In Defense of Antidepressants (Could this be true?) By PETER D. KRAMER

IN terms of perception, these are hard times for antidepressants. A number of articles have suggested that the drugs are no more effective than placebos.

Last month brought an especially high-profile debunking. In an essay in The New York Review of Books, Marcia Angell, former editor in chief of The New England Journal of Medicine, favorably entertained the premise that “psychoactive drugs are useless.” Earlier, a USA Today piece about a study done by the psychologist Robert DeRubeis had the headline, “Antidepressant lift may be all in your head,” and shortly after, a Newsweek cover piece discussed research by the psychologist Irving Kirsch arguing that the drugs were no more effective than a placebo.

Could this be true? Could drugs that are ingested by one in 10 Americans each year, drugs that have changed the way that mental illness is treated, really be a hoax, a mistake or a concept gone wrong?

This supposition is worrisome. Antidepressants work — ordinarily well, on a par with other medications doctors prescribe. Yes, certain researchers have questioned their efficacy in particular areas — sometimes, I believe, on the basis of shaky data. And yet, the notion that they aren’t effective in general is influencing treatment.

For instance, not long ago, I received disturbing news: a friend had had a stroke that paralyzed the right side of his body. Hoping to be of use, I searched the Web for a study I vaguely remembered. There it was: a group in France had worked with more than 100 people with the kind of stroke that affected my friend. Along with physiotherapy, half received Prozac, and half a placebo. Members of the Prozac group recovered more of their mobility. Antidepressants are good at treating post-stroke depression and good at preventing it. They also help protect memory. In stroke patients, antidepressants look like a tonic for brain health.

When I learned that my friend was not on antidepressants, I suggested he raise the issue with his neurologists. I e-mailed them the relevant articles. After further consideration, the doctors added the medicines to his regimen of physical therapy.

Surprised that my friend had not been offered a highly effective treatment, I phoned Robert G. Robinson at the University of Iowa’s department of psychiatry, a leading researcher in this field. He said, “Neurologists tell me they don’t use an antidepressant unless a patient is suffering very serious depression. They’re influenced by reports that say that’s all antidepressants are good for.”

Critics raise various concerns, but in my view the serious dispute about antidepressant efficacy has a limited focus. Do they work for the core symptoms (such as despair, low energy and feelings of worthlessness) of isolated episodes of mild or moderate depression? The claim that antidepressants do nothing for this common condition — that they are merely placebos with side effects — is based on studies that have probably received more ink than they deserve.

The most widely publicized debunking research — the basis for the Newsweek and New York Review pieces — is drawn from data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration in the late 1980s and the 1990s by companies seeking approval for new drugs. This research led to its share of scandal when a study in The New England Journal of Medicine found that the trials had been published selectively. Papers showing that antidepressants work had found their way into print; unfavorable findings had not.

In his book “The Emperor’s New Drugs: Exploding the Antidepressant Myth,” Dr. Kirsch, a psychologist at the University of Hull in England, analyzed all the data. He found that while the drugs outperformed the placebos for mild and moderate depression, the benefits were small. The problem with the Kirsch analysis — and none of the major press reports considered this shortcoming — is that the F.D.A. material is ill suited to answer questions about mild depression.

As a condition for drug approval, the F.D.A. requires drug companies to demonstrate a medicine’s efficacy in at least two trials. Trials in which neither the new drug nor an older, established drug is distinguishable from a placebo are deemed “failed” and are disregarded or weighed lightly in the evaluation. Consequently, companies rushing to get medications to market have had an incentive to run quick, sloppy trials.

Often subjects who don’t really have depression are included — and (no surprise) weeks down the road they are not depressed. People may exaggerate their symptoms to get free care or incentive payments offered in trials. Other, perfectly honest subjects participate when they are at their worst and then spontaneously return to their usual, lower, level of depression.

THIS improvement may have nothing to do with faith in dummy pills; it is an artifact of the recruitment process. Still, the recoveries are called “placebo responses,” and in the F.D.A. data they have been steadily on the rise. In some studies, 40 percent of subjects not receiving medication get better.

The problem is so big that entrepreneurs have founded businesses promising to identify genuinely ill research subjects. The companies use video links to screen patients at central locations where (contrary to the practice at centers where trials are run) reviewers have no incentives for enrolling subjects. In early comparisons, off-site raters rejected about 40 percent of subjects who had been accepted locally — on the ground that those subjects did not have severe enough symptoms to qualify for treatment. If this result is typical, many subjects labeled mildly depressed in the F.D.A. data don’t have depression and might well respond to placebos as readily as to antidepressants.

