To: Pancho Villa who wrote (878 ) 11/12/1997 7:46:00 PM From: NeuroInvestment Read Replies (1) | Respond to
It is possible that the clinicians who were polled as part of the WSJ article that produced the 8% figure may have been biased in favor of Redux, since they had all prescribed Redux. I am not saying that they were, but the possibility exists. Please understand that there is far more to 'investigator bias' than deliberate obfuscation or deception: one can have perfectly ethical individuals who may unwittingly skew their interpretation of subjectively evaluated data based on their own preconceptions. Cognitive dissonance theory posits that once an individual has taken an action consistent with a certain viewpoint, they will tend to subsequently skew their perceptions to coincide with that initial stand. This could operate in either direction in these Redux studies. The Harvard-refereed study has the advantage of (ostensibly) being run by individuals who have not previously established a 'position', and with safeguards to eliminate error induced by bias. Indeed Pancho, you and I are also prone to this same error: since I have been recommending Interneuron, there is a risk that my subsequent interpretations of events will be skewed in their favor. Since you have a short position and have articulated a pessimistic view of their prospects, your interpretations are vulnerable to being skewed in the other direction. It's just human nature to seek internal consistency, and in this case, it is in the face of information that displays anything but consistency. That is why, regardless of all the restatements and pontification that may emerge from any observer, ultimately this issue will have to be resolved by as objective a dataset as humans are able to compile given the circumstances. NeuroInvestment
