Yet more antidepressants

Thanks to paul in the comments below here's a link to the Maudsley debate on antidepressant efficacy, 'This House Believes Antidepressants are no Better than Placebo', featuring Irving Kirsch, Joanna Moncrief (for), Guy Goodwin, and Lewis Wolpert (against).

Interestingly Kirsch turns the question around to argue that there is no evidence that antidepressants are clinically significantly better than placebo (as you may be aware, I've addressed the Kirsch et al PLoS paper before).

Both Kirsch and Moncrief make some good points, but I was struck by Moncrief's claim that because we don't know that antidepressants act specifically against 'the' biological cause of depression, and in fact may have rather more non-specific effects that help to ameliorate the symptoms of depression, we therefore should not use them.* She goes on to argue a completely contradictory point at the end of her speech to claim that because antidepressants are (according to her) no better than placebo they are therefore harmful because they are not inert. Yet her argument that antidepressants are not superior to placebo hinges on the claim that their apparent superority hinges on their active side effects in clinical trials.

Goodwin and Wolpert make some fairly pedestrian counterarguments, some fallacious, largely anecdotal in Wolpert's case. The comments from the floor included some 'service users' ranting and anti-psychiatry, which is quite common at psychiatric talks.


* I've long been drawn to the idea (can't remember who first proposed it) that serotonergic antidepressants flatten emotional responses and noradrenergic antidepressants are activating. But both these effects would seem to me to be very useful in helping to relieve symptoms of depression and facilitate true recovery. Comments from the floor point out that in the rest of medicine we don't abandon treatments proven to work in clinical trials because we don't know their mechanism of action. In fact, it is pretty hard to see what Moncrief would advocate to treat depression instead of antidepressants, surely we can't know that physical exercise or CBT are definitely treating the underlying physical abnormality?

Back from hols

EP debunking Friday - sniffing out the perfect partner

As people keep moaning about the length of these debunking posts, I'll keep this one short. Browsing Feminist Philosophers I was reminded of this story from a few days ago:

"They say that opposites attract. But it seems the Pill may be preventing women sniffing out men who are opposite enough...But researchers found that the Pill disrupts a woman's power to recognise the aroma of a suitable partner."

This story is based on this study, "MHC-correlated odour preferences in humans and the use of oral contraceptives" an epub in Proc. R. Soc. B. The reasoning behind the study is that the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) of our genome shows great variation and this is thought to be related to immune function, so it would be genetically better to have offspring with individuals with genetically dissimilar MHCs from you.

So what does the study do? It looks at a bunch of women, none of whom were on the pill, but some of whom were thinking about taking it. So they got these women to smell the shredded sweaty shirts of men with either genetically similar or dissimilar MHCs:

"Almost 100 women then sniffed the shirts and gave their opinions on the 'pleasantness' and ' desirability' of the odour twice over a three-month period. Many started taking the Pill during the experiment - and their opinions of the smell of the T-shirts changed...Researcher Craig Roberts said: 'The results showed that the preferences of women who began using the contraceptive Pill shifted towards men with genetically similar odours.'"

So this is supposed to be evidence that:

"Saddled with the wrong man - someone who in scientific terms has similar genes - she may find it hard to become pregnant and any children she does have may have a lower resistance to infection.

What is more, when she stops taking the Pill and her sense of smell returns to normal, she's more likely to fall out of love, the Liverpool and Newcastle universities research suggests."

So is this what the study actually shows? Of course not. Without even getting into the question of whether woman actually choose partners based on the smell of their sweat, in actual fact the study found that women didn't rate the pleasantness, desirability, or intensity of the odour of men with dissimilar MHCs as any higher than men with similar MHCs.

The only significant finding was an interaction on an ANOVA where women on the pill showed a reduction in the amount they favoured MHC dissimilar odours, but there was no statistically significant difference between women on the pill and women not on the pill in the degree to which they favoured genetically dissimilar men. The interesting finding is that women not yet on the pill, but who intended to go on the pill seemed to favour MHC dissimilar men more than other women (presumably this wasn't statistically significant) and this is what is driving the interaction (the preference for dissimilar men normalises back to being like other women after they are taking the pill (see the figure, average odour 'desirability' for MHC dissimilar men minus MHC similar men, white bar represents first rating {before women started the pill} and the grey bar the second rating {with women in the pill group having started the pill}).

