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The Dodo Bird Verdict: A Brief History
Today, one of the most debated concepts in the field of clinical psychology is the “Dodo Bird Verdict.” According to the Dodo Bird Verdict, all psychotherapies produce fairly equivalent outcomes. For decades, claims have been made regarding the effectiveness of therapeutic treatments and in 1975 Luborsky, Singer, and Luborsky initiated the first comparative study demonstrating that there are not many significant differences between psychotherapeutic outcomes. After the Luborsky et. al (1975) study, hundreds of new studies have been initiated in the defense of the Dodo Bird Verdict as well as in opposition of it .Although the Luborsky et. al 1975 study was the first attempt in testing the dodo bird hypothesis, the term “Dodo Bird Verdict” was actually first coined by Saul Rosenzweig (1936) to illustrate the argument that all therapies could have the same success rate because it is not the specific therapeutic technique that yields stronger results but the idea that there are greater common factors involved . Rosenzweig borrowed the idea from Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), where, at a certain point, a number of characters become wet and in order to dry themselves, the Dodo Bird decided to issue a competition. Everyone was to run around the lake until they were dry. Nobody cared to measure how far each person had run, nor how long. When they asked the Dodo who had won, he thought long and hard and then said "Everybody has won and all must have prizes."

Supporters of the Dodo Bird Verdict believe all psychotherapy is equivalent because of the common factors shared in all treatments, whereas critics of the Verdict would argue that treatment techniques are the important part of patient improvement. The common factors theory states that all therapy in psychology is equally effective because of the common factors shared among all therapies in psychology   So the specific techniques or strategies that are unique to the individual treatments are ineffective in the treatment outcome of the patient. Instead, the only causal agents in treatment are the common factors, namely the therapeutic effect of having a relationship with a therapist who is warm, respectful, and has high expectations for client success. However despite the support for the Dodo Bird Verdict, evidence has found that certain specific treatments are in fact better for particular disorders when compared to active placebos or therapies. Here, in contrast to the common factor theory, qualitative components of the therapy have statistically significant results.

Support for the Dodo Bird Verdict
The common factor theory states that all therapy in psychology is equally effective because of the common factors shared among all therapies in psychology. So the specific techniques or strategies that are unique to the individual studies are ineffective in the treatment outcome of the patient. Instead, the only causal agents in treatment are the common factors. So the specific techniques or strategies that are unique to the individual treatments are ineffective in the treatment outcome of the patient.

One common factor is the client-therapist interaction. A 1992 study by Lambert showed that nearly 40 percent of the improvement in psychotherapy is from these client-therapist variables. Other researchers have further analyzed the importance of client-therapist variables in treatment. Researchers found that improvement in the patient was up to the patients themselves because the data showed that if patients were able to change their attitude they would improve. Wamphold et al 2002, found that 7% of the variability in treatment outcome was due to the therapeutic alliance whereas 1% of the variability was due to a specific treatment The therapists attitude is also a very important causal agent in positive patient change. Najavits and Strupp 1994, demonstrated that a positive, warm, caring, and genuine therapist generated statistically significant differences in patient outcome This shows that basic human qualities, not specific treatment qualities, are the determining factor for client improvement. Wamphold et al 2002, also found that nearly 70% of the variability in treatment outcome was due to the therapist’s attitude toward the efficacy of the treatment

Opposition to the Dodo Bird Verdict
Although the evidence in support of the Dodo Bird Verdict may seem viable, there is compelling research against the theory as well. The Dodo Bird Verdict relies on the premise that “different psychotherapies appear to produce similar results,” however this concept is subject to several misconceptions and inaccuracies. Luborsky, Singer, and Luborsky’s 1975 review on comparative outcomes of psychotherapies is one of the most well-known studies executed in the support of the Dodo Bird Verdict, however, although 30 years ago a general equivalency of the effect sizes of psychotherapies may have seemed accurate, that is not at all the case today,. With the improvement of research and the growth of psychology as a field in general, the treatments used by clinicians have evolved as well. We are no longer in the practice of bloodletting and lobotomies. Today especially, with the evolution of empirically supported treatments, there is a greater emphasis on treatment integrity and specificity than what there had been early on in psychotherapy practices.

