The Spooking of Ichabod Crane

There are 3 more Riffs on the 329 theme, with 3 more to come.

Julie Wood the prime moved behind the Study329.org site, which provided much of the underpinning of Children of the Cure has written a Riff on the book which can be found in full on Samizdat under Sympathy and Pills  or here as Warning May Cause Hostility, Insomnia and Akathisia.  For anyone not familiar with the story, Julie cuts to the chase and tells you what happened.

Leemon McHenry has also Riffed on the theme.  Like Julie, Leemon has had a starring role in the 329 story and is perfectly placed to distil the essence of the story which he has done here.  His review is on Samizdat under Caveat Emptor and  here in full The Dark Side.

Leemon has been liaising closely with Jon Jureidini, one of the authors of the Restoring Study 329, which is the beating heart of Children of the Cure.  Their collaboration extends back a decade and a half.  They have brought to light more pharmaceutical company issues and the consequences for clinical practice than almost anyone else.  Their collaboration had led to a book The Illusion of Evidence Based Medicine – published today, July 1st – Canada Day.

The Illusion of  Evidence Based Medicine is an academic take on the corruption endemic to pharma marketing that makes a mockery of Evidence Based Medicine – which should be one of our greatest achievements but which, where on patent pharmaceuticals are concerned, comes close to being a Cargo Cult.

Leemon and Jon’s book will or should spook most doctors, academics, philosophers and politicians who come anywhere near it – this is not to say everyone who reads these posts won’t enjoy it (maybe not quite the right word) or be able to master it – you will.  This phrasing is designed to set up a contrast with another book covering the same ground, aimed at anyone who likes to be spooked by a real page turner (which of course might include some doctors, academics, definitely politicians and maybe even a philosopher or two).

Paul John Scott’s Malcharist may turn out to be the book Samizdat was created for.  It is due out imminently. Watch this space.  It tells the same story about ghostwriting, clinical trial data sequestration that everything else linked to Samizdat, Jon and Leemon and Jim Gottstein with The Zyprexa Papers tells the story of Shivani Patel in the grippingest Grisham fashion.

Unbelievable stuff – except totally believable to anyone who has been there.  The real unbelievable is that people will think its unbelievable.

Ichabod Crane would have been well and truly spooked by Malcharist.  For those of you who like your Johnny Depp and the Tim Burton version of the Legend of Sleepy Hollow, the bad news is that this was not the real story.

Ichabod Crane was not a police detective investigating the legend of the headless horseman.  He was a townie schoolteacher come to a rural village in New York State who took a shine to the wrong woman.  He was no match for the man who really fancied her who decided to scare Crane out of town.

The legend of the headless horseman came in handy – and the coup de grace was when a nervous Crane making his way home was confronted by a horseman who rolled what he thought was a head in front of him.  The scene is so good that artists for a century and film-makers now feel compelled to Riff on the theme.

This scene has given rise to one of Bill James greatest creations which you can see in the its natural setting in another Riff on 329 – The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  Rolling a Giant Paxil pill where the head normally features is truly inspired.

We invited anyone who knows anything about the stories of Washington Irving to pick up an Irving theme and Riff to it.  They all centre on New York State – its easy to imagine Donald as a character straight out of a Washington Irving story.