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Old 6th March 2019, 08:49 PM   #523
Reality Check
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: New Zealand
Posts: 28,521
Originally Posted by The Atheist View Post
"Placebo, not Prozac"
Misleading "Placebo, not Prozac" from The Atheist.

The essay is Do antidepressants work?
An essay from Jacob Stegenga who is a philosopher of science, not a psychiatrist. Stegenga states that he is approaching the evidence about antidepressants as a philosopher. His own conclusion as a philosopher is "Placebo, not Prozac" (the last 3 words of the essay).

A more realistic conclusion is that the evidence about the effectiveness of antidepressants is complex and mixed and thus it has to be "Placebo or Prozac". If an effect can be produced by A or B and there is no evidence favoring A or B then science philosophy states that either A or B produces the cause. That meta-analysis do not favor A or B is a good part of the essay.

He cites Comparative efficacy and acceptability of 21 antidepressant drugs for the acute treatment of adults with major depressive disorder: a systematic review and network meta-analysis and dismisses it without any actual analysis. His biased analogy could have been checked by looking at the paper (Did 97% of the subject in the drug group get worse? Did 98% of the subjects in the placebo group have no change?). His essay even implies that his analogy is wrong - placebos do have beneficial effects so the placebo group should have improved.

If psychiatrists use antidepressants and patients improve, that is a success of psychiatry regardless of whether it is a effect of the drug or the placebo effect.
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