The Journal of Dubious Methods and Questionable Findings
A Frontier Psychiatrists Guest Post
One of the great joys of this year, for me, has been making a new friend. Chris Aiken, MD, is the editor of the Carlat Report, a long-standing newsletter—back when it was actually a newsprint thing, and may still be for some, in the field of Psychiatry. Psychiatry has had a problem, for a long time, which is that many industry-funded studies were problematic. By problematic, I mean deeply misleading. Biased. Not good. Practicing physicians needed guidance and help digging through the literature because, honestly, who has the time? We can't rely on drug reps, we can't rely on medical science liaisons coming from the drug companies—distrust was the feeling. We need to keep up with the evidence, still. We needed an independent voice. The American Psychiatric Association has long had a cozy relationship with Industry. It needs sponsors at its annual meeting in order for the whole thing to be subsidized. Danny Carlat is a psychiatrist who thought there was a solution—what if there was a newsletter that educated people about research but wasn't beholden to pharmaceutical companies to move their drugs?
He started the Carlat Report. Over time, it grew. He needed to bring on an Editor-in-chief. Chris Aiken, M.D., is a Psychiatrist who specializes in mood disorders and happens to be a very good writer; he took the job and has helped grow Carlat. Now there's a podcast, there's sub-Carlat newsletters, and more.
It is a force of nature. Here's Chris explaining why marketing in psychiatry can be difficult to get right at RAMHT 25—SF this year:
If this seems similar to what I'm doing at The Frontier Psychiatrists, well, it is, except I'm a lot less good at it!
I had the pleasure of meeting Chris about a year ago, and we've developed quite a friendship. It's great to have someone to talk to you about writing, who also understands the stresses of practicing as a psychiatrist, and struggling to understand the ever-growing literature base that supports our practice. We were talking just the other day, and he offered to write an article for this newsletter that's a little bit more sassy than what they do over there. The Frontier Psychiatrists, by virtue of being a lot of satire, provides us the canvas on which we can stretch out, and touch on issues beyond clinical data.
Today's article is one such piece of writing, guest-authored by Chris Aiken.
What are the challenges of the current administration? One of them is it hard to authorize inherently absurd things. The controversial appointee for the director of the NIH has created his academic journal. Chris decided to read it, and read the following article about some of the guidance provided in this academic journal on the top of the Psychiatry. He decided to report on what he read. If you think it's satirical, that's on you. To Chris and I, this is reporting. Such bias has no place here on The Frontier Psychiatrists.
Thank you, as always, for reading and clicking through to his non-humorous work the Carlat Report.
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