Re:Let's leave innuendo out of the discussion

I stand corrected, thank you. I will do my best to avoid raising issues for discussion that cannot be discussed.

It's an interesting problem, though. If bias does influence what data is presented, and where and how, then how do you have a discussion about the validity of the data without addressing the politics? Yet one cannot generally discuss the politics - not in public - because that would possibly lead to retaliation.

Certain instances of this are well known re EMDR and can be discussed. For example, when the ISTSS reviews of trauma treatments were commissioned, the first group of reviewers produced a review favorable to EMDR. That was rejected for no clear reason, and a new group of reviewers was commissioned with the clear expectation (based on the composition of the group) that EMDR would not be favorably portrayed (I hope I'm remembering this right...). This move threatened to tear apart the organization. Finally a new reviewer group was commissioned, that, based on its composition, would be expected to write a balanced review.

I have also heard that Project Liberty money in NYC (we're talking many many millions here) to help people recovering from 9/11 explicitly may not be used for EMDR, even though available literature indicates that PE and EMDR tend to get roughly equivalent results, and even though there are many EMDR-trained therapists in NYC.

In terms of my own experience, when I was writing some grant applications for federal funding sources a couple of years ago, virtually all of my senior colleagues urged me to replace EMDR with something more "acceptable" so that I would have a better chance of being funded. This even when much of the point of the grant application was to test EMDR! So there is a sense, among those who (in my view) are in the know, that EMDR would not get a fair hearing.

(In fact, I believe that my applications were treated fairly. Go figure.)

I guess where I'd like to leave this is that we should not assume that there is or is not bias in a given case, unless there is specific evidence to that effect. Just having someone's name as co-author would not constitute such evidence.

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