So it is pretty unlikely that taking the pill will cause problems becoming pregnant or children with a lower resistance to infection, since women not on the pill don't seem to favour MHC dissimilar odours (and thus men?) anyway, and women taking the pill don't show any difference in their preference for MHC dissimilar men compared to women not on the pill anyway.

The Mail does carry a contrary opinion from Professor Bill Ledger (Sheffield University) who wonders whether the smell of sweat is likely to overide the 'intellectual and emotional feeling' of a relationship but curiously doesn't attack the methodology of the paper. I wonder whether this is another example of embargoed press releases where those commenting on the paper don't actually get to see it and point out the obvious flaws.

Ossetia

Oh shit, the South Ossetia situation looks bad, but I'm intrigued at some of the reactions (e.g. Crooked Timber here, and on Comment is Free). I've never understood the seeming willingness of people to back western proxies against Russia with some really specious and hypocritical arguments. It harks back to the sort of cold war rhetoric that saw leftists backing dictators against western imperialism, and western democratic governments destabilising democratic socialist regimes and propping up despots.

For my own part I think a 'Neither Washington or Moscow' approach is needed here (more like this article in the Guardian), although I'm fairly unimpressed by legalistic arguments about territorial integrity and sympathetic to calls for regional autonomy where this is backed by the population. I certainly won't be "stand[ing] in solidarity with Georgia" in their attempts to subjugate the population of South Ossetia.

More informed coverage from A Fistful of Euros and Lawyers, Guns and Money.

Shibboleth

Being an old fashioned kind of guy, I haven't really followed the withdrawal of funding by JISC from Athens in favour of the 'UK Access Management Federation' and 'Shibboleth' technology. But now that my institution has withdrawn Athens compliance, I can tell you that it is just like Athens only it works about 1/10th as well.

Currently I'm working outside the university network (you'd hope within a university network with relevant IP addresses anyone would be able to figure out how to organise access management) but under the new system instead of being able to sign in to Athens once and then access all journal articles via links in commonly used search engines like pubmed, or via links in journal articles, now I have to search the university database of subscribed journals, then enter the citation, then wait while it chugs along at about one mile per hour to finally serve up the paper. If I'm lucky the journal may have got around to adding the 'UK Access Management Federation' to its long list of alternative logins, and then if I find it, and select the relevant UK university from the long list, I may be able to get it to recognise that I've already signed in (saving me the time to type in my login and password, but little else).

So why change? Apparently 'federated access management' (where they ask your institution if you're signed in there, rather than having you sign in directly) is the bees knees, according to JISC:

"Users will have a single sign-on using an institutional ID and password for a wide range of resources, as well as the assurance that their personal data will not be disclosed to third parties.
Librarians will be free of the burden of user name and password administration, and will have new tools for managing licenses and service subscriptions.
IT managers will have more control of the access management process through enhancements to enterprise directories, although this will require additional institutional effort in the short term.
Institutions will have a single service to meet the requirements of e-learning, e-research and library-managed resources. Simplification of the authentication process has also proven to lead to increased use of subscribed services."

It is good to know that in order to allow a single sign-on username and password and to free up a little bit of time for librarians (the rest of that stuff is pie in the sky techno-wank) access to online journals has regressed ten years in terms of useability, speed of access. Am I missing something or is this another example of management idiots fucking it up again? The potential benefits seem minimal and the implmentation is woeful.

Atheists as bad as witches and paedophiles

Via strummer on the badscience forums, a lovely piece of managerial fuckwittery. Apparently Birmingham City Council has banned access to sites:

"to do with "witchcraft or Satanism" and "occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism".

But not mainstream religions like Christianity, noo, no 'mysticism' there! The national secular society is on the case as this is not only ridiculous but also illegal. It looks like this is an example of the council implementing some proprietrary net usage restriction sofware, presumably from the US (thanks to Szlater - Blue Coat WebFilter)- at least I hope so, the alternative is just too disturbing, but Szlater points out that "Alternative Spirituality/Occult" and "Religion" as seperate with atheism and Wicca presumably part of the former, and Christianity and Hinduism part of the latter (I note you can also ban "Abortion", "Education", "LGBT", "Political/Activist Groups", "Sex Education ", "Spyware Effects/Privacy Concerns") so Birmingham Council obviously have some choice in the matter.

