Bias, Corruption & Accountability

From the New Scientist: “Paul Smaldino and Richard McElreath at the University of California Davis used an evolutionary theory-based computational model to analyse the problem of bad...

According to a study published in this month’s British Journal of Psychiatry, people diagnosed with depression in high-income countries are more likely to limit...

ProPublica has provided an update on their investigation of Dr. Michael Reinstein. "A former Chicago psychiatrist who was the nation's top prescriber of the...

Clinicians are following best practice guidelines only half of the time when giving antipsychotic medications to children, and following FDA-approved indications only one-fourth of the time.

Marcia Angell in the New York Review of Books writes about the inherent conflict in clinical trials between “the search for scientific answers," on one hand, and “the rights and welfare of human subjects,” on the other.

Between 2,150 and 4,100 children suffered from severe malformations connected to valproate prescription.

BrainBlogger has an interview with Gary Greenberg, psychotherapist and author of The Book of Woe: The DSM and the Unmaking of Psychiatry. "The (Diagnostic...

In spite of constantly increasing opportunities to tell different stories to the canonical story of bio-psychiatry, it can be risky for academics to voice a different perspective than the mainstream model of mental illness. In this conversation, a communication professor and a psychology professor discuss their challenges and personal experiences with going against the grain, such as what it means to be labeled “anti-psychiatry” by colleagues and responding to students upset to learn their medications may not be all they thought they were.

In the Atlantic, Cari Romm describes “what it is like to earn a living as a research subject in clinical trials.” “Phase 1 trials are almost always where the money is,” she writes, but they are “also the least regulated” and “companies aren’t legally required to register a trial with Clinicaltrials.gov.” “It seems to me like if you were considering signing up for one of these things, you would at least want to know the data that’s out there about [safety],” said Carl Elliott, an author for MIA and expert on the ethics of human subject research.

“Pharmaceutical industry influence can harm the social and moral character of medical students. In medicine, the traditional virtues of benevolence, compassion, integrity, respectfulness, honesty...

From HealthNewsReview: For nine years, HealthNewsReview has hosted a one-of-a-kind list of health care industry-independent experts for journalists. The list has now been revised with new...

National Institute of Mental Health Director Thomas Insel laments the lack of reproducibility in such a large majority of mental health-related research. He describes...

From the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics: The American Psychological Association's participation in "enhanced interrogation" and other forms of torture is indicative of the need...

ProPublica revisits the story of Dr. Chuck Denham, the previous editor of the Journal of Patient Safety and former "co-chairman of a committee that...

A new study provides an insider’s look into how psychiatrists view the establishment of drug-free programs in Norway.

University of Salzburg researchers analyzed the results of 1,000 randomly-selected published psychology articles from 2007 and found strong evidence of publication biases, according to...

Adolescent risk taking is explored contextually, beyond models of brain imbalances and adverse consequences.

-Carl Elliott reflects on the scandals at UMinn, and explains why he worries that medical and psychiatric research at other universities and institutions may be just as unethical.

Randomized controlled trials published in four leading behavioral health journals show that new requirements for registering of trials does not seem to be improving trial design or transparency.

"The American Psychological Association (APA) last week named a former federal prosecutor to lead an investigation into its role in supporting the U.S. government’s...

Pharmalot’s Ed Silverman reports on a Senate bill aimed at loosening requirements around the reporting of financial conflicts of interest between companies and physicians....

A review of academic textbooks finds that they often leave out effect sizes and molecular genetics findings, both of which suggest minimal impact of genetics on ADHD. Instead, textbooks focus on overblown conclusions from behavioral studies.

A “not otherwise specified” (NOS) diagnosis is often used when an individual may have some symptoms related to a psychiatric diagnosis but does not meet enough criteria to warrant a particular diagnosis. A new study, published online ahead of print in Psychiatric Services, reveals that the proportion of mental health visits resulting in such NOS diagnoses rose to nearly fifty percent, and that these diagnoses do not result in more conservative psychiatric drug prescriptions.

From The Lown Institute: New investigations and research are beginning to show the dangerous consequences resulting from the FDA's lack of oversight of medical devices. "It sounds crazy...

From STAT: STAT has recently awarded the first-ever Doing the Right Thing (DiRT) Award to the American Diabetes Association and its flagship journal, Diabetes, for championing correct...