Neuron Culture on Mental Health, Print Dinosaurs, and Furious Seasons

[UPDATE: This post has been edited to reflect corrections made by David Dobbs to his original post, which we quoted below.]

David Dobbs, a science writer whose work appears in the New York Times, Slate, and Scientific American, captures the ambivalence of the media moment with a post about newspaper coverage of mental health compared to the work of Philip Dawdy over at Seattle mental health blog Furious Seasons.

Though there is some symbiosis in the newspaper-blog food chain, the relationship is mostly an uneasy one--and getting uneasier as newspapers struggle for their existence. Locally, Dawdy's work at Furious Seasons has gone unremarked upon by the Seattle Times and P-I, though his investigations into the ethics of the pharmaceutical industry have had national impact.

Dobbs notes that the NYT broke the story on the illegally marketed antipsychotic Zyprexa, but that "Dawdy has pressed the Zyprexa story hard since early 2006--it's possible no one has read or written more about it--adding, synthesizing, and commenting on tons of information, and he pulled the sheets off in February 2007 by publishing, at what would seem to be frightening legal risk, the full set of court documents relating to Lilly's Zyprexa marketing."

And then Dobbs points out that elsewhere, "Dawdy led the way, drawing attention to conflicts of interest in the radio show "Infinite Mind" with a story on April 14, 2008. That story inspired a May 6 Slate piece that in turn helped inspire a Nov 22 story Times piece. Shortly after the Times' story ran, the show--a long-running, popular program--ceased production." [UPDATE: Dobbs rephrases this paragraph here, saying Dawdy led "the way in drawing attention to the "Infinite Mind," but did not inspire a specific Slate story.]

We're glad Dawdy is getting some merited and overdue recognition, but watchdogging a multi-billion-dollar industry is a lot to put on the back of a blogger--even one with Dawdy's professional capabilities--when the most he can hope for is public credit, rather than payment. As we watch the decline of primarily advertising-supported newspapers, we cherish a small hope that some will turn to investigative work that they have been shirking, and inspire a paying public with insights that can at times be a matter of life and death.

[UPDATE: Bill Lichtenstein, president of the company that produced "The Infinite Mind," has been offering his perspective on this story (see comments): Dobbs replies, "Mr. Lichtenstein offers some helpful corrections as well as some inaccuracies. I'll comment again soon with my mea culpas and not-exactlys." Here is that comment. On one point, we have this correction from Shannon Brownlee and Jeanne Lenzer: "Bill Lichtenstein is correct in stating that our May 6 Slate story was not inspired by Philip Dawdy's April blog--at the time we were entirely unaware of Philip's work. (Sorry, Philip!)"]

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By MvB in Miscellaneous on January 22, 2009 11:00 AM

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lcmedia

I read David Dobbs' story ("Zyprexa, Infinite Mind, and mainstream vs. pajama press") about former Seattlest writer Philip Dawdy with interest (see above).

Dobbs' premise is powerful and dramatic; that "pajama press" bloggers like Dawdy, and his blog (furiousseasons.com) are out-reporting news outlets like the New York Times on stories such as the recent one involving "The Infinite Mind" public radio series, and are not getting credit for it.

However, as president of the company that produced The Infinite Mind, and as someone familiar with the news coverage surrounding the undisclosed pharma fees accepted by the show's former host, Fred Goodwin, I am writing to note that there are numerous facts in Dobbs' praise of Dawdy that are stretched or are flat out wrong, which I would ask be addressed or corrected in your post. At the same time, the blogger who actually did break the story about Fred Goodwin and The Infinite Mind goes without credit.

1) Dawdy did not, as Dobbs' posting maintains, "lead the way" with his reporting about The Infinite Mind and "inspire" Jeanne Lenzer and Sharon Brownlee to write their May 2008 Slate.com story about The Infinite Mind's "Prozac Nation: Revisited" episode. I am not sure from where he got that information, but Jeanne Lenzer called me in late March 2008, immediately after the show aired, and weeks before Dawdy's first piece on The Infinite Mind had been posted on April 14, 2008, to discuss the program and issues she had about it that had been kicked around at a health journalism conference she attended. Jeanne and I also discussed her helping to produce a one hour The Infinite Mind special on the subject of anti-depressants and suicide. When we turned down the idea of her doing the radio show, she and her co-author, Sharon Brownlee, wrote the Slate.com story. Therefore, to say that Lenzer's Slate.com story was "inspired" by Dawdy's reporting is not true.

2) Despite Dobb's implication, which you restated above, that The Infinite Mind ceased production due to the November 2008 New York Times article, in fact the Times' story had nothing to do with the award-winning public radio series ending its 10-year run. The program, which was independently produced and distributed, had already announced to public radio stations before the New York Times story appeared that it would be ceasing production at the end of 2008 due to funding concerns.

3) Dobbs wrote that Dawdy "broke the [New York Times'] story," but this couldn't be further from the truth.

Dawdy's blogs about The Infinite Mind focused on issues related to anti-depressants and their links to suicide, and whether the program had erred by not disclosing the publicly-known pharmaceutical ties of three guests on a program that examined anti-depressants and suicide.

By contrast, the focus of the November 2008 New York Times article was the undisclosed acceptance by former host Dr. Fred Goodwin of $1.2 million in speaking fees from GlaxoSmithKline. To say that Dawdy broke that story is simply wrong.

In fact, the story of Goodwin's speaking fees was not broken by the New York Times nor Philip Dawdy. It first appeared on Ed Silverman's "Pharmalot.com" web site on November 20, prior to the Times posting it on their web site, and a full two days before the Times story went to print

(See Silverman's story at http://www.pharmalot.com/2008/11/talk-is-not-cheap-npr-host-has-ties-to-pharma/ )

Silverman had the whole story first, including the spreadsheet from Senator Grassley's office that detailed the $1.2 million in payments to Goodwin. Silverman got the story from the same place the New York Times did: Senator Grassley, who had read all of the details of his office's investigation of Goodwin into the Senate record the day before, on November 19. If anyone deserves the credit for the Goodwin story, it's Grassley's staff.

Finally, with regard to Dawdy's relentless attacks on The Infinite Mind for questioning what hard scientific evidence exists linking anti-depressants to suicide, I offer the following: in May 2008, the Slate.com article, critical of The Infinite Mind, was reviewed by STATS, a nonprofit, nonpartisan research organization affiliated with the George Mason University that works to improve the quality of scientific and statistical information in public discourse. STATS concluded that "The Infinite Mind needs to deal with the fact that it underplayed the risk [of antidepressants and suicide]; but Slate and Brownlee and Lenzer need to consider something less palatable: whether their approach to reporting this issue is putting, on balance, more lives at stake." The same, arguably, can be said about Dawdy and his writing on this story.

- Bill Lichtenstein