New York Times Remembers Dr Bernard Carroll, the " Conscience of Psychiatry "

We atHealth Care Renewal miss Dr Bernard Carroll, who we were proud to count among our bloggers.The New York Times just published akind obituary, which called him " the conscience of psychiatry. "It opened:Dr. Bernard J. Carroll, whose studies of severe depression gave psychiatry the closest thing it has to a ' blood test ' for a mental disorder, and who later became one of the field ’s most relentless critics, helping to expose pervasive corruption in academic research, died on Sept. 10 at his home in Carmel, Calif. He was 77.It described how he started his " second career " :He and a lifelong friend, Dr. Robert Rubin, a professor of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles, dissected psychiatric studies as they appeared, flagging sloppy work and sniffing out conflicts of interest. They then broadcast their findings to former colleagues and allies through various email lists, often taking their findings to the news media.' He never stopped; he was up at all hours, ' said Dr. Allen Frances, a former Duke colleague. ' I mean, I ’m an early riser. I’d get up and there’d be a bunch of emails from Barney. 'In the 2000s, Dr. Carroll and Dr. Rubin worked with Paul Thacker, then a staffer for Senator Charles Grassley of Iowa, to help expose huge undeclared payments to top academic researchers at Harvard, Emory University and other institutions. He knew very well how this world operates; he had consulted widely with drug makers himself.Dr. Carroll concluded tha...
Source: Health Care Renewal - Category: Health Management Tags: Bernard Carroll Source Type: blogs