Tyler Black, MD Profile picture
Feb 12, 2022 8 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Reviewing a PUBLISHED PEER REVIEWED paper about anxiety prevalence during the pandemic in the UK, and the authors commented that because this funnel plot is symmetrical, publication bias is unlikely.

NONE OF THE STUDIES ARE IN THE FUNNEL!!!!!
Funnel plots are supposed to give you confidence that the estimate is not biased. Usually, it's to "show you if there is a bias around the mean."

In this case, the funnel plot serves to tell us to simply throw out the effect size.
As the error gets smaller, the certainty range is supposed to get smaller, that's the entire point of the funnel plot.

This is simply a metaanalysis of randomness.
i can't even :( ...

so few of the CONFIDENCE INTERVALS for any of the studies even overlap, let alone agree with the estimate.

this one is for "depression"
but don't worry, "Due to the high heterogeneity, random-effects models were used in the analysis of the findings."

sigh.

Are we ever going to have sound epidemiological publications in pandemic mental health research?
this is totally normal (they removed the "small outlier study" to make the above plot, despite it being a survey of 600, even though there are other surveys they didn't remove with 315 participants)
well at least its "symmetrical" - no publication bias!!!!!!!

how on earth does this stuff get published
for reference, this is what funnel plots are SUPPOSED to look like (both showing bias and not)

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More from @tylerblack32

May 13
OK @joannamoncrieff ,lets do this.

POINT BY POINT
🔽🔽

/2 Image
Point 1: "Disease-targeting" is an invented criterion

1a. You demand drugs show "disease-targeting effects" or be presumed harmful. This is never necessary. The actual claim: reliable symptom change across replicated RCTs.

/2
Point 1: "Disease-targeting" is an invented criterion

1b. Cardiology doesn't know the molecular lesion driving most post-MI mortality benefit from beta-blockers. We use them anyway because they work. "No known mechanism, therefore presume harm" would gut most of medicine.

/3
Read 14 tweets
May 5
RFK is no better at psychiatric medications than he is about vaccines.

RFK's "overmedicalization crisis" thread is a master class in using true-ish numbers to imply a false conclusion. Let's go through it. 🧵

/1
The core trick: he treats prescription prevalence as self-evidently bad. But high rates only signal a problem if the meds don't work, are given to people who don't need them, or cause net harm. He establishes none of this. He just gestures at numbers.

/2
The same rhetorical structure would indict insulin prescribing, or asthma inhalers. Prevalence is not pathology. The question is whether treatment matches need — and whether the alternative (untreated illness) is better or worse.

/3
Read 20 tweets
May 4
Disabled people should not live in poverty.

It makes no sense the way we treat our people with disabilities in Canada. Canada has the full apparatus to implement adjusted payments, yet we typically support disabled people WELL under the poverty line.

/1 Image
Canada has an official poverty line: the Market Basket Measure. It's regionally calibrated, methodologically sound, and updated by StatCan.



A single person on BC PWD receives ~$18.4k/year. The Vancouver MBM is ~$29k.

/2www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.…
That's not a rounding error. It's a structural choice.

PWD recipients in Vancouver sit at roughly 47% of the poverty line and below the Deep Income Poverty threshold (75% of MBM), which is the level StatCan uses to flag the worst material deprivation in the country.

/3
Read 10 tweets
May 2
Quick thread: "How do SSRI's work" 🧵

I've had a few patients ask me how SSRI's work.

To be clear, my first answer is "well we know they are supposed to block serotonin reuptake, but it's not that simple and we don't really know."

But, if you want the best 2026 science...

/1Image
For a few particularly science-interested patients, I walk them through what we currently have for the 'best evidence' even though we're still not sure.

This is the "best story" I can tell about SSRI's right now.

(nb, this is NOT locked in, this is MY best synthesis)

/2
1) SSRIs BLOCK the Serotonin Transporter
The protein that pulls serotonin back into the neuron after its released is blocked. Serotonin lingers longer in the synapse, the gap where neurons signal each other.

This is very well established, & how SSRIs were designed.

/3Image
Read 15 tweets
May 2
The Ihben story is making the rounds. "Judge forced 18 vaccines, child got autism." It's being treated as a smoking gun. It is not a smoking gun. It is barely a story.

/1
Sourcing: one father, one advocacy org (CHD), one GiveSendGo. Records sealed. No filings. No named physicians. Every outlet repeating it cites the same Defender article. This is a closed loop, not corroboration.

/2
"18 vaccines in one day" is not a thing. That number counts antigens as doses to make the headline scream. Real catch-up schedules don't work this way and you can verify that in five minutes on the CDC site.

/3
Read 10 tweets
Apr 30
🧵Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) 🧵

Ask any person who has been even suggested to have BPD; they will uniformly tell you that they have been told to try DBT (Dialectical Behavioural Therapy). Reflexively recommended. "Gold standard."

This is not science-supported.

/1Image
Quick history: Marsha Linehan developed DBT in the late 1980s, published the foundational manual in 1993. She drew on CBT, Zen Buddhism, and dialectical philosophy. Brilliant clinician, brilliant marketer. Her institute has trained tens of thousands of therapists worldwide.

/2 Image
That marketing machine is the reason DBT is "the BPD treatment." It is not the reason DBT works better than alternatives, because it does not.

The faint superiority signals in older trials evaporate once you adjust for allegiance bias (DBT researchers studying DBT).

/3
Read 16 tweets

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