Indeed. The one thing RationalWiki is good at is, when there’s some quack theory or junk science out there that’s not notable enough to grace the Wikipedia, RW often times has a page on it.
As an aside, I do not trust Rational Wiki to be a reliable source of information.
Just one example: Their information about Alcoholics Anonymous’s effectiveness can charitably be described as a dumpster fire: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Alcoholics_Anonymous (For example, they cite Brandsma 1980, which is a very outdated chestnut anti-AA polemics always bring out; the study is really old and its methodology was pretty bad: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brandsma_1980 )
Earlier in the article, it states that “The review found 42% of AA participants were completely abstinent one year later, compared with 35% of participants who underwent other treatments like CBT.”
Cochrane reviews are considered the gold standard for meta-reviews. If the data, which does show AA [1] helps some alcoholics become abstinent, wasn’t scientifically sound, it wouldn’t had become part of the review.
Saitz either thinks a 7% improvement is a “similar result”, or he wasn’t familiar with the study when interviewed.
Obviously, people are free to think the science doesn’t “conclusively support” a given theory. Using this line of thinking, some people think radiocarbon dating doesn’t “conclusively support” the idea of the earth being older than 6,000 years -- but that’s hardly an evidence-based scientific line of reasoning.
[1] Since it’s not practical to use randomization to compare AA per se to non-AA recovery because of “contaminated control” issues, modern studies compare twelve-step facilitation (TSF) treatment with non-TSF treatment.
Since the linked article mentions Glaser’s now-discredited 2015 article which falsely claims AA is not helpful: The latest science shows that Alcoholics Anonymous is a very helpful resource for many alcoholics, and that AA increases sobriety by 7% compared to other treatments.
Compare this to Reddit, where some high-traffic sub-Reddits (/r/atheism coughcough) delete links to scientific evidence showing AA efficacy: https://archive.is/gEXfA Why let facts get in the way of a good social networking rage fest?
>Their religion-based system has about the same probability of helping you recover from addiction as not going to AA/NA.
Not this again. We know for a fact that treatments which encourage people to be a part of AA fellowships result in a significantly higher rate of abstinence from alcohol. [1]
Comparing Pendery 1982 to the Tuskegee Syphilis Study?? That’s a really emotionally charged and completely invalid reach.
I’m not sure how a reasonable conversation can continue. We’ve moved to a Twilight Zone alternate reality at this point. The only way we can go further in to la la land is to make a completely invalid comparison to Nazism so that Godwin’s Law can be invoked.
Another thing: Discarding what a judge says about a what is legal matter is not a particularly compelling argument. It’s the kind of thinking done by people who believe in conspiracy theories. As a contemporary example, people who are convinced that the 2020 United States presidential election was rigged, when pointed out that judges have concluded there is no reasonable evidence supporting that assertion, will say something like “I couldn't really care less what the judge concluded”.
That’s not what the judge looking at this very issue felt:
“Judge Hauk concluded that on balance it was more important to determine how the patients were faring following treatment than any possible breach of confidentiality and invasion of privacy which were protected by their right to refuse to participate in the study”
Source: Alcoholism: A Review of its Characteristics, Etiology, Treatments, and Controversies by Irvine Maltzman
(Keep in mind this was the mid-to-late 1970s in California)
Probably the most extensive critical account of that 1973 Sobell study, and how the Pendery 1982 follow-up came to be published, is the book Alcoholism: A Review of its Characteristics, Etiology, Treatments, and Controversies by Irvine Maltzman. All quotes in this post come from that book.
One patient’s “attorney had complained to the Hospital about the treatment that he had received.” As I describe elsewhere in this thread, some of the patients ended up trying to sue the Sobells. So, no, the patients were not happy with the treatment they received.
The subjects had no problem being contacted for follow-up: “the patients contacted prior to the court injunction all expressed a willingness to cooperate and to be interviewed”
Indeed, a judge familiar with the medical privacy laws of that era (we’re talking the mid-to-late 1970s here) made a court decision that contacting the patients for follow-up was perfectly OK: “Judge Hauk concluded that on balance it was more important to determine how the patients were faring following treatment than any possible breach of confidentiality and invasion of privacy which were protected by their right to refuse to participate in the study.”
The reference was for the fact some of the original patients tried to sue the Sobells.
The “delighted” bit comes from Alcoholism: A Review of its Characteristics, Etiology, Treatments, and Controversies by Irvine Maltzman, which goes in to the Sobell controversy in great detail.
Edit: Going back to the book, here’s the most relevant quote from the late Maltzman: “the patients contacted prior to the court injunction all expressed a willingness to cooperate and to be interviewed” Maybe “delighted” was too strong of a word.
Here’s the 2016 (i.e. done during the Obama administration) report from the US Surgeon General on some resources which help with recovery: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK424846/
Looking over at that Nice website, it looks like the Nice reports haven’t taken the information the 2020 Cochrane review on AA used in to account yet.
The subjects were delighted (Edit: See below for actual quote from one of the Pendery team researchers) to be contacted by another research group, and some of them felt the treatment they got in the Sobell group was so shoddy, they ended up trying to sue the Sobell researchers.
That article from The Atlantic uses outdated information. The figures Glaser used for AA efficacy do not come from peer reviewed science and are inaccurate. See https://www.thecut.com/2015/03/why-alcoholics-anonymous-work... for a direct rebuttal of that 2015 article.
This happened back in the 1970s when some researchers tried to get follow-up information about whether alcoholics can moderately drink again.
Here’s what happened: The paper Sobell 1973 made the bold claim that alcoholics could moderately drink again if given the right kind of therapy. So, other researchers asked: What was the long-term outcome with those patients supposedly engaging on “controlled drinking”?
So this research team including one Pendery asked Sobell for the list of patients so they could perform a proper follow-up. The Sobell researchers refused to provide the list. The Pendery team managed to get the list anyway. The Sobells then sued Pendary and their team to stop them from using the list.
After some litigation, the Pendary team got the Sobell lawsuit dismissed and then followed up with those supposedly moderate drinking patients.
Out of the 20 patients the Sobell study claimed were moderately drinking, only one arguably was still moderately drinking a decade later. Four of those “moderate drinkers” died from drinking too much. Eight were engaging in out of control drinking. Six were completely abstinent from alcohol. And one could not be found, but appeared to be “gravely disabled”.
No wonder the Sobells tried to block the follow up study with lawsuits: Because it showed that those “moderate drinkers” were no longer moderately drinking.
After a lot of effort, the Sobell lawsuit(s) were dismissed and the truth won.