One of the more common critiques against evidence in support of the Dodo Bird Verdict has to do with the legitimacy of the meta-analyses used in the study. These meta-analysis comparative tests unfortunately are not invulnerable to the subjective agenda of many psychologists. Arguments have proposed that the specific meta-analysis the Dodo Bird Verdict is based on (Luborsky, Singer, Luborsky 1975) could possibly produce misleading results because of the type of studies combine in the comparison,. A startling 43% of studies that support the Dodo Bird Verdict, yielding a report that concludes no outcome difference, are found not to have the sensitivity to detect differences in therapies even if they did exist Some meta-analyses constructed are not sensitive to the subtle distinctions between treatment effects, especially among comparative studies of highly similar treatments

Issues in Testing
The heart of the controversy over this theory lies precisely in the mechanism used to evaluate it. The controversy of the Dodo Bird Verdict essentially originates from the fundamental problems of Meta-analyses The obvious lack of clear psychotherapeutic evidence for the support of either side in the debate comes from the fundamental problems of Meta-analyses when used for comparing treatments “head to head”. These massive comparative studies have been used to compare the effect sizes of different treatments. Unfortunately, there ability in finding a reliable and valid effect size is heavily scrutinized by some. This is because many researchers are said to have an agenda when conducting a meta analysis. Thus, they hand select which experiments they want to use in their study to product the end result that they want, not what would be best represented scientifically This incites bias and should be discarded. Unfortunately, it is difficult to filter through valid and invalid science.

This seems to be the difficulty with a clear answer to the Dodo Bird Verdict. For example, Wampold 2009, found Siev et al 2007 study whose research for significancy of CBT versus RT was resting on one experiment with a uncharacteristically large effect size (1.02) by Clark et al 1994. Wampold 2009 found this effect size to be invalid because of the biases of the study. When this flawed experiment was removed, the effect size was not statistically significant for the use of CBT over RT in panic disorder therapy. On contrary to The Verdict, Chambless 2002, found that “errors in data analysis, exclusion of research on many types of cients, faulty generalization to comparisons between therapies that have never been made, and erroneous sorts of treatments for all sorts of problems can be assumed to represent the difference between any two types of treatment for a given problem.” Here, Chambless 2002 forcefully critiques many Dodo Bird supporting studies. It is clear that meta-analyses need to be conducted carefully for them to be taken seriously. In support of the anti-Dodo Bird side, Hunsley 2007 says that when “measurement quality is controlled for and when treatments are appropriately categorized, there is consistent evidence in both treatment outcome and comparative treatment research that cognitive and behavioral treatments are superior to other treatments for a wide range of conditions, in both adult and child samples.”

Importance of the Verdict
The "Dodo bird verdict" is especially important because policymakers have to decide on the usefulness of investing in the diversity of psychotherapies that exist. It is an endless academic debate because if in fact evidence today can prove the theory to be true beyond disbelief, many therapists would feel pressure not to use empirically supported therapies when treating their clients. With the publications of studies that conclude various therapies do produce similar results, to a certain extent, this claim is arguably correct. However more accurate studies deem the Dodo bird verdict statistically and clinically inappropriate Perhaps the greatest argument is that for CBT. If all therapy is equally effective, then the extensive, valid, reliable, and high quality research that went into the research for CBT over 50 years ago is false

Although the controversy surrounding the Dodo Bird Verdict continues today, current research in certain psychopathology may represent a means to an end. For example, the use of CBT when treating panic disorder (PD) cases is clearly a winner They found that CBT does improve patient pathology in five panic related symptom domains. There are many studies that echo similar results brought about by Sieve 2010 This example shows that the Dodo Bird Verdict does not span all of psychotherapy, even if it may come into play in certain areas

Although the verdict may not be as evident in some areas as others, it is still as prominent as ever because of the magnitude of research being done on both sides of the argument. Perhaps the greatest showing of the current state of the Dodo Bird Verdict is seen in meta-analyses of Wampold and Barlow. In these meta-analyses, both researchers precisely dissemble each other studies; pointing out weaknesses and inconsistencies. Although both researchers are both trying to improve psychology in their perspective ways, the disagreement and lack of consistent evidence for the Dodo Bird Verdict may in fact be weakening people’s views of the field. For example, these overall inconsistencies in the scientific plausibility may lead governmental officials to cut funding for psychological treatments and other public health measures  Another possible consequence of the debate could be the increase of public doubt of the field. Generally speaking in present day, the public does not regard psychology as a hard and applied science  Although this is what these researchers are trying to obtain, they may be doing more harm than good, because as of now, psychology is failing as an applied science. This has led to the scientist practitioner gap Although it would be optimal to have a clear answer, there may not be one