The antidepressant-debunking study

[substitute]

There was a news release today about a study that appears to show the uselessness of popular antidepressants.

This was reported in the Guardian, among other places. The publication can be read here.

There are problems, as summarized:

1. PlOS is not an academic peer-reviewed journal. edit: They are in fact peer-reviewed, based on better information I have received by comments. Read the threads. They say they are peer-reviewed, but when you read their FAQ, you'll see this: "We involve the academic community in our peer review process as much as possible. After professional staff have determined that the paper falls within the scope of the journal, and is of a minimum acceptable quality, decisions on whether to send a paper out for in-depth review are made via a collaboration between experienced, professional editors who work full time at PLoS, and academic editors who are experts in their field."
   
   I'm not saying this is Wikipedia, but it's not the same thing as a traditional journal, either.
   
   
2. It's one study. Beware of an equivalency between "one metastudy showed that these three or four drugs didn't show a good outcome under these conditions" and "antidepressants don't work."
   
   
3. The study measured outcomes at six weeks. That isn't very long in a depression treatment, whether you're using Prozac or a trampoline.

That having been said, anything that keeps family doctors from throwing the best-advertised drug at every problem is going to be helpful at this juncture. And using any kind of medication (except possibly the trampoline) without counseling is, well, crazy.

Comments

[etb.livejournal.com]

My concern was that their peer review model was opaque and worded strangely, and suggested that they don't follow the full procedure one expects at a peer-reviewed journal.

That paragraph reads a bit like it's intended for the public, which has no idea how peer review works and is subjected to publisher propaganda (e.g. "open access equals government censorship"—yes, really). Saying that they "involve the academic community" sounds like it's meant to reassure people who are being told that OA journals are somehow destroying peer review, or are, in fact, equivalent to Wikipedia.

I follow the open access movement fairly closely (for kicks; computer scientists are ahead of the curve here), and if there was anything seriously wrong with PLoS Medicine's process, I think I would have heard, even if it were only a chorus of "they suck but all the other OA journals are fine".