Diagnosing the D.S.M.

By Allen Frances
The New York Times - Opinion
Originally published May 11, 2012

At its annual meeting this week, the American Psychiatric Association did two wonderful things: it rejected one reckless proposal that would have exposed nonpsychotic children to unnecessary and dangerous antipsychotic medication and another that would have turned the existential worries and sadness of everyday life into an alleged mental disorder.

But the association is still proceeding with other suggestions that could potentially expand the boundaries of psychiatry to define as mentally ill tens of millions of people now considered normal. The proposals are part of a major undertaking: revisions to what is often called the “bible of psychiatry” — the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M. The fifth edition of the manual is scheduled for publication next May.

I was heavily involved in the third and fourth editions of the manual but have reluctantly concluded that the association should lose its nearly century-old monopoly on defining mental illness. Times have changed, the role of psychiatric diagnosis has changed, and the association has changed. It is no longer capable of being sole fiduciary of a task that has become so consequential to public health and public policy.

The entire story is here.

Publishers and Georgia State See Broad Implications in Copyright Ruling

By Jennifer Howard
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Published May 14, 2012

The publisher plaintiffs in the closely watched lawsuit over Georgia State University's use of copyrighted material in electronic reserves say they are "disappointed" with much of the ruling handed down by a federal judge on Friday. But they made the best of it in statements issued Monday, playing up points on which the judge had agreed with them. And one plaintiff, Oxford University Press, said that the decision "marks a significant first step toward addressing the need for clarity around issues of copyright in the context of higher education."

Meanwhile, in its own series of public comments, the university praised the judge's careful handling of a complex issue. It called the ruling, by Judge Orinda D. Evans of the U.S. District Court in Atlanta, "significant not only for Georgia State University, but for all educational fair use in general," in the words of President Mark P. Becker.

Kerry L. Heyward, the university's chief lawyer, added that the case "highlights the importance of fair use in providing academic faculty a cost-effective, legal way to spread important knowledge to their students." And Nancy H. Seamans, the university's dean of libraries, took a wider view of Georgia State's approach to fair use, saying that the university's policy on e-reserves "was based on practices from the broader academic library community."

The entire story is here.

Judge rules largely for GSU in copyright case

By Bill Rankin and Laura Diamond
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Originally published May 14, 2012

A federal judge in Atlanta has ruled in favor of Georgia State University on almost all infringement claims filed by three publishing houses in a closely watched case that tested the nature of copyright law in the digital age.

Senior U.S. District Judge Orinda Evans rejected 69 copyright claims against GSU filed by Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and SAGE Publications. The publishers had accused GSU of "massive" copyright violations by allowing professors to download and reproduce excerpts from published works for course materials.

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GSU, applying a 2009 policy, tried to comply with the Copyright Act, Evans said. "The truth is that fair use principles are notoriously difficult to apply," she wrote.

The entire article is here.

Thanks to Gary Schoener for this information.

Ignorance no defense for celebrity health records snoop

By Amanda Bronstad
National Law Journal
Originally published May 11, 2012

The Ninth Circuit has refused to toss out charges that a former researcher illegally obtained medical records of patients such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Tom Hanks.

The court rejected arguments that the HIPAA-related charges should have been dismissed because Huping Zhou didn't know what he was doing was illegal.

The entire article is here.

A subscription is needed for this site.

Thanks to Ken Pope for this informaiton.

Psychiatry Manual Drafters Back Down on Diagnoses

By Benedict Carey
The New York Times - Health
Originally published May 8, 2012

In a rare step, doctors on a panel revising psychiatry’s influential diagnostic manual have backed away from two controversial proposals that would have expanded the number of people identified as having psychotic or depressive disorders.

The doctors dropped two diagnoses that they ultimately concluded were not supported by the evidence: “attenuated psychosis syndrome,” proposed to identify people at risk of developing psychosis, and “mixed anxiety depressive disorder,” a hybrid of the two mood problems.

They also tweaked their proposed definition of depression to allay fears that the normal sadness people experience after the loss of a loved one, a job or a marriage would not be mistaken for a mental disorder.

But the panel, appointed by the American Psychiatric Association to complete the fifth edition of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or D.S.M., did not retreat from another widely criticized proposal, to streamline the definition of autism.

The entire story is here.

Autism Criteria Critics Blasted by DSM-5 Leader

By John Gever, Senior Editor
MedPage Today
Origianlly Published May 8, 2012

The head of the American Psychiatric Association committee rewriting the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorders took on the panel's critics here, accusing them of bad science.

Susan Swedo, MD, of the National Institute of Mental Health, said a review released earlier this year by Yale University researchers was seriously flawed. That review triggered a wave of headlines indicating that large numbers of autism spectrum patients could lose their diagnoses and hence access to services.

Swedo spoke at the American Psychiatric Association's (APA) annual meeting, in her role as chairperson of the work group developing new diagnostic criteria for neurodevelopmental disorders in DSM-5, the forthcoming fifth edition of the APA's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

She was especially incensed by reports in consumer media about the Yale group's study, led by a New York Times article with a "blaring" headline that read, "New Definition of Autism May Exclude Many, Study Suggests." The Yale study, according to the Times article, found that most patients with Asperger's syndrome and about 25% of those with overt autism would not qualify for those diagnoses under DSM-5.

The entire story is here.

Measuring the Prevalence of Questionable Research Practices With Incentives for Truth Telling

*Psychological Science* has scheduled an article for publication in a future issue of the journal: "Measuring the Prevalence of Questionable Research Practices With Incentives for Truth Telling."

