> Would this explain the propagation of, umm, data-challenged psychiatric drugs in the 80s and 90s?

I'm not sure what you're referring to. Could you unpack for those of us who haven't followed this but would like to learn?

It's hard to explain briefly, and I don't know the details. However, I know that my own antidepressant has no significant difference versus a placebo effect with respect to depression. I'm not claiming that they don't work for people, just that they were rushed to market given current studies.

A cursory google search brings up a decent review of the literature here (note, not peer reviewed to my knowledge but an article): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4172306/

Reboxetine is one example. It's an antidepressant pushed by Pfizer. Initial studies showed it was effective versus placebo or SSRIs, but later research found serious publication bias -- Pfizer suppressed evidence suggesting it was not effective. Only after the German Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care obtained unpublished data from Prizer was its lack of efficacy obvious:

http://www.bmj.com/content/341/bmj.c4737

Pre-registration and mandatory publication would help prevent this.

I was hoping for some sort of accessible synthesis of the available literature, since I don't have the time or inclination to get eyeballs deep in this issue. But thank you for the links.