{"id":7076,"date":"2011-04-09T08:00:23","date_gmt":"2011-04-09T12:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/?p=7076"},"modified":"2011-04-10T20:17:22","modified_gmt":"2011-04-11T00:17:22","slug":"the-appearance-of-conflict-of-interest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/1boringoldman.com\/index.php\/2011\/04\/09\/the-appearance-of-conflict-of-interest\/","title":{"rendered":"the appearance of conflict of interest…"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I’m still on STAR*D<\/font><\/strong>, and I put this first part in a box for two reasons – it’s convoluted, in spite of my attempts to make it clear. You might even skip it if you have an aversion to initials and technical talk. My second reason is so you can find it when you get to the end and decide you want to look it over again [or for the first time]: <\/p>\n\n\n
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In looking at the STAR*D<\/font><\/strong> study [recalculating…<\/font><\/a><\/strong><\/u>], there was a very confusing part about changing the primary out come measures along the way – from the standard HRSD [Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression<\/font><\/strong>] to the QIDS-SR [Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomatology–Self-Report<\/font><\/strong>]. If you don’t remember it, you might want to look back at my post about it. It turned out that that change was never approved by the NIMH DSMB [Data Safety and Monitoring Board<\/font><\/strong>]. It turns out that this is not just some picky point, because this new outcome measure was not blinded<\/u> during the study and available to the treating clinicians along the way. What made it worse, in the paper, the authors said, "the QIDS-SR was not used to make treatment decisions, which minimizes the potential for clinician bias.<\/font><\/strong>" I claimed that was a lie. But looking back at the exact wording in the paper,<\/div>\n