The authors are Leslie K. John of Harvard University, George Loewenstein of Carnegie Mellon University, & Drazen Prelec of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Here is the abstract:

Cases of clear scientific misconduct have received significant media attention recently, but less flagrantly questionable research practices may be more prevalent and, ultimately, more damaging to the academic enterprise. Using an anonymous elicitation format supplemented by incentives for honest reporting, we surveyed over 2,000 psychologists about their involvement in questionable research practices. The impact of truth-telling incentives on self-admissions of questionable research practices was positive, and this impact was greater for practices that respondents judged to be less defensible. Combining three different estimation methods, we found that the percentage of respondents who have engaged in questionable practices was surprisingly high. This finding suggests that some questionable practices may constitute the prevailing research norm.

Here's how the article starts:

Although cases of overt scientific misconduct have received significant media attention recently (Altman, 2006; Deer, 2011; Steneck, 2002, 2006), exploitation of the gray area of acceptable practice is certainly much more prevalent, and may be more damaging to the academic enterprise in the long run, than outright fraud.

Questionable research practices (QRPs), such as excluding data points on the basis of post hoc criteria, can spuriously increase the likelihood of finding evidence in support of a hypothesis.

Just how dramatic these effects can be was demonstrated by Simmons, Nelson, and Simonsohn (2011) in a series of experiments and simulations that showed how greatly QRPs increase the likelihood of finding support for a false hypothesis.

QRPs are the steroids of scientific competition, artificially enhancing performance and producing a kind of arms race in which researchers who strictly play by the rules are at a competitive disadvantage.

QRPs, by nature of the very fact that they are often questionable as opposed to blatantly improper, also offer considerable latitude for rationalization and self-deception.

Concerns over QRPs have been mounting (Crocker, 2011; Lacetera & Zirulia, 2011; Marshall, 2000; Sovacool, 2008; Sterba, 2006; Wicherts, 2011), and several studies--many of which have focused on medical research--have assessed their prevalence (Gardner, Lidz, & Hartwig, 2005; Geggie, 2001; Henry et al., 2005; List, Bailey, Euzent, & Martin, 2001; Martinson, Anderson, & de Vries, 2005; Swazey, Anderson, & Louis, 1993).

In the study reported here, we measured the percentage of psychologists who have engaged in QRPs.

As with any unethical or socially stigmatized behavior, self-reported survey data are likely to underrepresent true prevalence.

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The study "surveyed over 2,000 psychologists about their involvement in questionable research practices."

The article reports that the findings "point to the same conclusion: A surprisingly high percentage of psychologists admit to having engaged in QRPs."

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Most of the respondents in our study believed in the integrity of their own research and judged practices they had engaged in to be acceptable.

However, given publication pressures and professional ambitions, the inherent ambiguity of the defensibility of "questionable" research practices, and the well-documented ubiquity of motivated reasoning (Kunda, 1990), researchers may not be in the best position to judge the defensibility of their own behavior.

This could in part explain why the most egregious practices in our survey (e.g., falsifying data) appear to be less common than the relatively less questionable ones (e.g., failing to report all of a study's conditions).

It is easier to generate a post hoc explanation to justify removing nuisance data points than it is to justify outright data falsification, even though both practices produce similar consequences.

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Another excerpt: "Given the findings of our study, it comes as no surprise that many researchers have expressed concerns over failures to replicate published results (Bower & Mayer, 1985; Crabbe, Wahlsten, & Dudek, 1999; Doyen, Klein, Pichon, & Cleeremans, 2012, Enserink, 1999; Galak, LeBoeuf, Nelson, & Simmons, 2012; Ioannidis, 2005a, 2005b; Palmer, 2000; Steele, Bass, & Crook, 1999)."

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More generally, the prevalence of QRPs raises questions about the credibility of research findings and threatens research integrity by producing unrealistically elegant results that may be difficult to match without engaging in such practices oneself.

This can lead to a "race to the bottom," with questionable research begetting even more questionable research.

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Thanks to Ken Pope for this information.

The abstract and article are here.

Report Finds Academic Fraud Evidence in UNC Department

By Dane Kane
http://www.newsobserver.com/
Originally published May 6, 2012

An internal investigation into UNC-Chapel Hill’s Department of African and Afro-American Studies has found evidence of academic fraud involving more than 50 classes that range from no-show professors to unauthorized grade changes for students.

One of the no-show classes is the Swahili course taken by former football player Michael McAdoo that prompted NCAA findings of impermissible tutoring, and drew more controversy when the final paper he submitted was found to have been heavily plagiarized.

The investigation found many of the suspect classes were taught in the summer by former department chairman Julius Nyang’oro, who resigned from that post in September. The university now says Nyang’oro, 57, who was the department’s first-ever chairman, is retiring July 1.

“Professor Nyang’oro offered to retire, and we agreed that was in the best interest of the department, the college and the university,” said Nancy Davis, associate vice chancellor for university relations.

The entire story is here.

Suicide: The fourth-leading cause of American deaths abroad

By Gary Stoller
USA Today
Originally published May 4, 2012

Tom Miller jumped from the eighth floor of a hotel in the Philippines in February, and Gerhard Habel hanged himself in his apartment in Thailand last April.

These incidents aren't entirely unrelated. Suicide by an American in a foreign country is a more common occurrence than might be thought. It's the fourth-leading cause of death abroad from non-natural causes after road accidents, homicides and drowning, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The deaths of Miller and Habel stand out, though, because they were reported to the media by local police, and some information about the tragedies was made public.

Though more than 125 American suicides abroad are reported annually to the State Department, there is no public profile of most who commit the tragic act. For privacy reasons, the State Department will not provide victim information such as name, age, gender or addresses abroad.

"The travel medicine community could take preventative steps if there was more knowledge about risk factors and circumstances of those individuals who are committing suicide abroad," says Stephen Hargarten, director of the Injury Research Center at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The entire story is here.