After this cycle of bias and spin, a mere five studies were left that were unambiguously negative – that is, ten times fewer than existed at the start. And as a final, rotten cherry on top, the positive trials ended up being cited by later research three times as often as the negative ones. The whole dispiriting step-by-step process is illustrated in Figure 4 below. This isn’t unique to research on antidepressants: the authors found a similar chain of events in trials of new psychotherapies.3 Indeed, the same thing is happening, to a greater or lesser extent, almost everywhere in scientific
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