Dr. Stephan Heckers, Editor-in-Chief JAMA Psychiatry: conflict of interest and nepotism at Vanderbilt University Dept. of Psychiatry. Erica S. Weitz, MA; Steven D. Hollon, PhD; et al. Baseline Depression Severity as Moderator of Depression Outcomes Between Cognitive Behavioral Therapy vs Pharmacotherapy. An Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis JAMA Psychiatry. Published online September 23, 2015.
Stephan Heckers is Editor-in-Chief of a journal that his faculty Steven D. Hollon has published an article as second author, an example of conflict of interest and nepotism at Vanderbilt University Dept. of Psychiatry:
Erica S. Weitz, MA; Steven D. Hollon, PhD; et al. Baseline Depression Severity as Moderator of Depression Outcomes Between Cognitive Behavioral Therapy vs Pharmacotherapy. An Individual Patient Data Meta-analysis. JAMA Psychiatry. Published online September 23, 2015. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry. 2015.1516.
Besides the conflict of interest issue, the logic of this meta-analysis that looked at studies that compared antidepressants with or without blinding, with unblinded CBT is not scientifically valid. Blinding antidepressants handicap them when compared to unblinded CBT, and unblinded antidepressants impairs their ability to show efficacy when blinded compared with placebo (and without a confounding unblinded CBT arm as in this study), which is another kind of handicap. Double-blind conditions are absolutely necessary in order to filter bias from the results of these outcome studies where the evaluation endpoints are subjective as they are in subjects with depression.
Related page: JAMA Article.
