An exposé of two highly influential trials, closely tied to the pharmaceutical industry, that affected how we treat paediatric and adolescent depression. In a transpacific collaboration based on ten years of research, two university researchers from Australia and California, Jon N. Jureidini and Leemon B. McHenry, expose the scientific misconduct of two infamous studies. Both of these trials were highly influential in prescriptions of paroxetine (Paxil) and citalopram (Celexa) in paediatric and adolescent depression, yet both trials (Glaxo Smith Kline’s paroxetine study 329 and Forest Laboratories citalopram study CIT-MD-18) seriously misrepresented the efficacy and safety data. The Illusion of Evidence-Based Medicine provides a detailed account of these studies and argues that medicine desperately needs to re-evaluate its relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. Without a basis for independent evaluation of the results of randomised, placebo-controlled clinical trials, there can be no confidence in evidence-based medicine. Science demands rigorous, critical examination and especially severe testing of hypotheses to function properly, but this is exactly what is lacking in academic medicine.

Author Biography:

Jon Jureidini is Professor of Psychiatry and Paediatrics, Critical and Ethical Mental Health Research Group, Robinson Research Institute, University of Adelaide, Australia. Leemon B. McHenry is Emeritus Lecturer in Philosophy at California State University, Northridge.

Professor Jon Jureidini and Dr Leemon McHenry made critical contributions to exposing the scientific misconduct in two infamous trials of antidepressants in paediatric and adolescent depression, Study 329 of paroxetine, and Study CIT-MD-18 of citalopram.