Landmark Analysis of an Infamous Medical Study Points Out the Challenges of Research Oversight
One teenage patient taking the new antidepressant drug Paxil sliced about a dozen six-inch-long cuts into his arm over a period of several days. Another was hospitalized after threatening to kill herself. Neither test subject participating in the clinical trial of Paxil two decades ago was classified by a team of university researchers as suicidal. The researchers, led by Martin B. Keller of Brown University, in a medical-journal article summarizing their findings, instead endorsed Paxil as "generally well tolerated and effective for major depression in adolescents."