It helps to actually understand the studies

The Fix has no, for all intents and purposes, editorial control over what gets posted to their magazine. It's a pleasant surprise to see someone post there use peer reviewed research; it's an unpleasant surprise to see how poorly they actually quote the research.

Case in point: This 2017 article from the members of the group "Handshake Media." Two points for actually quoting peer reviewed research.  -10000 points for ignoring key points made by recent addiction research. 

Let’s see here: Discounting studies showing showing TSF/12-step effectiveness without a control group (even though the surgeon general didn't), but accepting the results of Zenmore 2017/2018 which also didn't have a control group. Ignoring experimental studies which do show TSF effectiveness (e.g. Walitzer 2009, which she should have been aware of because it was mentioned in Humphreys 2014).

Discounting Humphreys without presenting a compelling argument: This silly article claims that "Their methods were inadequate for determining whether increased participation is causally linked to increased abstinence, or whether increases in abstinence occurred without self-selection bias", but can not show any actual problem with this paper. Humphreys 2014 shows that, when looking at the increase in AA caused by a randomized experimental condition, that, among other things "The 3 month model showed that an increase in attendance of 1% (i.e., one absolute percentage point, not 1% of prior attendance) predicted an increase in PDA [Percent days abstinent from alcohol] of about a third of a percentage point (B = 0.38, p = .001)." It would seem that they did not fully read or did not understand Humphreys 2014.

Also: There's no need to link to the paywall version of Humphreys 2014; It's a PMC open access article.

The author’s bias is obvious.

That said, happy 4th of July everyone. As per request, this page is now open to moderated comments and please be patient; it may take days or weeks to moderate your comment.

Edit: To be fair, this author later conceded that Humphreys 2014 shows evidence that 12-step approaches can be helpful.