The Hans Eysenck affair: Time to correct the scientific record (2019) David F Marks

Trish said:
What stone has Sharpe been living under? Surely he already knew Eysenck was well known to be a charlatan.
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I'm not entirely sure if Sharpe's concern is over the fraud or rather over him being exposed as a fraud and how unfair it is to "science", something he should expect sometime in the future for basically the same reason.

I'm going with the 2nd one. They are ideological cousins, after all.
 
Andy said:


Links to https://www.coyneoftherealm.com/201...-shoved-a-hans-eysenck-scandal-under-the-rug/
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Wessely's quotes:
Of course, Professor Eysenck, the most influential psychologists of our time, has faced many assaults before (including, unforgettably, physical ones). It would take more than a couple of psychiatrists to ruffle him.
And so it proved. His replies made no concessions to his critics. In essence, his reply was “either you believe these findings, or you don’t”. He was certainly correct on one point. If his results are true, the doctors have been scandalously negligent in ignoring what is the most dramatic breakthrough in the treatment of cancer for many years.
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"Dramatic breakthrough" it was not. I wonder how similar Sharpe's current research is to that, seems to borrow from the same mindset.
Of greater concern is that this affair has drawn attention away from the real progress has been made in the psychological management of cancer. In a series of careful studies spread over many years, British psychiatrists and psychologists have described the psychological impact of both the diagnosis of cancer and the painful treatments that frequently follow. They’ve shown the effect of coping strategies on the prognosis of breast cancer – those who show either “fighting spirit”, or those who deny that there is any danger, seem to do better.
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Either you believe or you don't. Says it all. Science is not something you believe in or not. It's literally the WHOLE POINT of science, to separate belief and opinion from objective reality. And he dares call us anti-science.

The whole "fighting spirit" and war language of illness is particularly devious. What a horrible message, incredibly insulting.
 
Perhaps most alarming results were connected to Eysenck and Grossath-Maticek’s notion of ‘bibliotherapy’ which consisted of, as Eysenck put it, “a written pamphlet outlining the principles of behaviour therapy as applied to better, more autonomous living, and avoidance of stress.”

This was coupled with five hours of discussion, aimed both at reorienting a patient’s personality away from the cancer-prone and toward a healthier disposition. The results of this study, according to Pelosi, were that “128 of the 600 (21%) controls died of cancer over 13 years compared with 27 of 600 (4.5%) treated subjects.

"Such results are otherwise unheard of in the entire history of medical science.” There were similarly spectacular results concerning various forms of heart disease too.
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https://cosmosmagazine.com/society/is-this-one-of-the-worst-scientific-scandals-of-all-time
 
Put it another way:
This was coupled with five hours of discussion, aimed both at reorienting a patient’s personality away from the fatigue-prone and toward a healthier disposition.
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and it's like I'm seeing double.

The discussion over this fraud HAS to include the fact that his ideas persist, they were simply reoriented away from cancer and onto more easily-abused populations. It's the exact same thinking as the psychomagic model of ME and generally speaking the MUS/FND/WTF garbage bin of "those patients".
 
In a recent Retraction Watch guest post on the “Eysenck affair,” James Heathers notes the extraordinary possibility that as many as 61 Hans Eysenck publications might be retracted. I believe this figure is a significant underestimate.

This reckoning has been a long time coming. The issues surrounding Eysenck’s 1980s/1990s collaboration with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek and their unbelievable results linking personality to health outcomes have been known for decades. Many eminent researchers, including Tony Pelosi and Louis Appleby, had lined up to criticise this research even while it was still ongoing.
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https://retractionwatch.com/2019/10...ignificant-underestimate-says-his-biographer/
 
Was Eysenck right after all? A reassessment of the effects of psychotherapy for adult depression
2018

Abstract
Aims.
In the 1950s, Eysenck suggested that psychotherapies may not be effective at all. Twenty-five years later, the first meta-analysis of randomised controlled trials showed that the effects of psychotherapies were considerable and that Eysenck was wrong. However, since that time methods have become available to assess biases in meta-analyses.

Methods.
We examined the influence of these biases on the effects of psychotherapies for adult depression, including risk of bias, publication bias and the exclusion of waiting list control groups.

Results.
The unadjusted effect size of psychotherapies compared with control groups was g = 0.70 (limited to Western countries: g = 0.63), which corresponds to a number-needed-to-treat of 4.18. Only 23% of the studies could be considered as a low risk of bias. When adjusting for several sources of bias, the effect size across all types of therapies dropped to g = 0.31.

