���Re the Boyce & Wood article "Money or mental health: the cost of
alleviating psychological distress with monetary compensation versus
psychological therapy" ("Health Economics, Policy and Law", November
2009):
http://tinyurl.com/yljyl7m
I've now obtained the article. It turns out to be considerably worse
than even I anticipated! To me it reads like an undergraduate's essay
that would be returned by the author's professor with red markings all
over it. To take just one of a dozen or so criticisms I could make,
there is no evidence that they undertook any critical examination of
the numerous articles and studies they cite. I'll leave it at that.
Of equal importance is the way that the article has been uncritically
trumpeted on numerous medical and mental health websites. And it is
evident that psychotherapists are going to jump at the opportunity to
boost their profession:
"Psychotherapist and broadcaster Phillip Hodson, Fellow of the British
Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, says
"The Beatles sang "money can't buy you love" but perhaps they should
have penned a verse about investing in professional therapy instead.
“ 'We already knew that receiving extra income beyond about £35,000 a
year tended not to improve happiness levels. Clearly if you suffer
from clinical depression no amount of money could cheer you up. But
this research takes us further, suggesting that what really matters in
life are our human connections, being able to access and use our
emotions and getting personal recognition rather than compensation or
bonus cheques.'”
http://tinyurl.com/ygkd86s
How has all this been achieved by someone who has not yet obtained his
doctorate? Well, to start with, Cambridge Publications charge for
articles to be published in their online journals. They also tell
prospective authors: "Our constant aim is to publish papers with
maximum speed, accuracy and efficiency…" Given the monies obtained from
authors, and even more to the point, the $30/£20 they charged to
download *every* article in their online journals, it would hardly be
surprising if their peer review standards were compromised.
Boyce tells us more in an online interview for a U.S. group "Thetic":
http://tinyurl.com/yjz3c34
On being asked how did this end up getting out into the media, he
replied:
"Well, I put pressure on myself basically, I mean to me, I mean this is
a really important idea, it's probably one of the most important
chapters of my thesis in terms of its ideas and actually, you know,
this is a way that, you know you can really have a real impact. So
since we started writing this one it has always been in the back of my
mind that we eventually want to get this out to the media, so it's a
case of getting the Press Release out, making sure the Press Release
was just right, and sending that out to as many people as possible, and
it seems to have done quite well, so people have been contacting me…"
So you pay an online journal to get a quick publication, within a
system that must surely compromise academic standards, and then get out
Press Releases to as many people as possible. Many of them (in fact
every one I've seen), of course, simply post the results of the "study"
as if the conclusions were proven.
More from Boyce in his interview:
"We're basically trying to highlight how ineffective money is in
increasing well-being. So we're not necessarily saying psychological
therapy is really great, which it is, but we're just trying to
highlight that money is relatively ineffective…"
"Just to kind of get things clear. We didn't actually conduct any
analysis in and of itself, but what we're actually doing is kind of
bringing together very disjoint pieces of research… economists are
quite into evaluating effects of income on well-being, we took from
their studies and we're basically trying to join that up with various
psychological research, various research within law, and also medical
research, we're kind of bringing that all together. I'm specifically
quite unique because of my kind of very cross-disciplinary approach
that enables me to kind of bring all this research together. I have not
actually conducted any new analysis, but we're just drawing it all
together."
When asked about his claim made in the article that mental health is
deteriorating worldwide, his response was:
"In 1999 unipolar depression was estimated to be the fifth most
burdensome disease worldwide, and the estimate is that by 2020 that's
expected to be the secondmost."
This is the only 'evidence' provided in the article for the claim made
therein that "Mental health is deteriorating across the world", with a
reference to the JAMA article from which this factoid was obtained.
To be fair to Boyce and Wood, late among the flurry of assertions and
citations they do write: "Our argument is not without its limitations."
Too true!
Allen Esterson
Former lecturer, Science Department
Southwark College, London
http://www.esterson.org
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