Bias, Corruption & Accountability

-Is the World Health Organization moving towards developing tighter ties with corporations through its new "Framework of Engagement with non-State Actors"?

Scholars from the Centre for Global Health Policy describe changes in drug policies being taken by many national governments that are motivated by national security concerns.

A special issue explores the connection between poverty, mental health, and psychotherapy.

For MinnPost, Susan Perry discusses that the pharmaceutical industry played in the creation of the ‘mental disorder’ known as premenstrual dysphoric disorder or PMDD....

In a survey of 315 medical scientists in the Netherlands, 15% "admitted to recently fabricating or falsifying research data," while more than 25% "admitted...

In this op-ed for The New York Times, Emily Kelly, the wife of former NFL player Rob Kelly, shares the devastating impact that a professional...

“Decisions about the effectiveness of drugs are being made with incomplete information because results of almost three-quarters of clinical trials are still not published...

-Three former editors of the New England Journal of Medicine criticize the NEJM for its recent publication of a series of articles downplaying conflicts of interest.

Dr. Dainius Pūras argues that the status quo in mental health treatment is no longer acceptable and demands political action to promote human rights.

The Scientific American reports on an in-depth reanalysis revealing widespread underreporting of negative side effects, including suicide attempts and aggressive behavior. Article →

A group of physicians and academics in Australia has launched a campaign to ban all pharmaceutical company sales representatives from visiting any medical doctors...

Contrary to popular belief, science is not immune to the corrupting influences of the society it operates in. When false results produced by p-hacked research have social, scientific, and political importance, and affect or harm the lives of millions of people while entire fields look on, it constitutes a scientific scandal.

New research identifies poor long-term outcomes for both CBT and medications for treating anxiety disorders in childhood.

Researchers detect a striking relationship between the month of school enrollment relative to peers and patterns of ADHD diagnoses in a large sample of elementary school students throughout the US.

The October edition of the Journal of World Psychiatry, the 3rd ranked journal of Psychiatry, will publish a reanalysis of antidepressant efficacy versus placebo in major depression. When the researchers, Arif Khan and Walter Brown, analyzed the data from the FDA archives for antidepressants approved between 1985 and 1997, “it was evident that the conventional wisdom of 70% response with antidepressants was at best an overestimate.” In fact, “the magnitude of symptom reduction was about 40% with antidepressants,” compared to “about 30% with placebo.”

From Medium: According to many prominent physicians, so-called "evidence based medicine" is no longer useful. Much of the evidence base has been corrupted by the...

This week another study was published showing that SSRI antidepressant use during pregnancy is associated with increased rates of autism in the children.  By my count, this is now the tenth study on this topic and it follows on the heels of previous studies – all of which found links between SSRI antidepressant use in pregnancy and autism in the offspring.  Most of these studies were recently reviewed by Man, et al, who also concluded that SSRI antidepressant use during pregnancy is associated with autism in the children. So we now have numerous studies in different human populations all showing a link between SSRI use in pregnancy and autism in the children. Yet, much of the news and blogosphere focus on casting doubts about these findings. What is going on here?

A new study in the journal Translational Psychiatry, an influential journal in biological psychiatry published by Nature, challenges the state of the research on antipsychotic drugs.

The American Psychiatric Foundation has announced the launch of a pharmaceutical company-funded national initiative to move people from jails into psychiatric care.

In this piece for Vision Magazine, Danit Felber details the U.S. pharmaceutical industry's efforts to stomp out foreign competition. "What does this mean practically? A nonprofit...