kirsch

For the placebo effects of coffee - Kirsch & Wiexel 1988 (can't find it online, annoyingly enough).

If it's about her role as executor, why the detail about the kirsch in the fondue at the garden party?

And yours is a complete mischaracterization of the work of Kirsch et al.

It isn't my characterization so much as a paraphrase of various sources I've read/heard on this, including Kirsch himself.

> Two early efforts to re-analyze the Kirsch data set using different methodological approaches 15,16 independently reported results quite similar between them but different from those published by Kirsch.

Is Kirsch mischaracterizing his own work?

Too much kirsch in the fondue: the tupperware business is distinctly secondary to an excuse to get a bit drunk with friends, which tells us a bit more about her social cohort.

I agree with many of your comments around this paper, and essentially it was only published because Kaptchuk and Kirsch are two of the leading names in the non-clinical field.

A recent multi-meta-analysis 17 utilized the Kirsch et al dataset and concluded that the most probable effect size of antidepressants relative to placebo is 0.34 (0.27-0.42) and that there is no significant effect of the initial severity of depression.

> The Kirsch hypothesis concerning depression 10,11 is that there is a response which lies on a continuum from no intervention at all (e.g., waiting lists) to neutral placebo, then to active and augmented placebo including psychotherapy, and finally to antidepressants, which exert a slightly higher efficacy probably because blinding is imperfect due to side effects (enhanced placebo).

) "They also note that Kirsch’s study lumps all antidepressants together.

Kirsch writes, “When administered as antidepressants, drugs that increase, decrease or have no effect on serotonin all relieve depression to about the same degree.” What all these “effective” drugs had in common was that they produced side effects, which participating patients had been told they might experience.

Particularly troubling is the lack of critical analysis that can be found regarding Kirsch's book.

Given that even inert placebos produce most of the same effect (Kirsch's finding), the placebo explanation is pretty clearly a major candidate.

Kirsch has, like everyone else, approached this study with a definite bias, a career based on raising the prominence of the placebo affect.