The ones who exposed it from inside

The man who chaired DSM-IV, against DSM-5

Allen Frances, the psychiatrist who chaired the DSM-IV task force, became one of DSM-5's most prominent critics in the peer-reviewed literature: that it adopted controversial changes on weak scientific support and without adequate risk-benefit analysis, that it raised sensitivity without attending to specificity, and that future revisions should be overseen by an independent body.

And now the crucial part, because this is where the mistakes get made. Frances is an insider critic, not an opponent of psychiatric diagnosis. In the same period he argued that ICD-11 and DSM-5 should be brought closer together, that psychiatry is among the noblest of professions, and that the most severely ill are catastrophically under-treated. We do not conscript him into an argument he did not make.

Interest declared: Frances wrote a trade book on the subject.

[27] Frances AJ, Widiger T. Annu Rev Clin Psychol 2012;8:109-130 · [28] Frances AJ, Nardo JM. "ICD-11 should not repeat the mistakes made by DSM-5", Br J Psychiatry 2013;203(1):1-2

He asked for his own study to be withdrawn. They said no.

Robert L. Spitzer — the psychiatrist who wrote the proposal to delete homosexuality from DSM-II in 1973 — publicly repudiated and apologised for his own 2003 study of "reparative therapy", in a 2012 letter to Archives of Sexual Behavior, writing that he now judged the major critiques of it to be largely correct.

He asked the journal to retract the paper. The editor declined, on the ground that the data had not been falsified and only the interpretation had changed. The 2003 paper carries no retraction notice and remains citable today.

We say "repudiated", not "retracted". The difference is not pedantry — it is exactly the kind of error that would hand a critic the one sentence they need.

[43] Spitzer RL, letter to the editor, Arch Sex Behav 2012;41(4):757

And an ally not presented as an authority

Peter Gøtzsche co-authored a documented peer-reviewed contribution to the measurement of ghost authorship in industry-funded trials — still among the most cited work in the field.

And: his membership of the Cochrane Collaboration was terminated by its Governing Board in September 2018.

Both are given. A contested figure is not presented here as an unqualified authority because he agrees with a position.

[34] Healy D, Cattell D, Br J Psychiatry 2003;183:22-27 · Cochrane statements, September 2018 — retrievable only via the Internet Archive

The list, gathered

Harold Bourne, junior psychiatrist: published in the Lancet in 1953 that insulin coma therapy had no proven specific effect. Nine of fourteen published replies argued against him. He was vindicated in 1957.

John Gunn, Professor of Forensic Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, with André Laubscher and Jean-Pierre Restellini: entered the Leros establishments in March 1993 as members of the CPT delegation and signed what they recorded.

Sir John Blofeld, judge: investigated the death of David Bennett and recommended the three-minute limit on prone restraint — which was not adopted.

The nursing staff of Lepida XI, unnamed in the report: had painted and renovated the ward on their own initiative, with nobody asking them to.

None of these practices stopped because someone outside decided it.

[1] CPT/Inf (94) 20, §§2, 227 · [7] Blofeld inquiry 2003 · [39] Bourne H, Lancet 1953