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Mashup Score: 9‘Equal-unblinding’ meta-analysis of psychedelic therapy vs. antidepressants for the treatment of depression - 5 day(s) ago
Importance: Psychedelic-assisted therapy (PAT) trials have high levels of functional unblinding. This effect positively biases results when PAT trials are compared against truly blinded trials. Objective: This pre-registered meta-analysis investigated the comparative efficacy of PAT and open-label traditional antidepressants (tAD; such as SSRIs and SNRIs) for the treatment of major depression. The rationale is that PAT is effectively always open-label, thus, it is only fair to compare results against open-label tAD trials, so both interventions equally benefit from effects associated with patients knowing the treatment. Data Sources: PubMed was systematically searched for trials of PAT and open-label tAD for the treatment of major depression without comorbidity in outpatient, non-psychotic adults. 24 of the initially retrieved 619 records met inclusion. Data Extraction and Synthesis: Depression scores were extracted by two independent reviewers; estimates were pooled with both Bayesian
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet
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Mashup Score: 0Liberals and Conservatives Make Different Assumptions of Vulnerability, Explaining Moral Disagreement - 21 day(s) ago
Political disagreement can make it seem like liberals and conservatives have different moral minds, but here we show how moral disagreement can arise from a universal harm-based morality—people make different assumptions about who and what is especially vulnerable to harm. Assumptions of vulnerability (AoVs) predict people’s moral judgments, implicit attitudes, and charity behaviors, and can also be experimentally manipulated. We highlight four clusters of targets—the Environment, Othered, Powerful, and Divine—where liberals and conservatives hold different AoVs, helping to explain political disagreements about hot-button issues from abortion to policing. More generally, liberals amplify group differences in vulnerability, splitting the world into the very vulnerable (oppressed) versus the very invulnerable (oppressors), while conservatives dampen group differences in vulnerability, seeing all people as similarly vulnerable to harm. AoVs show how people with a common harm-based mind ca
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
Liberals and Conservatives Make Different Assumptions of Vulnerability, Explaining Moral Disagreement https://t.co/yfCJnuYWuq via @jakewomick et al https://t.co/81kTD1DeOR
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Mashup Score: 2
A general overview of artificial intelligence (AI) designed for academic students, workers, researchers and teachers. It is a less technical introduction for those of us who are not familiar with computer science. It focuses primarily on generative AI (Gen AI) as this is the tool that is rapidly transforming every aspect of academic work. This primer covers four areas: 1. How does AI know what it knows? – An overview of artificial neural networks, large language models and the “knowledge” in Gen AI; 2. Ethics and Best Practices – Good scientific practice, ethics and legal aspects; 3. Sources and Tools – to support the research process; and 4. Prompting – Strategies to optimize interaction with Gen AI.
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
An Introduction to Generative Artificial Intelligence for Academics https://t.co/Osh3kxfzlV via @BreznauNate et al @MustBeMistry https://t.co/WVp93MfJTH
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Mashup Score: 1Adjusting for Publication Bias Reveals Evidence Against Social Comparison As a Behaviour Change Technique Across the Behavioural Sciences - 1 month(s) ago
Social comparison is increasingly used as a behaviour change technique (SC-BCT) yet its true efficacy remains unclear. To address this concern, Hoppen and colleagues1 performed a comprehensive meta-analysis of 79 randomized controlled trials involving over 1.3 million participants. Hoppen and colleagues “found evidence supporting the efficacy of SC-BCTs in shaping behaviour in the desired direction”. However, their own risk of bias assessment revealed that “most trials (k = 66; 84%) had some concern of bias regarding selection of the reported result(s) given that preregistrations and prespecified analysis protocols were rare” and they noted that “it remains unknown to what extent the present results are affected by publication bias”. In our re-analysis, we demonstrate that publication bias exaggerated the evidence in favor of SC-BCT to such a degree that once this bias is properly adjusted for, the effect disappears entirely. In fact, the data show moderate evidence against the presenc
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
Adjusting for Publication Bias Reveals Evidence Against Social Comparison As a Behaviour Change Technique Across the Behavioural Sciences https://t.co/ngs34YPBca via @BartosFra et al https://t.co/mYOcD2neSi
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Mashup Score: 1A consensus statement on potential negative impacts of smartphone and social media use on adolescent mental health - 2 month(s) ago
The impact of smartphones and social media use on adolescent mental health remains widely debated. To clarify expert opinion, we convened over 120 international researchers from 11 disciplines, representing a broad range of views. Using a Delphi method, the panel evaluated 26 claims covering international trends in adolescent mental health, causal links to smartphones and social media, and policy recommendations. The experts suggested 1,400 references and produced a consensus statement for each claim. The following conclusions were rated as accurate or somewhat accurate by 92–97% of respondents: First, adolescent mental health has declined in several Western countries over the past 20 years. Second, heavy smartphone and social media use can cause sleep problems. Third, smartphone and social media use correlate with attention problems and behavioural addiction. Fourth, among girls, social media use may be associated with body dissatisfaction, perfectionism, exposure to mental disorders,
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
A consensus statement on potential negative impacts of smartphone and social media use on adolescent mental health https://t.co/szcGv0afUy via @ValerioCapraro et al https://t.co/ArCMAehDFE
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Mashup Score: 3
