I’m on a break. I’ve been outside with my neighbors Dick Pratt and David Frevert, sawing away at a huge tree that fell with an authentically scary crash just outside my house. It barely missed the living room. Where I was standing.
La Kid, watching a film in her bedroom at the time, claims she heard nothing. The Pratts, four houses down and the owners of the woods where the tree stood, report having heard it quite clearly.
All of our work is overlooked by The Deer Who Are Always Here.
Neighbors wander by and gawk. Pick up a saw, people!
There’s sawing, and there’s dragging limbs and leaves out to the street for the town maintenance truck to haul. Lots of discussion among us as to whether this humongous amount of tree will overwhelm the town’s capacity…
Oh – I take it back. I just glanced out the window, and a woman I don’t even recognize has parked her dog in my garden and taken up the work with Dick.
I’m heading back out there now – cranberry juice for the workers, water for the dog.
The artist.
Michiko Kakutani, in the New York Times, writes a nice, concise appreciation of DeLillo’s 1997 novel, Underworld.
Robert Whitaker writes the strongest response so far to Peter Kramer’s defense of antidepressants.
… returns to haunt the Minister of Foreign Affairs and Communications in Trinidad.
…contemplating koi at the
Japanese Koi Pond at the
Catoctin Animal Park —
just a hop skip and a jump
from Camp David.
UD thanks her sister
for the photo.
… this book. It shows a child’s hand grabbing a massive number of pills. [Scroll down to read some of the book.]
Your Child Does Not Have Bipolar Disorder is a richly deserved attack on one of Harvard University’s most prominent professors, Joseph Biederman, a man whose financially self-interested insistence on this serious diagnosis continues to damage and stigmatize millions of young children.
The book’s author, Stuart Kaplan, a professor at Penn State, also has a blog on which he worries, in a day-to-day way, about the psychiatric profession maintaining Buy-Bipolar Biederman’s regime. He notes that although the diagnosis is gradually (thanks to books like Kaplan’s, and to Biederman’s having been sanctioned for taking and not disclosing drug money) being discredited, the editors of the latest, in-progress DSMV are still saying things like this:
… ‘[C]lassic’ adult [bipolar disorder] clearly does present in pre-pubertal children as well as in adolescents, although it may be rare in the younger age group. Unambiguous agreement about this fact weighed heavily in the Work Group’s deliberations.
Kaplan goes to town on this:
The use of the wording “unambiguous agreement about this fact” is a coercive rhetorical device that has held sway for more than 15 years in the pediatric bipolar scientific literature. Instead of providing evidence, the Work Group attempts to persuade the reader that everyone who is smart and important knows this to be true. In truth the assertion is unfounded and has no place in sophisticated scientific discussions of bipolar disorder in children. The clause “although it may be rare in the younger age group” suggests some hesitation on the part of the Work Group in endorsing the existence of Bipolar Disorder in pre-pubertal children.
That the committee accepted as fact that bipolar disorder exists in children raises the issue of the use of the word fact in psychiatry as contrasted with its use in other sciences and in everyday conversation. The use of word “fact” in scientific papers in psychiatry is highly unusual. The use of the word in this context by the DSM-V Work Group is jarring to regular readers of the scholarly literature in psychiatry. In this scientific literature, papers end with conclusions preceded by discussions that are expected to point out the limitations of the scientific work. Conclusions are usually modest, tentative and limited. The word fact is almost never used.
Are there “facts” in psychiatry comparable to the physical constant of the speed of light in physics, the periodic table in chemistry, the function of the adrenal gland in biology, or the boiling point of water on the earth at sea level in everyday life? There may be some (e.g., need for an adequate environment for infants and children for psychological growth and development) but most so called facts in psychiatry are brief stand-ins or proxies for many inferences and theories that shift and change abruptly. For example, the diagnosis of bipolar disorder in adults is based to some degree on the diagnosis of Manic Depressive Insanity first developed by Kraepelin. The veracity of his observations and theories about psychosis are part of the brew of the current diagnosis of Bipolar Disorder. The diagnosis is based to limited degree on Kraepelin’s theories and a large number of other hypotheses many of which are disputable. Fact as the acceptance of some immutable truth does not enter into the discussion.
When the DSM-V Work Group refers to the unambiguous fact that the disorder exists in prepubertal children, does the Work Group have any specific age range in mind? Preschoolers? Children ages 10 years to 12 years? Children ages 6 years to 12 years? Each of these age groups has been the subject of controversy related to bipolar disorder in children, but they are lumped together without any discrimination between them. Similarly, the use of the word “rare” by the DSM-V Work Group remains inexplicably undefined. The expression “rare” has a specific meaning in medicine, referring to a prevalence of 1 or less cases per 1500. Is this what the DSM-V Work Group means? There is a startling lack of precision in the discussion of the existence of pediatric bipolar disorder in childhood by the DSM- V Work Group. Many people, myself included, believe it is closer to the truth to assume, until proven otherwise, that this prepubertal “disorder” does not exist at all.
The misdiagnosis monster lives: the stake must still be driven in to the heart of the beast.
Beast? Why the strong language?
Because the diagnosis is doing terrible things to children; and because the only people benefiting seem to be the people who sell all those pills under the child’s hand on the book’s cover.
The bipolar monster was loosed because American university professors, in cooperation with drug companies, created it. Indeed the problem that confronts us now, as Kaplan says, is how to kill it.
