One of the most insightful 10 minute talks I have seen in the last years. Sir Ken Robinson about the education system and the way we think about learning, growth, and success.

… although it works?

This was the title of an investigation by Plakun (former chair of APA’s Committee on Psychotherapy by Psychiatrists and director of admissions and professional relations at the Austen Riggs Center) and West (policy research director for the American Psychiatric Institute for Research and Education (APIRE)).

The conclusion: “There is a lost generation that was trained at the point of the deepest commitment to biological reductionism. That’s part of the reason why the Committee on Psychotherapy by Psychiatrists was originally formed. There was a recognition…that psychotherapy was in danger of being a skill lost in the practicing of psychiatrists and the training of residents.”

Here is a 5 minutes Youtube video in which Plakun explains their findings.

When I grow up, I want to become a psychoneuroimmunologist.

Allen Frances, head of the DSM-IV task force, in a scathing critique of the DSM-V and DSM-V field trials that were published on October 30th in AJP. Must-read for every clinical psychologist.

Unaccountably, it failed to address two much more crucial questions — DSM-5′s potential impact on who would be diagnosed and on how much its dramatic lowering of diagnostic thresholds would increase the rates of mental disorder in the general population. There was no possible excuse for not asking these simple-to-answer and vitally important questions. We have a right to know how much DSM-5 will contribute to the already rampant diagnostic inflation in psychiatry, especially since this risks even greater overuse of psychotropic drugs.
[...]
APA then had to choose between delaying the publication of DSM-5 or canceling its planned second stage of field testing that was meant to provide for desperately needed quality control. APA decided to cancel the trial and instead is rushing ahead with the premature publication of DSM-5 next May — publishing profits clearly trumped concern for the quality and integrity of the product. Fiduciary responsibility was thrown out the window.
[...]
The nine DSM-5 disorders in the kappa range of 0.40-0.59 previously would have been considered just plain poor, but DSM-5 puffs these up as “good.” Then DSM-5 has the chutzpah to call acceptable the six disorders that achieved lousy, absolutely unacceptable reliabilities with kappas of 0.20-0.39. DSM-5 finally finds unacceptable the three diagnoses that were below <0.20 (which is barely better than chance).

The Scientific American, April 2005, about giving up on being persuaded by “mere evidence”.

In retrospect, this magazine’s coverage of so-called evolution has been hideously one-sided. For decades, we published articles in every issue that endorsed the ideas of Charles Darwin and his cronies. True, the theory of common descent through natural selection has been called the unifying concept for all of biology and one of the greatest scientific ideas of all time, but that was no excuse to be fanatics about it. Where were the answering articles presenting the powerful case for scientific creationism? Why were we so unwilling to suggest that dinosaurs lived 6,000 years ago or that a cataclysmic flood carved the Grand Canyon? Blame the scientists. They dazzled us with their fancy fossils, their radiocarbon dating and their tens of thousands of peer-reviewed journal articles. As editors, we had no business being persuaded by mountains of evidence.

A hilarious article worth reading.

(– via brainchallenged spacegirl)

Who isn’t on this paper?

How to Cite this Article:
Power RA, Keers R,Ng MY, Butler AW, Uher R, Cohen-Woods S, Ising M, Craddock N, OwenMJ, Korszun A, Jones L, Jones I, Gill M, Rice JP, Hauser J, Henigsberg N, Maier W, Zobel A, Mors O, Placentino AS, RietschelM, Souery D, Kozel D, Preisig M, Lucae S, Binder EB, Aitchison KJ, Tozzi F, Muglia P, Breen G, Craig IW, Farmer AE, Müller-Myhsok B, McGuffin P, Lewis CM.
2012. Dissecting the Genetic Heterogeneity of Depression Through Age at Onset.
Am J Med Genet Part B 159B:859–868.

Beautiful analysis & visualization of pin numbers and passwords.

One of the greatest TED talks I have seen: John Lloyd pointing out all the things we cannot see, and talking about how few things we know about this universe.

The Guardian published an edited extract from “Bad Pharma”, by Ben Goldacre, published next week.

I don’t know what to say. These are facts, and I read a lot of the papers he talks about. We really need to do something about this. It’s one of the greatest and most dangerous crimes of our times.

Just one example:

“When GlaxoSmithKline applied for a marketing authorisation in children for paroxetine, an extraordinary situation came to light, triggering the longest investigation in the history of UK drugs regulation. Between 1994 and 2002, GSK conducted nine trials of paroxetine in children. The first two failed to show any benefit, but the company made no attempt to inform anyone of this by changing the “drug label” that is sent to all doctors and patients. In fact, after these trials were completed, an internal company management document stated: “It would be commercially unacceptable to include a statement that efficacy had not been demonstrated, as this would undermine the profile of paroxetine.” In the year after this secret internal memo, 32,000 prescriptions were issued to children for paroxetine in the UK alone: so, while the company knew the drug didn’t work in children, it was in no hurry to tell doctors that, despite knowing that large numbers of children were taking it. More trials were conducted over the coming years – nine in total – and none showed that the drug was effective at treating depression in children.

It gets much worse than that. These children weren’t simply receiving a drug that the company knew to be ineffective for them; they were also being exposed to side-effects. This should be self-evident, since any effective treatment will have some side-effects, and doctors factor this in, alongside the benefits (which in this case were nonexistent). But nobody knew how bad these side-effects were, because the company didn’t tell doctors, or patients, or even the regulator about the worrying safety data from its trials. This was because of a loophole: you have to tell the regulator only about side-effects reported in studies looking at the specific uses for which the drug has a marketing authorisation. Because the use of paroxetine in children was “off-label”, GSK had no legal obligation to tell anyone about what it had found.”

Please read the full article, and consider looking into the book.

– Source: guardian.co.uk