A review of scores of studies on antidepressants has been retracted because it used an incorrect analysis.
The original paper, published in JAMA Psychiatry on February 19, 2020, looked at individual differences in patients taking antidepressants and concluded that there were significant differences beyond the placebo effect or the data’s statistical noise. The paper earned some attention, including a story on MedPage Today.
However, the analysis didn’t hold up to scrutiny. The retraction notice reads:
In the Original Investigation, “Individual Differences in Response to Antidepressants: A Meta-analysis of Placebo-Controlled Randomized Clinical Trials,”1 published on February 19, 2020, and in the June 2020 issue of JAMA Psychiatry, an incorrect analysis (coefficient of variation ratios) was conducted. When a proper analysis is used (random-slope mixed-effects model), the original findings are no longer valid. Thus, the article has been retracted.
The corresponding author, Benoit Mulsant, of the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto, Canada wrote in an email to Retraction Watch:
The five authors (cc’ed) have agreed on the following response to your question:
We conducted the analysis and published the paper in good faith.
To our knowledge, this was only the third time this analytical approach was used with psychiatric data (and the second time with treatment data).
After the paper was made available on line, two different groups sent letters to the Editor pointing out potential flaws in our analytical approach.
After conducting additional analyses, we agree that the analytical approach we used yielded incorrect results.
We communicated this to the Editor and he made the decision to retract the paper.
The editor of the JAMA family of journals, Howard Bauchner, declined to comment on the retraction beyond the notice, which he co-authored.
Mulsant added in a follow up:
Honest errors happen in science; it is to the benefit of the scientific community that these errors are identified and corrected.
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Who was the statistician for this study?
The “Author Contributions” at the end of the body of the paper credit “Statistical Analysis” to the first and third authors (out of 5), Marta M. Maslej, PhD and Andrea Cipriani, MD, PhD. Dr. Maslej’s degree is in Psychology. Dr. Cipriani is a psychiatrist and professor at the University of Oxford.