The review on antidepressant withdrawal that Cochrane won’t publish

Peter Gøtzsche and Anders Sørensen on trying to get a review of methods for safe antidepressant withdrawal published in Cochrane: “They sent us on a mission that was impossible to accomplish” to “protect the psychiatric guild.” About half of the patients on depression pills, or over 50 million people worldwide, will experience withdrawal symptoms when […]

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The mantra of evidence-based medicine stifles important psychiatric research

“We live in the era of evidenced-based practice. If an approach is not funded, then it will never acquire the kind of data that would allow it to be considered evidence-based. This creates a closed loop: only research that is hypothesized to be of value is funded; understudied approaches that might be of value are

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More drug deaths: Merck and PTC Therapeutics want clinical study reports to be secret

Yet again, two US drug companies are trying to reintroduce secrecy. Merck and PTC Therapeutics have appealed an initial ruling that clinical study reports should not be considered confidential. On 11 September, Advocate General of the European Court of Justice, Gerard Hogan, found that disclosure of the documents would harm the companies’ commercial interests. The

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Science and censorship — my story

By Maryanne Demasi, Ph.D. August 19, 2019. Science is facing a crisis of democracy. Now more than ever, vitriolic attacks are being leveled at people who debate opposing scientific views. Asking questions that challenge the establishment may be unsettling, but silencing debate and proclaiming that the “science is settled” is not the solution. Belgian physician

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Meeting in Erice, Sicily, 7-9 October 2019 about reducing drug harms

Sponsored by the Uppsala Monitoring Centre and co-arranged by the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine in Oxford, 34 invited people participated in a three-day workshop, “Improving the detection, analysis and reporting of harms in medicines: exploring, enhancing and empowering.” It has been shown in several independent studies that prescription drugs are the third leading cause of

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BMJ News: Expelled Cochrane director to set up new institute for “integrity in science”

Peter Gøtzsche, who was expelled from the Cochrane Collaboration last year, plans to found a new Institute for Scientific Freedom. The new organisation, whose goal is “to preverve honesty and integrity in science”, will be launched on 9 March at an international symposium in Copenhagen. Read more.

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