Living things must monitor and regulate cellular-level energy supply, demand, and transformation capacity to remain alive. They do so through a brain-directed interoceptive process we refer to as “metaboception.” Here, we introduce a specific metaboceptive signaling cascade mediated by the metabokine/cytokine growth differentiation factor 15 (GDF15), which we name “mitoception.” Mitoception involves afferent signaling initiated by the integrative stress response (ISR) and efferent signaling that induces energy conservation and promotes fuel mobilization. Afferent mitoceptive signaling is mediated by GDF15 released when cells face energy demand in excess of their energy transformation capacity, creating an “energy gap”. Efferent mitoceptive signaling arises when GDF15 receptors in the brainstem receive the signal and initiate psychological experiences including fatigue and anxiety, together with neuroendocrine stress responses. Mitoceptive outputs thus reprioritize systemic energy metab
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
How does the brain monitor our energy status? https://t.co/5Eob4fMS4O via @MitoPsychoBio et al https://t.co/30xI8XHr72
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Mashup Score: 1The time course of local coherence effects: Evidence from self-paced reading times and event-related potentials - 2 month(s) ago
In sentences like “The coach smiled at the player tossed a frisbee,” the string “the player tossed a frisbee” cannot be an active subject-verb-object (SVO) clause given the preceding context; yet, comprehenders seem to entertain this incorrect parse, at least momentarily. Behaviorally, this momentary mis-parse is expressed as greater difficulty during and after the SVO phrase is read. This phenomenon, called local coherence effect, has important implications for sentence processing theories that treat grammar as a strict filter during incremental sentence processing: Under such a strict filter, local coherence effects should never occur. Several studies report the existence of local coherence effects in languages like English, German, and Hindi, but one question remains unanswered: at what moment is the local coherence effect triggered, and how quickly does grammar override the mis-parse? We investigate the time course of local coherence effects through two relatively large-scale e
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
The time course of local coherence effects: Evidence from self-paced reading times and event-related potentials https://t.co/VKiGF4zpMU via @pia_schoknecht et al https://t.co/R1uvWIbM5q
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Mashup Score: 4
The Cass Report aimed to provide recommendations for how services for gender diverse children and young people should be delivered in England. Our critical appraisal reveals significant methodological and conceptual flaws within the report and the research commissioned to inform the report, which included seven systematic reviews and both quantitative and qualitative primary research. Using the ROBIS tool, we identified a high risk of bias in each of the systematic reviews driven by unexplained protocol deviations, ambiguous eligibility criteria, inadequate study identification, and the failure to integrate consideration of these limitations into the conclusions derived from the evidence syntheses. We also identified potential sources of bias and unsubstantiated claims in the primary research that suggest a double standard in the quality of evidence produced for the Cass Report compared to quality appraisal in the systematic reviews. We discuss these issues in relation to how evidence
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
Critical appraisal of the Cass Review on gender affirming care https://t.co/AQcqqfita7 via @AlexAshman et al https://t.co/12hDXq93wu
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Mashup Score: 0Personality Traits and Traditional Philanthropy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis - 2 month(s) ago
Volunteering and charitable giving are core examples of traditional philanthropy that contribute to the health of democratic societies and individual well-being. Differences in people’s willingness to engage in these behaviors hint at a role of psychological factors that foster or hinder these types of philanthropic engagement. Theory and empirical research suggest that broad personality traits may shape volunteering and charitable giving. However, existing evidence for links between specific traits and philanthropic engagement has been mixed, in part because of insufficient statistical power and methodological variation across studies. In this preregistered meta-analysis, we integrated data from 29 studies to estimate the associations between the Big Five personality traits with volunteering (N = 91,241, Median age = 34 years, 61% female, 36% U.S. samples) and charitable giving (N = 3559, Median age = 39 years, 52% female, 40% U.S. samples). We further examined potential moderators, i
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine News, NeurologyTweet-
“Personality Traits and Traditional Philanthropy: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis” by Christopher J. Hopwood et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology https://t.co/j92V4Ig4bB
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Mashup Score: 17Major Flaws in Taylor et al.’s (2025) Meta-analysis on Fluoride Exposure and Children’s IQ Scores - 3 month(s) ago
A recent meta-analysis in this journal (Taylor et al 2025) produced ostensible evidence of a negative correlation between fluoride exposure and intelligence in children, which garnered major public attention. There has, however, been criticism of this undertaking and conclusions. In order to address the controversy over this work, we in this special communication undertake an independent forensic meta-science review of the methodology and statistical approaches employed and inferences drawn by the authors, as well as an investigation of the underlying data integrity of the constituent studies. We find that the authors employed unjustified methodological and statistical errors which invalidate their conclusion, and demonstrate that the data cannot be analysed as the authors assert. We further find major problems with the sources employed, including reliance on studies from non-MEDLINE indexed publications with an anti-fluoridation editorial stance, and major underlying issues with the d
Source: osf.ioCategories: General Medicine NewsTweet-
Major Flaws in @kylawtaylor et al’s (2025) Meta-analysis on Fluoride Exposure and Children’s IQ Scores https://t.co/OaZF74d1aI via @MatthewBJane et al https://t.co/1LzCNNASfM
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Psychedelics don't outperform antidepressants in fair comparison where both studies are unblinded. https://t.co/HG2nDt3Na9 via @QuantPsychiatry et al https://t.co/uMfX1T7gZu