagner’s history, but perhaps I should’ve started a couple of years earlier with the now infamous TMAP project. And then there was an appearance at a SmithKline Beechum Neuroscience Division meeting that bears mentioning… TMAP/TCMAP […]