{"id":16026,"date":"2011-11-16T07:00:49","date_gmt":"2011-11-16T12:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=16026"},"modified":"2011-11-16T18:32:05","modified_gmt":"2011-11-16T23:32:05","slug":"entrepreneurial-neuroscience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2011\/11\/16\/entrepreneurial-neuroscience\/","title":{"rendered":"entrepreneurial neuroscience…"},"content":{"rendered":"
I noticed that the ACNP [American College of Neuropsychopharmacology<\/font><\/strong>] meeting was coming up in early December, and I was perusing the program<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a> looking for something specific. What were the people identified by Senator Grassley’s investigation up to these days? Were they still active in ACNP? What I found was this session, and it sent me off in a different direction:<\/div>\n
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There were two of them in the same session [Alan Schatzberg and John Rush]. But they were there with two others [Stephen Koslow and Leanne Williams] who are also authors with them in the iSPOT-D<\/font><\/strong> study being conducted by Brain Resource<\/font><\/strong>, an Australian Company run by Evian Gordon: <\/div>\n
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International Study to Predict Optimized Treatment for Depression (iSPOT-D), a randomized clinical trial: rationale and protocol.<\/font><\/strong><\/u> <\/a>
by Williams LM<\/font><\/strong>, Rush AJ<\/font><\/strong>, Koslow SH<\/font><\/strong>, Wisniewski SR, Cooper NJ, Nemeroff CB, Schatzberg AF<\/font><\/strong>, and Gordon E.<\/sup>
Trials<\/strong>. 2011 Jan 5;12:4.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Nicholas Cooper and Stephen Wisniewski are longtime Rush co-authors on STAR*D<\/font><\/strong> papers, and Charlie Nemeroff – well, you know who he is. So what was my different direction on seeing this session? It seems really odd. I suppose it makes sense for David Kupfer, head of the DSM-5 Task Force, and Bruce Cuthbert representing the NIMH RDoC [Research Domain Criteria<\/span>] to be presenting in a session called Striving for the Correct Diagnosis in Mental Disorders<\/font><\/em><\/strong>. But what’s the gang from Brain Resource<\/font><\/strong> doing there? What does iSPOT-D<\/font><\/strong> have to do with the topic? <\/div>\n
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"The aim of iSPOT-D is to identify pretreatment measures that predict or moderate MDD treatment response or remission to escitalopram, sertraline or venlafaxine; and develop a model that incorporates multiple predictors and moderators.<\/em>"<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
It seems gratuitous, like a way to get the iSPOT-D <\/font><\/strong>study on the program. Dr. Koslow was formerly Director of Neuroscience at the NIMH, and is now with Evian Gordon’s Brain Resource<\/font><\/strong> Company. Dr. Gordon is a psychologist, something of a guru who has tapes and presentations all over the Internet – an example<\/font><\/strong><\/u><\/a>. He seems to be a cross between "brain trainer" and a motivational speaker. I summarized what I could make of Brain Resource<\/font><\/strong> earlier this year [personalized medicine: the Brain Resource company I…<\/font><\/a><\/strong><\/u>, personalized medicine: the Brain Resource company II…<\/font><\/a><\/strong><\/u>]. His company has jumped onto the personalized medicine idea in a big way gathering experts at his The Mayflower Conference<\/font><\/a><\/strong><\/u> <\/strong>to discuss the topic. Having three Grassley alums on one study is pretty impressive: <\/div>\n
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One of the Clinical Sites for the iSPOT-D<\/font><\/strong> study is their Brain Resource Center<\/font><\/u><\/a><\/strong> in New York – something I didn’t locate back in April when I was looking into personalized medicine.<\/div>\n

In case it doesn’t come across in the spaces between my words, I’m suspicious of every aspect of this enterprise: the motivational videos with their simplified and sometimes fantastic connections between brain and behavior, the slick web site, the cast of characters<\/font><\/u><\/a><\/strong> at the The Mayflower Conference<\/font><\/a><\/u><\/strong>, his choice of coauthors, the "assessment" and its promises – the whole gestalt is  of lots of financial backing and some very fluid and loose science. This personalized medicine line of thinking in mental illness feels like a money-making scheme in training. John Rush [lately of Singapore] is the former Director of the TMAP scam and P.I. on STAR*D, the NIMH study that produced a record number of papers but no visible results, joined by two of his chronic partner authors and his trusty writing assistant slash science fiction author ["We gratefully acknowledge the editorial support<\/em> of Jon Kilner<\/u><\/a><\/strong>, MS, MA …"]. Charlie Nemeroff has been involved in most every psychiatric money making scheme for twenty years, a surviver of multiple defrockings and expose`s. Alan Schatzberg, Nemeroff’s partner in crime on a ghost-written, industry funded textbook is the founder of Corcept, a long running company trying to capitalize on an ineffective treatment for depression. And there are three people from Brain Resource<\/font><\/strong>, a company that mixes and matches pop psychology, pop neuroscience, and modern media with semi-hard science in often unintelligible ways. I cringe at what they’ll come up with and anticipate expensive assessment tools for picking treatments filled with sound and fury, signifying nothing. <\/p>\n

I wouldn’t even mention this except that they’ve gotten themselves onto the program of ACNP, just like they attracted the who’s who in neuroscience to their Mayflower Conference. And they’ve engaged David Kupfer of the questionable DSM-5 fame and Bruce Cuthbert who’s pushing the NIMH RDoC that’s going to classify mental illnesses by the data from neuroimaging, genetics, etc. It feels more like entrepreneurial neuroscience<\/font><\/strong> than something for the program of a scientific organization like ACNP. I wonder what they were thinking?…
<\/strong><\/div>\n
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Update<\/font><\/strong>: I guess I should mention this Session to round out the Grassley Quartet: <\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I noticed that the ACNP [American College of Neuropsychopharmacology] meeting was coming up in early December, and I was perusing the program looking for something specific. What were the people identified by Senator Grassley’s investigation up to these days? Were they still active in ACNP? What I found was this session, and it sent me […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16026","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16026"}],"version-history":[{"count":46,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16026\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16081,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16026\/revisions\/16081"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}