Nonetheless, the F.D.A. mostly gets it right. To simplify a complex matter: there are two sorts of studies that are done on drugs: broad trials and narrow trials. Broad trials, like those done to evaluate new drugs, can be difficult these days, because many antidepressants are available as generics. Who volunteers to take an untested remedy? Research subjects are likely to be an odd bunch.

Narrow studies, done on those with specific disorders, tend to be more reliable. Recruitment of subjects is straightforward; no one’s walking off the street to enter a trial for stroke patients. Narrow studies have identified many specific indications for antidepressants, such as depression in neurological disorders, including multiple sclerosis andepilepsy; depression caused by interferon, a medication used to treat hepatitis and melanoma; and anxiety disorders in children.

New ones regularly emerge. The June issue of Surgery Today features a study in which elderly female cardiac patients who had had emergency operations and were given antidepressants experienced less depression, shorter hospital stays and fewer deaths in the hospital.

Broad studies tend to be most trustworthy when they look at patients with sustained illness. A reliable finding is that antidepressants work for chronic and recurrent mild depression, the condition called dysthymia. More than half of patients on medicine get better, compared to less than a third taking a placebo. (This level of efficacy — far from ideal — is typical across a range of conditions in which antidepressants outperform placebos.) Similarly, even the analyses that doubt the usefulness of antidepressants find that they help with severe depression.

In fact, antidepressants appear to have effects across the depressive spectrum. Scattered studies suggest that antidepressants bolster confidence or diminish emotional vulnerability — for people with depression but also for healthy people. In the depressed, the decrease in what is called neuroticism seems to protect against further episodes. Because neuroticism is not a core symptom of depression, most outcome trials don’t measure this change, but we can see why patients and doctors might consider it beneficial.

Similarly, in rodent and primate trials, antidepressants have broad effects on both healthy animals and animals with conditions that resemble mood disruptions in humans.

One reason the F.D.A. manages to identify useful medicines is that it looks at a range of evidence. It encourages companies to submit “maintenance studies.” In these trials, researchers take patients who are doing well on medication and switch some to dummy pills. If the drugs are acting as placebos, switching should do nothing. In an analysis that looked at maintenance studies for 4,410 patients with a range of severity levels, antidepressants cut the odds of relapse by 70 percent. These results, rarely referenced in the antidepressant-as-placebo literature, hardly suggest that the usefulness of the drugs is all in patients’ heads.

The other round of media articles questioning antidepressants came in response to a seemingly minor study engineered to highlight placebo responses. One effort to mute the placebo effect in drug trials involves using a “washout period” during which all subjects get a dummy pill for up to two weeks. Those who report prompt relief are dropped; the study proceeds with those who remain symptomatic, with half getting the active medication. In light of subject recruitment problems, this approach has obvious appeal.

Dr. DeRubeis, an authority on cognitive behavioral psychotherapy, has argued that the washout method plays down the placebo effect. Last year, Dr. DeRubeis and his colleagues published a highly specific statistical analysis. From a large body of research, they discarded trials that used washouts, as well as those that focused on dysthymia or subtypes of depression. The team deemed only six studies, from over 2,000, suitable for review. An odd collection they were. Only studies using Paxil and imipramine, a medicine introduced in the 1950s, made the cut — and other research had found Paxil to be among the least effective of the new antidepressants. One of the imipramine studies used a very low dose of the drug. The largest study Dr. DeRubeis identified was his own. In 2005, he conducted a trial in which Paxil did slightly better than psychotherapy and significantly better than a placebo — but apparently much of the drug response occurred in sicker patients.

Building an overview around your own research is problematic. Generally, you use your study to build a hypothesis; you then test the theory on fresh data. Critics questioned other aspects of Dr. DeRubeis’s math. In a re-analysis using fewer assumptions, Dr. DeRubeis found that his core result (less effect for healthier patients) now fell just shy of statistical significance. Overall, the medications looked best for very severe depression and had only slight benefits for mild depression — but this study, looking at weak treatments and intentionally maximized placebo effects, could not quite meet the scientific standard for a firm conclusion. And yet, the publication of the no-washout paper produced a new round of news reports that antidepressants were placebos.

In the end, the much heralded overview analyses look to be editorials with numbers attached. The intent, presumably to right the balance between psychotherapy and medication in the treatment of mild depression, may be admirable, but the data bearing on the question is messy.

