On 2018 Jan 24, Erick H Turner commented:

As the last author on this paper, I must say that Dr Berger has a point. There do seem to be systematic differences in the degree of blinding. Can anyone be blind to the fact that he or she is receiving psychotherapy? And can an investigator be blind to whether he or she is administering psychotherapy (or which kind)? Perhaps we are comparing apples and oranges.

On 2018 Jan 21, Doug Berger commented:

It is hard to understand why the authors state that both psychological interventions and pharmacotherapy for depression are both "efficacious". While medications for depression have been studied and approved by the FDA based on clinical trials that are double-blinded and have a blind-placebo control groups, no psychotherapy has ever been studied with either a single-(patient blind) nor double-blind (patient and therapist blind), and neither has there ever been a blind-placebo control. It is impossible to weed-out the effects of hope and expectation that can bias results in psychiatric conditions such as depression that have subjective endpoints and large random error. "Blind raters" are not part of a double-blind and these raters only record the reports of unblinded subjects. Non-blind outcome research is only acceptable in conditions with objectively measurable endpoints such as bone fracture rates, myocardial infarction, stroke, tumor size etc.Thus, psychotherapy has never been actually shown to be "efficacious" in a clinical trial with robust control on bias (and never can be as the subject and treaters must be ublind to the treatment given).

These and other points are discussed in more detail and are referenced in this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26870318.2

On 2018 Jan 21, Doug Berger commented:

It is hard to understand why the authors state that both psychological interventions and pharmacotherapy for depression are both "efficacious". While medications for depression have been studied and approved by the FDA based on clinical trials that are double-blinded and have a blind-placebo control groups, no psychotherapy has ever been studied with either a single-(patient blind) nor double-blind (patient and therapist blind), and neither has there ever been a blind-placebo control. It is impossible to weed-out the effects of hope and expectation that can bias results in psychiatric conditions such as depression that have subjective endpoints and large random error. "Blind raters" are not part of a double-blind and these raters only record the reports of unblinded subjects. Non-blind outcome research is only acceptable in conditions with objectively measurable endpoints such as bone fracture rates, myocardial infarction, stroke, tumor size etc.Thus, psychotherapy has never been actually shown to be "efficacious" in a clinical trial with robust control on bias (and never can be as the subject and treaters must be ublind to the treatment given).

These and other points are discussed in more detail and are referenced in this article: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26870318.2

On 2018 Jan 24, Erick H Turner commented:

As the last author on this paper, I must say that Dr Berger has a point. There do seem to be systematic differences in the degree of blinding. Can anyone be blind to the fact that he or she is receiving psychotherapy? And can an investigator be blind to whether he or she is administering psychotherapy (or which kind)? Perhaps we are comparing apples and oranges.