Last week, I chastised New Scientist for describing...
Category: psychiatric research
Last week, I chastised New Scientist for describing a blog post from the National Institute of Mental Health as "a bombshell."
Andy Coughlan and Sara Reardon wrote the following lede off of the post, written by the NIMH director, Thomas Insel:
The world's biggest mental health research institute is abandoning the new version of psychiatry's "bible" – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, questioning its validity and stating that "patients with mental...
Researchers once optimistic about the development of new drugs for psychiatric illnesses say that research has failed and the drug pipeline has dried up.
In the Feb. 23 issue of Science News, Laura Sanders quotes one psychiatrist who says that "Not a single drug...
Researchers once optimistic about the development of new drugs for psychiatric illnesses say that research has failed and the drug pipeline has dried up.
In the Feb. 23 issue of Science News, Laura Sanders quotes one psychiatrist who says that "Not a single drug designed to treat a psychiatric illness in a novel way has reached patients in more than 30 years." A neuroscientist tells her that "“Brain research is really hard. No one should be blamed for how hard this is. But we did get stuck.”
She begins her thorough assessment of the state of psychiatric drug research with an anecdote about a Lilly drug, LY2140023, that promised relief from the hallucinations and delusions of schizophrenia. "All signs pointed to success," she writes. The drug worked well in mice, and in small, preliminary...
In November, I praised "a chilling story" by Peter Whoriskey in The Washington Post [that] shows how drug companies have misused their influence and their expertise to corrupt...
In November, I praised "a chilling story" by Peter Whoriskey in The Washington Post [that] shows how drug companies have misused their influence and their expertise to corrupt and distort research on new drugs." It was an important piece.
Now he is back with another pharmaceutical industry story, which leads with whether antidepressants should be prescribed to people suffering from grief such as that produced by the loss of a spouse. This time, I think Whoriskey has missed something important.
Both stories are part of a Post special report entitled "Can Medical Research Be Trusted?" These are important stories, and we need this kind of tough reporting on the powerful pharmaceutical industry. The stories detail suspicious practices by the pharmaceutical industry that have led to increased profits--sometimes at the...
In an important and thorough post last week at The Atlantic, Ford Vox, a physician-journalist in Boston, wrote about Scientology's...
In an important and thorough post last week at The Atlantic, Ford Vox, a physician-journalist in Boston, wrote about Scientology's campaign against psychiatry, a useful reminder that Scientology continues to pursue its agenda, even if we're not always aware of it.
His post focuses on a series of four articles written by Andrea Ball in May and June at the Austin American-Statesman. They deal with a controversy over psychiatric research that appears to have been done improperly. The first article begins with a serious indictment:
The Department of State Health Services has prohibited the use of a controversial treatment at its public psychiatric hospitals after officials say they learned that a doctor performed unauthorized research on...
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