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Healthy Skepticism Library item: 13193

Warning: This library includes all items relevant to health product marketing that we are aware of regardless of quality. Often we do not agree with all or part of the contents.

 

Publication type: Journal Article

Turner EH.
Efficacy of antidepressants
BMJ 2008 Mar 8; 336:(7643):516
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/336/7643/516


Abstract:

Is not an absolute measure, and it depends on how clinical significance is defined

In February 2008, Kirsch and colleagues reported a meta-analysis of the efficacy of antidepressants using data from clinical trials submitted to the Food and Drug Administration.1 They provocatively concluded, “there seems little evidence to support the prescription of antidepressant medication to any but the most severely depressed patients.”

In January this year, we published an article about the selective publication of antidepressant trials and its influence on apparent efficacy,2 in which we also used FDA data. Our main finding was that antidepressant drugs are much less effective than is apparent from journal articles. From the FDA data we derived an overall effect size of 0.31. Kirsch and colleagues used FDA data from four of the 12 drugs we examined and calculated an overall effect size of 0.32.

Although these two sets of results were in excellent agreement, our interpretations of them were quite different. In contrast to Kirsch and colleagues’ . . .

turnere@ohsu.edu


Notes:

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There is no sin in being wrong. The sin is in our unwillingness to examine our own beliefs, and in believing that our authorities cannot be wrong. Far from creating cynics, such a story is likely to foster a healthy and creative skepticism, which is something quite different from cynicism.”
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