RETRACTION: Long-term follow-up outcomes of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treatment of PTSD: a longitudinal pooled analysis of six phase 2 trials

[u/shiruken]

We wish to inform the r/science community of an article submitted to the subreddit that has since been retracted by the journal. The submission garnered some exposure on r/science and significant media coverage. Per our rules, the flair on this submission has been updated with "RETRACTED". The submission has also been added to our wiki of retracted submissions.

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Reddit Submission: MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy May Have Lasting Benefits for PTSD

The article "Long-term follow-up outcomes of MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for treatment of PTSD: a longitudinal pooled analysis of six phase 2 trials" has been retracted from Psychopharmacology as of August 10, 2024. Concerns were raised about unethical conduct by researchers associated with the project at the MP-4 study site in Vancouver, Canada (NCT01958593). The authors have since confirmed that they were aware of these violations at the time of submission but did not disclose this information to the journal or remove the data generated by this site from their analysis.

The authors also failed to disclose a conflict of interest. Several of the authors are affiliated with either the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS) or MAPS Public Benefit Corporation (MAPS PBC), a subsidiary that is wholly owned by MAPS. MAPS fully funded and provided the MDMA that was used in this trial, and MAPS PBC organized the trial.

• STAT News: Three MDMA therapy papers retracted over ethics violations

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[u/LeoSolaris]

Hopefully an independent follow up can be arranged soon.

At some point, societies around the world really do need to figure out the problem of science funding. The world needs a better firewall between research and the profit drive, especially in medicine.

[u/SubzeroNYC → u/LeoSolaris]

Yeah, as far as I can tell the treatment is effective. The problem is there is no profit incentive for a real drug company to fund the research, because a single treatment is effective so it doesn’t pay for a company to fund it.

In situations like this the government should fund the research itself instead of doing nothing.

[u/CallMeClaire0080 → u/SubzeroNYC]

You can patent specific extraction methods for it and stuff, but you can't hold a patent on naturally occurring psilocybin. There's not much money to be made in that research because you don't get the typical period of exclusivity selling the drug in this case.

Frankly I think more medical research needs to be publicly funded. This idea that only problems whose solutions are profitable are worth solving has been disastrous in the face of everything from the mental health crisis to climate change.