Sunday, September 14, 2008

Holy Schatz! Part 2

I have reproduced
two of the slides that were presented by Schatzberg to better illustrate my point. At the bottom of this (top/right) slide, you'll see the following reference "DeBattista et al., Biol Psychiatry, 60(12):1343-9, 2006," which is this study (1). Data from a published clinical trial, accompanied by the appropriate reference below.

In the second slide (bottom/right), at the bottom is this reference "Schatzberg AF et al., J Affective Disorder, 107:S40-41, 2008." As I pointed out in my previous post, this reference is to an abstract that does not mention these data.

Now, I am not suggesting any wrong doing; however, I do wonder, what was the purpose of listing this reference? It's relevance to these data appears to not exist. This much I do know,
when data are presented, and that data is accompanied by a reference, it is implied that the data is taken from that reference. In an earlier post (2), I critiqued an article wherein the authors made specific statements that were not supported by the references they cited. This is how misinformation is spread.

And speaking of misinformation, in the my first post about Schaztberg's presentation (3, post has been corrected), I wrote that he did not indicate 06 was a negative study. He did show a slide, which showed that the primary endpoint was not statistically significant (p=.144). What he primarily focused on, was the secondarily analysis of the data, which said that "there was a statistically significant correlation between plasma levels and clinical outcome achieved during treatment" (4). This is Corcept's and Schatzberg's attempt to turn a negative into a positive, which they have been doing for a couple years now (5).

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