Conclusions.
These results suggest that the effects of psychotherapy for depression are small, above the threshold that has been suggested as the minimal important difference in the treatment of depression, and Eysenck was probably wrong. However, this is still not certain because we could not adjust for all types of bias. Unadjusted meta-analyses of psychotherapies overestimate the effects considerably, and for several types of psychotherapy for adult depression, insufficient evidence is available that they are effective because too few low-risk studies were available, including problem-solving therapy, interpersonal psychotherapy and behavioural activation.
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https://www.cambridge.org/core/jour...t-depression/AD6D7EDCBA894C295E67503570BF8957

slight twist(?)

eta: found a list of all his publications here
Hans Jurgen Eysenck - Publications
https://neurotree.org/beta/publications.php?pid=7664&searchstring=&showfilter=all
 
King’s College London’s enquiry into Hans J Eysenck’s ‘Unsafe’ publications must be properly completed
This journal recently drew attention to an extensive body of highly questionable research published by Hans J. Eysenck in collaboration with Ronald Grossarth-Maticek. The subsequent enquiry by King’s College London concluded that 26 publications were unsafe and warranted retraction. However, the enquiry reviewed only a subset of the 61 questionable publications initially submitted to them, only those Eysenck co-authored with Grossarth-Maticek. The enquiry excluded publications where Eysenck was the sole author. The King’s College London enquiry must be properly completed. They have a pressing responsibility to re-convene and broaden their review to include all Eysenck’s publications based on the same body of research – including an additional 27 publications recently uncovered. The unsatisfactory nature of the KCL review process makes the case for a National Research Integrity Ombudsperson even stronger.
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Open access, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1359105319887791
 
To date, this episode has not increased our confidence in the capability of academic institutions to fully investigate the potential misconduct of those they have employed. One reason for this might be the obvious conflict of interest involved. KCL has only investigated a fraction of the publications pertaining to the complaint for reasons it has not explained. This leads us to conclude that there is an urgent need to establish an independent National Research Integrity Ombudsperson to investigate allegations of academic misconduct.

The need for an independent UK body to promote the good governance, management and conduct of academic, scientific and medical research could never be stronger than in the present situation.
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What do people think of this part?

Wouldn't any UK body be very likely to made up of those with a desire to cover-up problems with the work of their friends and colleagues? The more I've seen of the personal networks within UK academia the more doubtful I've become that an official body like this would do more good than harm.
 
Journal retracts 30-year-old paper by controversial psychologist Hans Eysenck

The International Journal of Sport Psychology has retracted a paper by the late — and controversial — psychologist Hans Eysenck, whose work has faced doubts since the early 1990s.

The paper, published in 1990, was one of dozens by Eysenck and Ronald Grossarth-Maticek found to be “unsafe” by King’s College London, but appears to be the first to be retracted.

Here’s the abstract of “Psychological factors as determinants of success in football and boxing: The effects of behaviour therapy”
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The retraction notice, posted on the homepage of the journal, says: The article was retracted due to an internal review of King’s College London. The review committee found a lack of confidence.
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I am longing to see this for another trial...

https://retractionwatch.com/2020/01...r-by-controversial-psychologist-hans-eysenck/
 
Sly Saint said:
From the abstract of retracted paper:


"The review committee found a lack of confidence."

Wonder if they will ever publish how the committee reached this decision.
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Or if there will be some examination of how it got published in the first place and what it means for every other behavioral research paper that follows similar methodology (i.e. all of them). Especially considering the bar keeps getting lowered to avoid having to do so, as evidenced by BMJ, PLOS, Lancet and Cochrane ignoring their own standards, with the latter currently opting to drop them firmly below ground.

The entire body of research is suspect and needs to be paused and reexamined. Unlikely to happen yet but it not happening now only to later be inevitable will make it all look that much worse. It may just be the most overhyped and least reliable body of evidence in all of science.

One small step for science, but there are thousands more to take.
 
A journal has retracted three papers co-authored by the late — and controversial — psychologist Hans Eysenck, following a university investigation that found dozens of his papers to be “unsafe.”

The same journal, Perceptual and Motor Skills, subjected eight of Eysenck’s papers to expressions of concern, while another — Psychological Reports — subjected 10 of them to the same flag. Both journals are published by SAGE.
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https://retractionwatch.com/2020/02...rs-by-hans-eysenck-flag-18-some-60-years-old/
 
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