As for the news media’s uncritical embrace of debunking studies, my guess, based on regular contact with reporters, is that a number of forces are at work. Misdeeds — from hiding study results to paying off doctors — have made Big Pharma an inviting and, frankly, an appropriate target. (It’s a favorite of Dr. Angell’s.) Antidepressants have something like celebrity status; exposing them makes headlines.

It is hard to locate the judicious stance with regard to antidepressants and moderate mood disorder. In my 1993 book, “Listening to Prozac,” I wrote, “To my mind, psychotherapy remains the single most helpful technology for the treatment of minor depression and anxiety.” In 2003, in “Against Depression,” I highlighted research that suggested antidepressants influence mood only indirectly. It may be that the drugs are “permissive,” removing roadblocks to self-healing.

That model might predict that in truth the drugs would be more effective in severe disorders. If antidepressants act by usefully perturbing a brain that’s “stuck,” then people who retain some natural resilience would see a lesser benefit. That said, the result that the debunking analyses propose remains implausible: antidepressants help in severe depression, depressive subtypes, chronic minor depression, social unease and a range of conditions modeled in mice and monkeys — but uniquely not in isolated episodes of mild depression in humans.

BETTER-DESIGNED research may tell us whether there is a point on the continuum of mood disorder where antidepressants cease to work. If I had to put down my marker now — and effectively, as a practitioner, I do — I’d bet that “stuckness” applies all along the line, that when mildly depressed patients respond to medication, more often than not we’re seeing true drug effects. Still, my approach with mild depression is to begin treatments with psychotherapy. I aim to use drugs sparingly. They have side effects, some of them serious. Antidepressants help with strokes, but surveys also show them to predispose to stroke. But if psychotherapy leads to only slow progress, I will recommend adding medicines. With a higher frequency and stronger potency than what we see in the literature, they seem to help.

My own beliefs aside, it is dangerous for the press to hammer away at the theme that antidepressants are placebos. They’re not. To give the impression that they are is to cause needless suffering.

As for my friend, he had made no progress before his neurologists prescribed antidepressants. Since, he has shown a slow return of motor function. As is true with much that we see in clinical medicine, the cause of this change is unknowable. But antidepressants are a reasonable element in the treatment — because they do seem to make the brain more flexible, and they’ve earned their place in the doctor’s satchel.

Peter D. Kramer is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Brown University.

PROVIDENCE, R.I. - NYT

A América e a Europa estão a ir ao fundo – Riscos para todo o mundo

Em Washington discute-se o tecto da dívida; em Bruxelas olha-se para o fosso da dívida. Mas o problema é mais ou menos o mesmo.

Os EUA e a União Europeia andam com as finanças públicas fora de controlo e os seus sistemas políticos mostram-se demasiado disfuncionais para resolver o problema. A América e a Europa estão no mesmo barco, um barco que se está a afundar.

De ambos os lados do Atlântico ficou agora bem patente que grande parte do crescimento económico registado nos anos que precederam a crise se ficou a dever a esse ‘boom' insustentável e perigoso do crédito. Nos EUA as vítimas da crise foram as pessoas que adquiriram casa própria; na Europa foram países inteiros como a Grécia e a Itália, países que aproveitaram as baixas taxas de juro para contraírem empréstimos de uma forma que se revelaria insustentável.

O choque financeiro de 2008 e tudo o que se seguiu foi um rude golpe para as finanças públicas quando a dívida pública começou a subir vertiginosamente. E tanto na Europa como nos EUA a este choque vieram juntar-se pressões demográficas, pressões que assumem cada vez mais a forma de pressões orçamentais, numa altura em que a geração dos ‘baby boomers' começa a reformar-se.

E, em ambos os lados do Atlântico, a crise económica está a dividir os políticos, o que torna ainda mais difícil encontrar soluções racionais para o problema da dívida. E, por outro lado, começamos a assistir também à ascensão de movimentos populistas, como é o caso do Tea Party nos EUA, do partido Dutch Freedom na Holanda ou do partido True Finns na Europa.

A ideia de que a Europa e os EUA representam duas faces da mesma crise tem sido lenta a assimilar, isto porque, durante muitos anos, as elites de ambos os lados do Atlântico não se cansaram de apontar as diferenças entre os modelos norte-americanos e europeus. Já perdi a conta ao número de conferências em que participei e aos debates entre as duas facções: uma partidária dos "mercados laborais flexíveis" ao estilo norte-americano e outra que defendia de forma apaixonada um modelo europeu, contrário ao americano. Na Europa o debate político era semelhante.

