[bheadmaster]

Does drug being approved by FDA prove its effectiveness? If you can demonstrate without reasonable doubt that it does, i.e. that it's virtually impossible for a drug to be both approved by the FDA and as effective as placebo, then that would make a good argument.

In any case, any argument is better than just a "Stop spreading FUD and misinformation, you antivaxxer"-style comment.

[tsimionescu]

The standard for drug approval by the FDA is that the drug has proven to be more efficient than the controls in a phase 3 clinical trial, to the satisfaction of the FDA's experts. The ESA has similar requirements, as do the NHS and other national bodies.

Given this, I consider that the right prior is to believe that a drug that has been FDA, ESA, NHS and many other national bodies is actually more effective than placebo. Which means, the onus is on you to bring evidence if you want to claim they are not - otherwise, "Stop spreading FUD and misinformation" is the exact right response.

[tsimionescu]

Edit: I should have written EMA(European Medicines Agency) not ESA (the European Space Agency).

[bheadmaster]

> "Stop spreading FUD and misinformation" is the exact right response.

I strongly disagree. Everyone should have the right to "spread FUD and misinformation" as much as they like, and those who care should learn how to argue for the truth. Otherwise our society is pretty much guaranteed to devolve into a bunch of gullible morons.

The fact that nobody is willing to dig up any proof of effectiveness of SSRIs beyond "well, they're in use, so they must be good", but are perfectly okay with silencing people who disagree with them is both funny and scary to me. And annoying. Who the fuck are they to silence others?

[tsimionescu]

It's exhausting to argue every obvious point over and over. If you want to claim that well established practices are wrong, it's up to you to bring the evidence. I'm not going to cite studies to prove the earth is round either.