The paper by David Nutt and colleagues is the root of much controversy in both the UK and USA. We feel that this publication falls short of standards set by The Lancet, hiding its subjective nature and meagre analysis behind a fancifully named method (multicriteria decision analysis [MCDA]). The MCDA approach was an open discussion whereby a group of experts assigned scores between 0 and 100 to 20 drugs according to 16 criteria. Nutt and colleagues admit that "scores [were] often changed... as participants share[ed] their different experiences and revise[d] their views". Individuals with strong views and personalities might have dominated the discussion and introduced bias. In other words, the only data used were generated by the panel during this process.
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