Um grupo queria que Bruxelas copiasse Washington e se tornasse na capital de uma verdadeira união federal; e tínhamos aqueles que insistiam que era impossível ter uns Estados Unidos da Europa. Mas ambos os lados partilhavam a convicção de que, em termos económicos, estratégicos e políticos os EUA e a Europa era dois planetas diferentes - "Marte e Vénus", nas palavras do académico norte-americano Robert Kagan.

O debate político norte-americano continua a usar as diferenças da Europa como ponto de referência. A acusação de que Barack Obama está a importar um "socialismo à europeia" é usada para acusar o presidente de ser pouco americano. À esquerda há quem olhe para a Europa como um lugar que faz as coisas de forma diferente e melhor em certas áreas - como é o caso dos cuidados universais de saúde.

Mas estas duas regiões do planeta têm agora mais dilemas do que diferenças em comum - dívidas que não param de aumentar, um estado social cada vez mais caro e difícil de reformar, medo do futuro e estrangulamento político são agora os grandes pontos em comum.
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Gideon Rachman, Colaborador do fanancial Times

Angola vs Líbia: Entre a paz e a guerra os angolanos procuram novas estradas (Julho de 2011)

Comentário no Circulo.angolano.intelectual (Grupo Facebook) em mérito ao intervento da ilegal da OTAN em Libia.

É historicamente demonstrado que na luta pelo poder os cidadãos que justificam qualquer tipo de intervenção estrangeira (a próprio favor) são inclinados a vender a própria pátria.

Os meios não justificam os fins, excepto no campo da mais pura demagogia. Leio com tristeza as opiniões dos mais grandes "demokratikus" da nossa praça política-cultural, segundo os quais a construção de um estado de direito em Angola justificaria até mesmo a eliminação física de sujeitos políticos.

É triste constatar o pensamento destes ditos "intelectuais" que deixam vazar entre linhas as justificações de mortes como caminho indispensável para a aceleração do processo democrático angolano. Isto nos leva crer que a guerra em Angola não ensinou muito, digo isto porque com facilidade leio opinião de homens e mulheres prontos a entregar-se nas mãos dos "EXPORTADORES DE FALSAS DEMOCRACIAS" (Cfr. Guerra "neo-colonial" em Líbia | Iraque, Afg, Somalia, etc).

Caríssimos, a estrada é clara: formação de mentes, batalha política pela afirmação dos princípios e de justiça e igualdade, em outras palavras, militância em vários campos sociais por um estado de direito através do uso de instrumentos democráticos existentes.

America Today: The Real Reason We’re Leaving Afghanistan - “the tide of war is receding.”

Whatever President Obama may have thought he was doing in his June 22 speech on troop reductions in Afghanistan, his remarks will be remembered as the point at which America decided it was time to come home. Over the next 15 months or so, a third of the U.S. forces currently in the country will depart, resulting in a much-diminished pace of military activity. Even before the troop reductions were announced, the Pentagon was planning to cease U.S. participation in major combat operations during 2014. So the end of America’s longest war is fast approaching.

President Obama offered several reasons for why it is time to commence troop reductions. First, “the tide of war is receding.” Second, U.S. forces have made impressive progress in dismembering Al Qaeda. Third, overseas wars are costly and the U.S. must turn to its own economic recovery. The president’s critics see a different agenda driving the drawdown, starting with the fact that Mr. Obama is seeking reelection only months after the announced cuts are completed. They detect a lack of presidential leadership on the war that could squander hard-won gains, and hint the White House is simply responding to opinion polls that show deteriorating support for the military campaign.

Notice that these explanations, both pro and con, are mostly about us. The role that Afghans may have played in leading the president to decide on withdrawal barely gets mentioned. But the real reason Washington wants to depart is that its leaders now understand the limitations of the Afghans as allies and nation-builders. Most Americans have only the vaguest notion of who the Afghans are, just as they had little understanding of the Vietnamese, Somalis, Slavs and Iraqis who populated other recent battlefields where U.S. forces have fought. After ten years of counter-insurgency warfare, though, senior U.S. leaders know the Afghans all too well, and they have figured out that Afghanistan is not the kind of stuff from which happy endings can be fashioned.

A few salient facts about the country are in order. Afghanistan’s per capita GDP is about two-percent of America’s, and according to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, 97 percent of economic activity is tied to the U.S. military presence or international aid. The country’s biggest export is opium. Its biggest import is weapons. Nearly half the population is under the age of 15, and among those who are 15 or older, three-quarters can’t read or write (including seven out of eight women). The polyglot culture is fractured among communities speaking three major languages and 30 minor ones.

