researcher allegiance

Sorry, forgot something.

To the best of my knowledge, researcher allegiance has only been directly tested on one occasion in EMDR research.

Edmond, T., Rubin, A. & Wambach, K.G. (1999). The effectiveness of EMDR with adult female survivors of childhood sexual abuse. Social Work Research, 23, 103-116.

In this study, they trained 4 therapists in EMDR to be the interventionists. First, though, they assessed the therapists' opinions re EMDR as a credible treatment. They found that therapist pre-EMDR-training bias did not affect therapist effectiveness with EMDR.

Most of the other studies that favor EMDR were conducted by investigators who were initially proponents of CBT, and who in many cases still actively do, teach, and study CBT. Hopefully their bias is for science, not for whatever treatment happens to have won yesterday.

In one study, the investigators claimed that they only included EMDR as a "sham" treatment, as a control condition for the CBT.

Carlson, J.G., Chemtob, C.M., Rusnak, K., & Hedlund, N.L. (1996). Eye movement desensitization and reprocessing treatment for combat PTSD. Psychotherapy, 33, 104-113.

However, EMDR "won." Does that mean that these investigators are now biased for EMDR? Maybe, maybe not. The point is that we should not be assuming bias for or against EMDR unless there is a specific reason to do so.

(An example of this would be the Devilly & Spence study in which there was an unusually high dropout rate for the EMDR group, most of which occurred prior to onset of EMDR treatment. This does not mean that the investigators were in fact biased, but there is at least reason to raise the issue, based on the evidence.)

The fact that an investigator has had findings favoring one treatment before does not mean that s/he is therafter tainted or biased.

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