Citation

Benno Meyer-Rochow V, Hakko T, Hakko H, Riipinen P, Timonen M. Mol. Psychiatry 2021; ePub(ePub): ePub.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2021, Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1038/s41380-021-01028-x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

It is admirable that Plöderl and Hengartner have taken up the task to examine publications for occurrences of false positives and other flaws [1, 2]. That is a major undertaking and will likely occupy them for many years to come since in their own words "most research findings are false positives". In psychiatric publications successful replications were in fact possible only in one third of the published cases [3]. The question is whether the other two thirds were useless articles, especially in view of the fact that in epidemiological studies data are usually gathered for several purposes and compromises are necessary to decide what to gather and what to ignore. Consequently, epidemiological data may, to some extent, always have some limitations.

It is correct that we did not discuss the possibility of a false-positive finding. However, since none of the three reviewers of the original manuscript expressed a need for such a discussion, we did not include an analysis on false-positive results. Plöderl and Hengartner are also correct in stating that our results are novel in view of "given what we know about the lack of association between moon phases and suicide" (Plöderl and Hengartner). However, is what has been widely believed until now about moon phases and suicides actually true?

Lunar phases are well known to affect reproductive and other behaviours in animals, but were dismissed for years in connection with humans until Wehr [4] could recently show that synchrony of sleep-wake and bipolar mood cycles can indeed be related to lunar cycles. Earlier rejected as false, earthquakes have also recently been shown to be associated with lunar phases...

Language: en