Talk:Project MATCH

Hello all. Welcome to the MATCH page. I hope to work on this article over a period of time. I welcome any one who wishes to collaborate. I have just imported the work from the AA article, and I want to make it a more rounded description of the project, looking at all aspects, rather than a very AA-centric version. Hopefully we can avoid the controversy of Alcoholics Anonymous. But this will take some time. Please be patient and BE BOLD - contributions can always be reverted, so get stuck in. Step13thirteen (talk) 14:03, 25 February 2008 (UTC)

Is MATCH relevant to AA?
This comment seems odd: Other researchers stated that "AA has rarely been investigated with the kind of rigorous methological attention it received in Project MATCH." [41]

As has been mentioned before, Match did not evaluate "AA". So, just like Dr. Gordis' statement, I don't know what to do about it. The investigators apparently did say this in a peer-reviewed journal article (that I have not read), but it is wrong. If we need to say something positive about Match, then I don't think that should be too difficult.Desoto10 (talk) 08:33, 31 January 2008 (UTC)

In that case it should be deleted --207.232.97.13 (talk) 23:02, 31 January 2008 (UTC)Fred


 * I put it back in. It is a comment on MATCH from a reliable, academic source. — DavidMack (talk) 17:57, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

It still seems to be gone, as far as I can tell66.120.181.218 (talk) 03:39, 2 February 2008 (UTC)


 * MATCH evaluated AA indirectly. As stated in the article, direct, randomised trials are difficult or impossible with AA, so the best research available on AA is always indirect. — DavidMack (talk) 18:06, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The article states that Cutler and Fishbain criticise MATCH based on results from zero-treatment group, and also that Peele accuses MATCH of not having a zero-treatment group. Can someone please explain this? Also, would the person who put in the Cutler and Fishbain critique be willing to add the MATCH rebuttal? Thanks. — DavidMack (talk) 18:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Regardless, it is clearly stated Project Match did not evaluate AA. Your comment does not belong in Critics of Project Match.

Science for Dumb People. A control group is a control group, it is not people who sign up to take part in one of the three treatments then drop out.

There is no real data provided on AA attendance, regardless of Tonigans claim. In fact if you put Tonigan in, there was no real data in the study to back up Tonigans remarks. --MisterAlbert (talk) 19:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC) In fact The Project MATCH Research Group (1997) reported that only one hypothetical "match" was clearly supported by the data. This proposed that clients with low psychiatric severity would do best in the 12-step facilitation condition. The results showed that these clients had more abstinent days during six and twelve months of follow-up than those treated with cognitive behavioural therapy. However, the extent to which clients in either condition became involved in AA during the follow-up period has not been reported.

That is not rigouress investigation. --MisterAlbert (talk) 19:47, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Here is the qualifier on research follow up: in the outpatient group only, less psychiatrically severe subjects had 4 more abstinent days per month on average in TSF than in CBT treatment. from Peeles article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by MisterAlbert (talk • contribs) 20:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Here is a complicating factor: the MATCH press release says "Many patients in the three treatments also participated in community meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, a mutual support fellowship rather than a formal treatment." So we have people doing TSF or AA or both. I'm wondering if this AA attendance had an effect on results. Another example of why it's hard to create a non-AA group: people just go if they feel like it. I'm sorry that I don't have time to read the original MATCH paper right now to find out more about this. — DavidMack (talk) 18:45, 26 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I'm going to research this when I have some time. Will be looking at it from a wider angle than we have been up until now, as it is more than just a study of AA.  Watch this space.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Step13thirteen (talk • contribs) 17:00, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Critics of MATCH
I think that we might be arguing about two distinct issues:

1. Did Project Match "study" AA?

2. How to handle the views of critics of Project Match.

As for 1, it is clear that TSF therapy is NOT AA, but, as DavidMack keeps saying, it is pretty much all we have to work with if we want studies that randomly assign subjects to different therapies.

The second point seems to me to be more difficult to deal with as much of the criticism of the Match study does not relate to the results of the study itself, but to the (sometimes incorrect) commmentary about the study. My take is that the Match study did what it set out to do: determine if outcomes were better for patients assigned to different treatments based on the patient's scores on psychological tests. By and large, and certainly for the initial reports, there was no such effect--subjects did pretty much the same no matter what treatment group they were assigned to. All fine and good so far. But then some individuals made claims about how the study showed how good current treatments are, resulting in a dogpile of criticism because the study was not designed for determining absolute treatment effects. Does this make any sense? I think that the Match study could be summarized in one or two sentances (maybe just the way it is now), with the caveat that some investigators made claims about the results of the study that are not backed by the study and that others critisize both the study and the claims. The rebuttle to C&F by the Match PI strongly implies that the statement by Gordis was either wrong or taken out of context.Desoto10 (talk) 00:49, 2 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, in this article certain users tend to generate a flood of copy, and others have to pare it down to what is concise, reliable and relevant. — DavidMack (talk) 21:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I need to repeat a question from above: The article states that Cutler and Fishbain criticise MATCH based on results from zero-treatment group, and also that Peele accuses MATCH of not having a zero-treatment group. Can someone please explain this? Also, would the person who put in the Cutler and Fishbain critique be willing to add the MATCH rebuttal? Thanks. (Again.) — DavidMack (talk) 21:46, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

I don't know if this got answered before, but my understanding is that Peele complains that there was not a zero-treatment CONTROL group built into the study so that comparisons could be made about absolute effectiveness of the three treatment groups. This is a complaint about the experimental design, not about the interpretation. However, since the purpose of the study was not to determine absolute effectiveness, I don't understand the complaint. C&F used the dropouts from the various treatment groups, since these subjects were followed as well as the non-dropouts. The main conclusion was that most of the reported effects occurred either after a single treatment or, in many cases after no treatment at all. This is an interesting result to be sure, but I don't know what it means.Desoto10 (talk) 03:51, 26 February 2008 (UTC)

David--Yes, go ahead and add it. I like the rebuttal because it points out that much of the complaining about MATCH is due to that fact that it was misinterpreted by the media and, indeed, even the director of NIAAA (or he was misquoted).Desoto10 (talk) 06:50, 13 February 2008 (UTC)


 * Doesn't look like the rebuttal ever got added. Somebody should, if they can - they present some extremely complex arguments and it will take someone with a sound understanding of stats and an ability to translate those stats into "laymans terms".  I for one struggled reading through the whole thing.  82.0.206.215 (talk) 16:49, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Copyvio text removed
I have removed the description of the findings of this paper, as they were copied verbatim from the paper itself. The bibliographic details, and link to source, are as follows:

--NicholasTurnbull | (talk) 07:55, 13 June 2010 (UTC)
 * Cutler, Robert; Fishbain, David (2005). BMC Public Health. doi:10.1186/1471-2458-5-75. Are alcoholism treatments effective? The Project MATCH data. http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/5/75

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