UPDATE
More at Pharyngula, you can see how a site is categorised here, and the category descriptions here:

"22 - Alternative Spirituality/Occult

Sites that promote and provide information on religions such as Witchcraft or Satanism. Occult practices, atheistic views, voodoo rituals or any other form of mysticism are represented here. Includes sites that endorse or offer methods, means of instruction, or other resources to affect or influence real events through the use of spells, incantations, curses and magic powers. This category includes sites which discuss or deal with paranormal or unexplained events." [my emphasis]

Apparently RichardDawkins.net was listed as 'Religion' but is now 'Society/Daily Living'!

*Since I'm reusing old post titles, this one refers to previous posts pointing out that atheists are worse than terrorists and as bad as gays and Jews, apparently this Blue Coat software also blocks access to sites that "promote witchcraft, the paranormal, sexual deviancy and criminal activity."

I ate the baby Jesus too*

I haven't been following the crackergate story too closely, but PZ Myers seems to have fomented quite a little storm in a teacup (see Cosmic Variance).

Basically some student receives a Catholic communion wafer and instead of eating it he keeps it to show to his friend, some of the congregation get a bit upset about it and try to take it of him, he gets annoyed at this and takes it home, lots of Catholics are pissed off because he's taken the body of Jesus 'hostage' - nutjobs like Bill Donohue waded in to call for sanctions to be brought against the student and for extra security at a Republican convention to defend the delegates from the likes of PZ Myers. So far so dull - kid seems like he's being a bit silly, Catholics come across as over-reacting and their silly (and falsified) beliefs are highlighted.

So PZ writes about this taking the predictable line "Get some perspective, man. IT'S A CRACKER." He finishes by asking for someone to send him a consecrated wafer to desecrate. And when he gets one he sticks a nail through it also providing a delightful sample of the threats he's been sent in the meantime, e.g.:

"You fool, the vengeance for your sacrilege will not be . exhausted against you, but it will be carried out on your child. Wait and see."

It seems to have created quite a stir on teh internets, despite the fact that PZ has blogged about desecrating the quran and bible before without anywhere near such attention.

For what it's worth I think that deliberately winding up theists by threatening to violate their laughable taboos is a bit mean, but perfectly acceptable behaviour, particularly if it is funny (compare the Jyllands-Posten controversy to Jesus and Mo). D^2 lives up to his reputation as being vaguely amusing but a bit of a dick in this post at crooked timber:

"While I of course do not countenance the harassment of anyone by religious nuts, I also have something of a baleful view of the kind of self-conscious atheist who regards it as a good use of his time to spend the day winding up the god squad.
...
while I am perhaps the last person on earth who is well-placed to tell anyone else that winding people up for the sake of it is a really silly and childish thing to do … well, winding people up for the sake of it is a really silly and childish thing to do, and furthermore Dawkinsite militant atheists are as annoying as fundies in their own way and perhaps deserve a bit of winding up too.
...
And so it is that, at some point this weekend, I plan to tell a small, credulous child (about whom I will provide no other information) that a rainbow is a special sign from God that he promises never to flood the world again and that this proves that God exists."

It's summed up nicely by mpowell:

"I think Dsquared has outdone himself on this one.

Step one: Hypocritically look down on those who have a go at others for the sake of it.

Step two: Brazenly imitate this behavior.

It’s times like these that I realize that I can never really measure up in the area of being a pretentious, sarcastic wise-ass. It’s almost enough to make me give it all up, but I’m not sure my friends and family could bear the loss."

Some of the other comments are also priceless:

"The fact that you can generate such a reaction merely by claiming you plan to do something—which is, in the final analysis, totally harmless—says a lot about the New Atheism."

Obviously I don't think D^2 means it, nor particularly care if he does, but it is interesting to note the symmetry or lack of between his threat and PZ's threat - PZ is quite entitled to do what he wants to communion wafers, but it causes quite some stink. Theists are quite entitled to bring their children up with nonsensical stories about God and floods (or even other lies about Father Christmas) and this is so accepted in our society that no one would seek to prevent this - the only opposition from atheists and secularists is about willfully witholding information about alternatives and indoctrination at the state's expense.


*I appear to have used the pun in the title "I ate the baby Jesus" before, repeating myself already, oh dear.