Afghan society is characterized by extreme poverty and widespread criminality. The government is weak and corrupt. There are chronic shortages of housing, jobs, electricity and medical care. If you think this sounds too harsh, don’t blame me: I’m quoting from the CIA’s World Factbook entry on Afghanistan. It is very depressing reading, and proof that Afghanistan does not have what it takes to be a self-sustaining democracy.

In other words, there was a reason why Osama bin Laden sought sanctuary in Afghanistan in 1996, and it wasn’t the weather. He knew the country was so isolated, primitive and divided that a small amount of money could buy him all the protection he needed. Having now killed him and two-thirds of his lieutenants over the last two years, the Obama Administration realizes that’s probably the most it can hope for from such an inhospitable place. Economic growth and political stability are not feasible unless America sticks around forever, buying off the warlords and injecting billions of (borrowed) dollars into a backward economy.

The problem here isn’t lack of American resolve. U.S. forces have remained in places such as Germany and South Korea for generations, even when the number of American lives at risk was far greater than the losses incurred in Afghanistan. But there were major economic and security benefits to those commitments, and politicians on both sides of the aisle in Washington have begun to doubt the value of remaining in Afghanistan. Even the geography works against us.

So Washington is moving on. It has had enough of Mr. Karzai and the warlords and the opium growers and the ISI interlopers who have made our mission there even harder than it needed to be. The U.S. intelligence community and special operations forces will continue to wage a vigorous campaign against the remnants of Al Qaeda, but the period of large-scale U.S. military activity in Southwest Asia is coming to a close. A consensus is emerging that America has done what it needed to do in Afghanistan, and now it is time for the locals to start looking out for themselves.

LOREN THOMPSON
Business in The Beltway
MONEY & POLITICS

How to Buy Gold Safely: The Basic Elements Found in Every Gold Transaction (The Secret)

With the current interest in gold ownership seemingly at a historical level, the question is not if you should buy gold, but how to buy gold. As the price of gold hovers around $1200 an ounce, many newcomers to the gold market have been looking to get their hands on the precious metal. Whether you just want to diversify your portfolio, see gold as a hedge against inflation or feel the dollar and world currency are headed for disaster, you should know how to buy gold.

The easiest way to understand about buying gold is to take physical possession of it. You can go down to your local coin shop and hand over $1200 or so dollars and receive a one ounce American Eagle gold coin. If you have more money to invest, you can buy bullion from any number of reputable companies. Knowing how to buy gold will keep you from being "ripped off" by an unscrupulous seller. Basic rule - expect to pay a few dollars over spot price (the current market price for gold) and receive spot price when you sell.

When you don't want to take physical delivery of the commodity, there is a solution for buying gold. Most large, gold selling companies will hold your gold for you at their facility. Simply set up an account, purchase however many ounces of gold you desire and let them handle the rest. You'll receive a statement and an account number indicating the amount of gold you own and you can retrieve it (take physical possession) anytime you want or simple sell it back to the company and receive a check for the proceeds.

Deciding how to buy gold can be challenging. For some, ETF's (Electronically Traded Funds) designed to track the daily price of gold, are the perfect option. Basically, you purchase shares in the fund and if the price of gold rises, you make money. Conversely, when gold prices drop, the ETF declines in value. This option offers the convenience of very high liquidity as well as not having to worry about taking physical possession of the commodity.

If you know how to buy gold mining stocks, you may be able to earn a greater return on your investment than by simply buying the the pure asset. In addition to being correlated with the price of gold, the price of a gold mining stock is also affected by the overall performance of the company.

Click here to learn everything you need to know on how to buy gold safely... and secure your financial future by putting your money into gold the right way!

By Elaine Bixler

More information?

How Can a Private Individual Buy Gold? Here you find the best secret

Gold has always been the most precious metal in the world. Although there have been other metals that are more expensive than gold like platinum, but the importance of gold has dwarfed their presence. The importance of gold is evident from the fact that the currency value of every country is determined through its gold reserves. Similarly, people buy gold as the safest form of investment. This immense value of gold is thus the fuel that runs the world economy.

