Bad Science.

[rhythmaning]

I have been busy recently, and this evening I am catching up with LJ, blogs and so on. (And playing spider solitaire. Obviously.)

I read with a lot of interest Ben Goldacre's blog "BadScience", on bad science and poor reporting on serotonin and antidepressants.

Here's to scepticism.

Comments

[melted-snowball.livejournal.com]

Recommended book: The Antidepressant Era by Healy.

It seems to me, based on some reading of research literature, and on some secondary source reading, that the best we can say is that some of these drugs help some people sometimes. And, well, that's not much different than what we can say about a lot of other drugs; there was a study last week that appeared that says more or less the same thing about cold medication.

What is the case, though, is that there is great money to be made in the process of determining if someone is one of the people to be helped. Many of the new generation of drugs for schizophrenics cost $300-$600/month, despite a recent study that suggests they're no more effective than previous drugs that are an order of magnitude cheaper. But maybe they are, for some people.

This is very hard. And yes, people should be most skeptical. (No matter which side of the pond's spelling of that word you use.)