Today, I (Peter Gøtzsche) discovered that an article I published in 2011 in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews about review production in Cochrane no longer existed. I have therefore uploaded it. It showed that Cochrane centres were essential for review production. However, Cochrane’s CEO from 2012 to 2021, journalist Mark Wilson, systematically undermined the

I (Peter Gøtzsche) recently published an article with this title and explained why the Cochrane Collaboration’s motto “Trusted evidence” is misleading. Virtually every Cochrane review of psychiatric drugs should be distrusted because there is too little attention to all the flaws in the trials. As an example, the Cochrane 2021 network meta-analysis of depression pills

Researcher and journalist Maryanne Demasi published today an account of the Cochrane show trial against Peter Gøtzsche (me) and of subsequent events. I have uploaded the Cochrane Tapes, with an introduction and explanations. The show trial was intended to be kept secret, but the tapes from the Governing Board meeting were leaked. They show that

I describe what is likely the beginning to the end for Cochrane. According to its major funder, the writing has been on the wall for 8 years, which is exactly the period when Cochrane’s new CEO, journalist Mark Wilson, ruled the organisation and destroyed it. He suddenly left his job, in the middle of a

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

… it was because Professor Gøtzsche was prepared to call out the lowering of scientific standards in Cochrane that the hierarchy felt compelled to plot his demise …  one of the worst show trials ever … in a manner that mirrors how the drug industry operates … the death of Cochrane rather than the whistleblower.

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.

I first published this Cochrane review in 2001 and lastly updated it in 2013. Because many more deaths have now been published, I updated the review again in January 2023, and a month later, my co-author had independently assessed the new data and agreed with what I had found. The updated mortality data show even

Our review of safe withdrawal of depression drugs  shows that length of taper is highly predictive for the chance of success (P = 0.00001). All the randomised studies we reviewed were of poor quality. They confounded withdrawal symptoms with relapse; did not use hyperbolic tapering; withdrew the depression drug too fast; and stopped it entirely when