Gold buying is nothing short of an art form. Although anyone can buy gold and millions do it on a daily basis, it is not a very easy process. You would say that anyone could go to a jeweler or gold market and buy gold, right? Yes, that is the simplest way of buying gold, but what about huge quantities of gold. A purchase of mere 10 grams of gold would not bring you to a profitable position. You will have to buy at least 100 grams to 200 grams to secure your investment for the future.

Private individuals regularly buy gold from the open market. They do so in a number of ways. As mentioned above, the easiest way is a purchase in the open market. However, this is not good in all situations.

The prices of gold change on a daily basis and gold dealers want to maximise their profits. If you buy a jewel set of gold and think that you have made a good investment, think again. The better option is to research a lot before buying gold. The biggest factor that can affect your decision is the current cost of gold in the global market.

The cost of gold depends on many things with the most important being the geo-political situation. During wars and tensions between countries, the prices of gold shoot up as people want to secure their assets. On the contrary, gold prices see a decline during peace times. Fluctuating gasoline prices also play an important role in the global prices of gold.

If you have made your mind to buy gold as a form of investment, do two things. First, try to survey the local rates of gold in your area. If they are affordable, then you can buy some as per your budget and future needs. Otherwise, it is recommendable to wait for some time until the prices come down.

That is necessary because buying gold at extremely high prices can have very severe consequences. People bought gold during the second Iraq war as they thought that it would last for many years. However, the prices of gold did not sustain the surge and came crashing down after a few months. Thousands of investors lost billions of pounds worth of gold during this episode.

There are of course risks in any investment and you have to be prepared for any losses. The best tip for gold investment is patience. If you can wait for a couple of years and have some extra money to spare, then gold is the best investment option.

Learn How to buy gold in the recession times.

Jack Wagon is a gold smith. You can know how to buy gold bar and save money.

By Jack Wogan

“Black Women Are Less Attractive” say japanese Satoshi Kanazawa

Psychology Today blogger Satoshi Kanazawa sparked a firestorm with his latest posting entitled, "A Look at the Hard Truths About Human Nature."

In it, the evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics argues that black women are less physically attractive than other women. The article was quickly removed from the site, but not before screenshots made their way onto BuzzFeed. Some excerpts:

What accounts for the markedly lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women? Black women are on average much heavier than nonblack women. The mean body-mass index (BMI) at Wave III is 28.5 among black women and 26.1 among nonblack women. (Black and nonblack men do not differ in BMI: 27.0 vs. 26.9) However, this is not the reason black women are less physically attractive than nonblack women. Black women have lower average level of physical attractiveness net of BMI. Nor can the race difference in intelligence (and the positive association between intelligence and physical attractiveness) account for the race difference in physical attractiveness among women. Black women are still less physically attractive than nonblack women net of BMI and intelligence. Net of intelligence, black men are significantlymore physically attractive than nonblack men.

[...]

The only thing I can think of that might potentially explain the lower average level of physical attractiveness among black women is testosterone. Africans on average have higher levels of testosterone than other races, and testosterone, being an androgen (male hormone), affects the physical attractiveness of men and women differently. Men with higher levels of testosterone have more masculine features and are therefore more physically attractive. In contrast, women with higher levels of testosterone also have more masculine features and are therefore less physically attractive. The race difference in the level of testosterone can therefore potentially explain why black women are less physically attractive than women of other races, while (net of intelligence) black men are more physically attractive than men of other races.

Kanazawa, whose prior, controversial works can be viewed in part here, was met with widespread backlash. Jenée Desmond-Harris at The Root wrote, "The blog's presentation of the allegedly scientific findings had a decidedly informal tone, especially given the highly contentious conclusions. It struck us as so outrageous that we almost thought it was a hoax of some sort, and we double-checked the URL to make sure it didn't include 'The Onion.'"

Latoya Peterson at Racialicious opined: "Justifying racism using 'science' isn't new, by any means. Every few years, it appears that someone needs to provide a rationale for bigotry, so they publish some sort of madness and hope most of the readers suffer from scientific illiteracy. The problem is that even with a thorough debunking, people latch on to articles like this to confirm their own biases."

Kaja Perina, Psychology Today's editor-in-chief, didn't explain why Kanazawa's piece was removed,however she told NPR, "Our bloggers are credential[ed] social scientists and for this reason they are invited to post to the site on topics of their choosing. We in turn reserve the right to remove posts for any number of reasons. Because the post was not commissioned or solicited by PT (in contrast to a magazine article), there was no editorial intent to address questions of race and physical attractiveness."

Kanazawa hasn't made any public statement, although, as NPR notes, his personal website does disclaim, "Prepare to be offended."