… and who can be surprised that they crop up in Michele Bachmann’s business?
[Marcus Bachmann’s] Ph.D. comes from the Union Institute, a Cincinnati-based correspondence school; in 2002, it was cited by the Ohio Board of Regents, which said, “Expectations for student scholarship at the doctoral level were not as rigorous as is common for doctoral work.”
As Politico has reported, he’s not licensed with any of the boards that certify mental-health professionals in Minnesota, one of the few states that allows unlicensed people to practice mental-health care. [Another therapist on staff has an M.A. that] comes from Argosy University, a for-profit diploma mill.
Having maintained the University of Kentucky’s beautiful sports program [scroll down], and having built Coal Lodge, now-retired President Todd takes a plush, well-deserved rest back on the UK faculty.
Todd’s new office at UK’s Advanced Science and Technology Commercialization Center will cost $143,828.
The office will be built from an existing conference room, complete with two subdivided rooms that will be a waiting area and a suite for Todd and his assistant.
Some on the faculty are angry that buildings and programs are falling apart right and left on campus while the university sends a big fat thank you to Todd. But you can’t deny that he did a great job of maintaining, and indeed deepening, the culture of the University of Kentucky.
… secretly industry-sponsored research papers in the field of medicine to secretly industry-sponsored research papers in the field of economics!
Two of UD‘s colleagues recently released a report which makes “a strong argument for shrinking the role of the Federal Housing Administration in insuring mortgages. But nowhere is it disclosed that the paper was at least partially underwritten by the private mortgage insurance giant Genworth Financial Inc., which stands to benefit from a pull back in the market by FHA.”
WHOOOOPS. One of the authors “said he didn’t realize he had failed to note Genworth’s underwriting of the paper in the credits.” Such a small thing… easy to overlook… they’re just the people paying for the work.
And here’s a funny thing for a professor to say about his research: “They are using up our time, so they make a [financial] contribution to the university.”
… about Theodore Roszak, author of The Making of a Counter Culture. He died this week.
I’ll let you know when the post is up.
**********************************
Here it is.
Carolyn Beeler, at WHYY, makes explicit the problem with medical school professors who allow their work to be ghostwritten by the pharmaceutical industry:
“A medical writer might create a shell of the article that says this is the primary outcome measure, this is the population measure that’s going to be included in the study, and then create dummy tables for the results,” [Harvard’s John] Abramson said. “That is perfectly legitimate.”
The problem is when that veers into ghostwriting. Medical writers paid by drug companies have control over the data analysis and writing, not the academic whose name adds legitimacy at the top of the study, Abramson said.
“Then there’s a serious problem, because then what’s happening is that the commercial sponsor of the study is using a facade of science,” Abramson said.
Massachusetts psychiatrist Dr. Danny Carlat said ghostwriting might hold a special allure for companies marketing drugs to psychiatrists because there is a vast array of drugs that are of similar effectiveness.
“In a field like that, where there’s so much competition, ghostwriting becomes a very important part of the marketing machinery of any company,” Carlat said. “You want to convince psychiatrists who are reading these studies that your drug has some kind of advantage, however slight, over the competitor’s drug.”
And the allure for professors who hand their intellectual integrity over to marketing agencies?
Well, sometimes they get a cut, of course. Money’s always nice.
And it’s a quick and dirty addition to your cv. Nice raise and promotion work, if you can get it.
… might be a good name for doctorates from Bonn University. Judging by one high-profile PhD of theirs, the degree is a bit on the confectionery side.
Jorgo Chatzimarkakis, a rising German politician, has had the doctorate revoked — more than half of it was plagiarized, which is rather a lot.
Copy, Shake, and Paste, a blog devoted to plagiarism, notes that Chatzimarkakis went on tv, before the revocation, to defend himself:
Chatzimarkakis defended himself with, among other things, the argument that the work was “intertextual” and that he was using “Oxford style” quotations, that he learned when he was at Oxford.
It’s intertextual, man. The self is an illusion. Chill.
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As always, UD thanks Chris for alerting her to the latest naughty German.
We’re talking Australia here (the stats for the States are probably worse); and the Australian media is beginning to wonder
1. why the country hasn’t been able to come up with prescription guidelines for this runaway train; and
2. why the committee of experts charged with this task has got in-hock-to-pharma folk on it.
Of course the underlying problem is that Australia is … a little slow. How long does it take for news to get there? We’ve known for years that Joseph Biederman’s research is compromised by his own pharma affiliations, but here comes the committee to announce that they’ve been unable to decide on the Australian guidelines because
US psychiatrist Joseph Biederman, whose work is cited over 80 times in the draft guidelines, and two colleagues were sanctioned by Harvard University after allegedly failing to report more than $1.6m they received from drug firms.
Uh… ye-e-e-s-s… Biederman’s conflicts of interest and non-disclosures and, er, “strong pro-drug views” have now gotten him into formal trouble. But Harvard took its sweet time. Everybody’s been scandalized by Biederman for ages. Where were you guys?
Meanwhile, millions of children down under get diagnosed with ADHD and have to take really strong drugs… I guess… Ho hum.
Answer: Hyuk! It don’t! It’s Tennessee!
A colleague of UD‘s named Turley
Wants one boy to have many girlies.
“My thing on polygamy
Makes UD quite sick of me,
And even my wife has turned surly.”
