http://mindhacks.com/2010/01/30/the-rise-and-fall-of-antidepressants/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Sun, 19 May 2013 05:26:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2010/01/30/the-rise-and-fall-of-antidepressants/#comment-5106 Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:56:11 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/the-rise-and-fall-of-antidepressants/#comment-5106 Science Based Medicine has a write-up on the new JAMA article.
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/?p=3722

]]> http://mindhacks.com/2010/01/30/the-rise-and-fall-of-antidepressants/#comment-5105 Wed, 03 Feb 2010 21:52:30 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/the-rise-and-fall-of-antidepressants/#comment-5105 Found you via Times Online top 30 list, congrats! Looks good in general, I’ll come back and read more later, but I had to comment about this post.
I understand the underlying research has very valid points about anti-depressants and placebos, but this Newsweek article is certainly not excellent.
1. “antidepressants are basically expensive Tic Tacs.” Great quotable, but lousy science journalism. The tic tacs don’t work anywhere near as well as antidepressants for severe depression.
2. Almost only authors of studies with similar findings are quoted in the story. The one exception: “Even defenders of antidepressants agreed that the drugs have ‘relatively small’ effects.” And the drug company quotes, but they are easily disregarded as biased. There is not one neutral source to evaluate the claims. I’d say this the definition of a puff piece.
3. “the difference was minuscule” One-third better is minuscule?
4. “the editors of the journal Prevention & Treatment ran a warning with his paper, saying it used meta-analysis ‘controversially.’” Hid this rare rebuke in smarmy paragraph.
5. “emperor had no clothes” Quote sources, otherwise don’t bother.
6. “Why that should be remains a mystery, admits coauthor” Maybe because antidepressants work for severe depression?
Bad Science wrote up some problems with the main study here: http://www.badscience.net/2008/02/619/
See “One more thing” after the pictures.
Anyway, sorry to rag on here, my issue is with the article, not you. I still look forward to more reading.

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