Posted by therese desqueroux on January 30, 2002, at 18:03:40
A few months ago, the New York Times ran an article on a psychologist-researcher who apparently has become the bete-noire of the psych community.
I may have forgotten the exact details, but this is the gist: She had made herself extremely unpopular with some learned journals by questioning the methodology used in the studies they published.
One example knocked me for a huge loop: the revelation that at least some studies do not account for the subjectivity of individuals' numerical ratings of their mood in answering questionnaires: in other words, that someone's mood rating of "4" on a scale of 1 to 10 might correspond to someone else's "7". I am not scientifically trained as I suppose is obvious, but that seemed pretty darned basic.
Which made me wonder further, since I will probably never get beyond the self-servng drug monograph on the Web posted by the company, do these studies reveal:
How the participants were selected? Referred? Responded to an ad? What was the population? Large city? College town? Retirment community?
Were the participants paid,and if so, how much?
What was the clinical diagnosis of the participants at the start of the study, if any?
Were the participants given free medication/therapy?
If the participants were not given free medication/therapy, did the cost resemble anything like the real world cost? In other words, you might look at therapy/medication a bit more critically if you are paying $175 for 50 minutes of therapy or hundreds of dollars for medication every couple of months.
How long did the therapy last?
It seems to me that without the answers to these questions, it's hard to get a true reading of whether a new therapy or medication works. If you were paid some money for some so-so therapy for six weeks, you might be less inclined to give it a negative rating.
poster:therese desqueroux
thread:92237
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20020124/msgs/92237.html