Posted by SLS on September 24, 2012, at 0:17:11
In reply to Do antidepressants do more Harm than good ?, posted by Nootril on September 23, 2012, at 17:06:30
I think antidepressants are very capable of doing more harm than good - sometimes.
Just to play advocate of a contrary position...
> Here's a very thorough citation study...
I don't know how thorough it is, but it is very long.
I am not impressed by their citing the works of Irving Kirsch to come to their conclusions. It comes as a red flag to me, but that is another matter. They seem to question the conclusions of the majority of neuroscientists. They have only their conjectures - which is perfectly fine, as long as they are not accepted uncritically.
"At the same time, the assumption that neurogenesis is a beneficial effect of antidepressants should not be accepted uncritically."
Of course not! Good scientists are always critical of the results and interpretations of their own work and those of others. Nothing is accepted uncritically. This article provides lots of citations, though. To me, I see the the authors as using them as pieces to arrange in a way so as to create a picture that is to their liking. However, they often contradict themselves:
"In fact, if antidepressants were really effective in promoting the proliferation of new neurons, clinicians would have to weigh any possible
utility of antidepressants with the possibility that they could trigger brain tumors (Jackson,2009). However, there is growing in vitro evidence that antidepressants reduce gliomas and neuroblastomas, and these effects are mediated by neuronal apoptosis (Levkovitz et al.,2005; Cloonan and Williams,2011)."Well, which is it?!
They want it both ways here. Do antidepressants make cells grow or do they make cells die? "In fact", something is NOT a fact when one must set up an if-then sentence to portray it as being such. They have proven nothing by doing this. I would have considered it a clever strategy to further their thesis were they not to have included the "However" sentence that follows.
There is more that these authors say that I find are geared towards making data fit a thesis without making an effort to offer alternative interpretations, but I'll stop at citing the one example above. The data is real. Their conjectures are also real, but they are not established fact. They are opinions that I happen to disagree with.
For me to do a "thorough" job at critiquing the offering of these authors, I would have to find each article that they cite so as to review their selection of data and text. I am not inclined to be that thorough. Some of their stuff is reasonable. Some things I agree with. However, I have my own thesis regarding their thesis. I don't have to be scientific in reaching my conclusions, though. Neither do they. I could go cherry picking, too.
The NIH NLM does a nice job in providing an opportunity for authors to contribute their literature, even when their opinions are different from the existing consensus. It happens often enough that a minority opinion ends up becoming the new majority consensus.
- Scott
Some see things as they are and ask why.
I dream of things that never were and ask why not.- George Bernard Shaw
poster:SLS
thread:1026432
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20120922/msgs/1026486.html