This article by Dr. Christopher Lane has been published in Psychology Today. It begins:
“KEY POINTS
- New research finds widely prescribed drugs are much less effective than their published record suggests.
- One study saw financial conflicts of interest driving whether unfavorable results were reported and where.
- A new study of FDA data finds the recorded efficacy of alprazolam XR inflated by more than 40 percent.
Earlier this summer, three distinguished researchers set out to determine if publication bias over the handling of unfavorable results could be quantified precisely.
When uncounted negative data are reintroduced into datasets and swollen effect sizes, however, flags appear over the published record on which researchers, practitioners, and patients all rely heavily.
Unfavorable Results
In the August issue of the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, Martin Plöderl of Salzburg’s Paracelsus Medical University and Simone Amendola and Michael P. Hengartner at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences re-examined 27 observational studies that had previously assessed associations between antidepressant use and increases in suicidal behavior …”
You can read more from here.
