Upon Further Review

In a new study, researchers examined 29 popular introduction to psychology textbooks and found that almost 80% included misinformation about intelligence.

On Wednesday, JAMA Psychiatry released a meta-analysis comparing the results of cognitive-behavioral therapy and antidepressant medication in severely depressed populations. Currently, many practice guidelines suggest that antidepressants be used over psychotherapy for major depressive disorder. The analysis, however, found that “patients with more severe depression were no more likely to require medications to improve than patients with less severe depression.”

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.

When the CDC released data revealing an increasing suicide rate in the US, some experts, speaking to major media outlets, speculated that the increase...

Review of a new mixed depression guideline reveals financial bias of guideline developers and lack of evidence supporting recommendations for prescribing of antipsychotics.

Current standards for clinical trials rely on statistical methods that allow for ineffective treatments to gain approval.

A new study reports that the supplement EPA improved ADHD symptoms but a closer look calls these results into question.

Despite concerns about the risk to benefit ratio, the FDA approved flibanserin (Addyi) to treat low female sexual desire in August. In a new...

A new study finds that sponsors of clinical trials in the EU continue to fail at reporting their results as required by recent legislation.

Researchers from the City College of New York and Columbia University published a study this month testing the hypothesis that people diagnosed with schizophrenia treated long-term with antipsychotic drugs have worse outcomes than patients with no exposure to these drugs. They concluded that there is not a sufficient evidence base for the standard practice of long-term use of antipsychotic medications.

Due to the thickness of the scalp and skull, transcranial electrical stimulation (TES) is incapable of targeting networks of neurons in the brain.

A study that appeared online in the British Medical Journal suggests that the FDA’s warning in 2003 that antidepressants increase the risk of suicidal ideation in youth paradoxically  led to an increase in suicide attempts in this age group. Media reports on the study tell of how the black-box warning “backfired.” But is this conclusion warranted by the study? Or is the study flawed? And how did the media report on this story?

Researchers question biases of preliminary trials that found that sodium nitroprusside, an antihypertensive drug, has positive effects on schizophrenia symptoms.

Following an extensive systematic review of treatments for major depression, the American College of Physicians (ACP) issued a recommendation to clinicians suggesting cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) as a first-line treatment for major depressive disorder along with second-generation antidepressants. The results of the review revealed that CBT and antidepressants have similar levels of effectiveness but that antidepressants present serious side-effects and higher relapse rates.

The researchers theorized that this increased effectiveness was due not to “antidepressant” properties, but rather to the drug’s side effects, which include insomnia, drowsiness, and nausea.

What does "normal" brain development throughout childhood look like? It may depend on your demographics.

A massive number of meta-analyses of antidepressant clinical trials have financial conflicts of interest and are unduly influenced by pharmaceutical companies, according to a review to be published in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology. Researchers also found that meta-analyses with industry ties almost never report any negative findings in their abstracts.

New research shows that more connected and well-known researchers are more likely to be published, even when they receive negative reviews.

From The British Psychological Society: A recent meta-analysis has raised concerns about the validity of previous studies on the effectiveness of psychotherapy, calling their methodology and...

A new study, published online by the Open Science Foundation, suggests that questionable research practices (QRPs) are prevalent in the fields of ecology and evolution.

Last Tuesday, The New York Times and several other outlets (including Mad In America) reported on the highly-touted results of a study on psychosocial treatment for patients diagnosed with schizophrenia. Now, claims made about the study, which the ‘Times called “the most rigorous trial to date,” are coming under increased scrutiny.

In a new study, researchers argue that correlational studies may not sufficiently account for alternative explanations, and offer suggestions for mitigating this danger.

While clinical trials make up the “bedrock of evidence-based medicine” in other specialties, psychiatry faces a number of both ethical and scientific problems related to its use of randomized control trials. According to a new editorial in The Lancet Psychiatry, the field of psychiatry research has particular problems with ethical issues in recruitment, inaccurate classification systems, and controversial placebo comparisons, and then, once the studies are finished, it often remains unclear what the “outcomes actually mean for people’s lives.”

In the September issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) three FDA advisory committee members describe the convergence of factors that made the committee’s recommendation to approve flibanserin especially challenging and politically charged.

Scientists at the Yale Collaboration for Research Integrity and Transparency (CRIT) published a new policy paper this month criticizing the current state of biomedical research and calling for improved transparency in research methods.