This is the saddest moment in my 45-year career as a psychiatrist. Dr. Allen Frances wrote this in a December blog post on the Psychology Today website. The reason was the approval by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) of the new edition of psychiatry’s bible – Diagnostic and Statistical.
Apr. 8, 2021 , 4:00 AM
Hans-Ulrich Wittchen, one of Germany’s top psychologists and an expert in treating anxiety and phobias, is not shy about promoting himself. His email signature says he is a “highly cited researcher,” and with good reason. He has almost 1000 articles to his name, according to the Web of Science, and has racked up nearly 70,000 citations. He is an editor of Germany’s diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders the bible of clinical psychology and until 2017, he led a psychology research institute at the Dresden University of Technology (TU Dresden).
Yet his reputation is under fire after an investigation into one of his studies found evidence of manipulation and elaborate efforts to cover up the misdeed. The investigation report, turned over to TU Dresden in February and obtained by